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Well. Apparently there is more you can do to sex up a sweater in the middle of a Michigan winter.
“Job requirement,” Carter says, and I’m pleased to hear the flatness in his voice. She might be unabashedly flirting with him, but he’s not returning the favor.
“Well, you know, if you need someone to go for some late-night runs with you…” the girl says, moving closer to him.
“I’m actually set, thanks,” Carter tells her.
She giggles again. “I bet you are.”
I can hardly keep my eyeballs in their sockets, they’re rolling so hard. No wonder I’m single. I’ve never tried that hard in my life.
“Ahem,” I say, walking up to both of them. “Did you find what you were looking for, sugar plum?”
The girl lets out a breath, and then her eyes turn to daggers as she looks from Carter to me. To make sure she gets the message, I hand Carter my books to carry, and then I blink my regular-length lashes at her while I smile serenely.
“Right,” the girl says, not bothering to hide the disappointment on her face. “Good luck, Carter. And call me!”
She shoves a business card at him and skips off, steam practically trailing behind her.
“So this is everywhere you go, huh?” I ask, watching as he tucks the business card into a random book and pushes it back onto the shelf.
Carter shrugs. “They’re not really interested in me. They’re into the ballplayer thing, and probably my money.”
I want to believe him, and maybe he’s right. But it’s just another reminder that Carter can have any girl he wants. Groupie life is around the corner, while I’ll be back to shelving books as soon as he leaves.
It makes me wonder. If Carter has money, then what does the endorsement matter? Can he really be hurting that bad that he has to have me as his fake fiancée? Or is he just greedy?
I can’t help it. The words bubble out of me. “Why are you doing all of this anyway?”
“Doing all what?” he questions, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.
“Why are you pretending to be engaged? You said you needed the endorsement deal, but don’t you get paid enough tossing a ball around?”
“I’m not sure I’d call it ‘tossing a ball around, ” he replies a little drily. “That sounds like basketball.”
“Answer the question, Carter,” I say.
I don’t know why I need to know now. Maybe it was the groupie. Or maybe it’s that, try as hard as I can, just being a “fling” isn’t easy for me.
I wait for Carter to lie. Or to shrug it off. Tell me he needs the money for hookers. Something. Anything.
But in the end, he just smiles.
“How about I show you instead?”
Chapter Ten
Carter pays for my books despite my protests. I hate that it endears me even more to him. I’m an independent woman and I don’t need anyone to buy my books. And yet… I feel like Carter knows that. He doesn’t think I can’t buy the books. He just wanted to do something nice. To make me happy.
Don’t be stupid, I tell myself. This is a game. Or maybe this is a tip, since the whole engagement thing is going well.
I’m overthinking everything, I know. But one thing I can’t even begin to figure out is what, exactly, Carter’s showing me. Because after we get into his car, he takes off without a word of explanation. And when I ask where we’re going, he just smiles.
“You better not be killing me in the woods,” I say. “Because that definitely isn’t good PR.”
“Jesus,” he says. “You didn’t tell me you’ve got a dark sense of humor. I signed up for the good girl, remember?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m just saying. You said you wanted to ‘show me’ something, and now you’re driving out to the middle of nowhere.”
“Actually, I’m driving you to a park.”
“Same thing.”
“I disagree.”
“Whatever,” I say. “Besides, why would a park be your way of showing me anything?”
He sighs. “Are you always this impatient?”
“Are you always this mysterious?”
That gets a laugh out of him, and I grin.
“Behold,” he says as he pulls up to the park. “What I have to show you.”
I stare at it. It is, as he told me, just a park. In fact, it’s somehow less than a park. It’s…
“This might be the most depressing park I’ve ever seen,” I say.
Compared to everything else in Reindeer Falls that’s coated in magic, this park is sad and abandoned, with only one swing set where two should be and an ancient metal slide. But it’s what’s behind it that’s even sadder.
The baseball field is covered in snow, but even with that, I can tell that this place hasn’t had any TLC in years. I doubt there is any grass under the snow and parts of the chain-link fence are rusted straight through.
