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“We still need to sign a contract.”
He balked. “We do?”
“Yes, Beau. I like structure. I like rules. I imagine you do, too, or you wouldn’t be a Marine and you wouldn’t have these insanely detailed contracts for your clients. I want the contract so I know what to expect, but I promise I won’t try to pay you.”
He considered me for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine.”
“Great. Let’s do it.”
“Now? What, you want me to pull it up on my phone?”
I rolled my eyes. “Duh, that’s where the contract lives, right? You operate your business out of an app.”
“We’re at your sister’s wedding.”
“Are you kidding? Look at her. She’s having the time of her life and all eyes are on her. This is the perfect time. Anyone would just think we were sitting here hanging out because we’re a couple and that’s what couples do.”
Oh, how I wish we were really a couple.Especially after seeing him in those dang dress blues. I’d attended how many of the same weddings as Beau in the last year? Tons. But this was the first time I’d seen him in the iconic uniform, and when I’d first laid eyes on him as I was coming down the aisle, I’d almost tripped on my dress. Talk aboutswoon.
But no. Beau was right. There was no sense in thinking about it. He was leaving. He didn’t want a relationship. All signs pointed to a big, fat finish line on us, as soon as we were done playing pretend.
I waited while he got out his phone, then watched as he clicked around on it. This would be good. There were all kinds of rules in Beau’s contracts that would prevent me from getting too close to him.
“Give me a minute to draw one up that fits the… circumstances,” he said, not looking up from the screen.
“You got it,” I replied.
While I waited, I looked around the beautifully decorated reception. Layla and Zac’s wedding was small in comparison to most of the weddings Starlight had recently hosted. And not just the bridal party, since we were down by two with Aria and Will being absent. There were relatively few guests, too. It was likely because his family was pretty small, so many of these guests were from our family.
Oh, man. Our family. Hopefully we’d be able to make this whole thing work for two weddings. Beau didn’t usually attend multiple events with the same clients. I’d heard him say once it was hard to remember stuff because he did so many of these things, and he didn’t want to get caught in a lie.
The idea of lying caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. Lying. That was what we’d be doing. And a whole lot of it, too, if we were going to keep this up for an extended period of time. It felt…wrong.
“Okay, look it over,” Beau said. “But this may not be the best time to talk about the details.”
I looked back at him and was immediately sucked into the hazel eyes that stared back at me. My heart rate picked up at merely the sight of this man, never mind what the prospect of getting to feel his strong arms around me as we pretended to be a couple would do. When he’d put his arm over my shoulder earlier, I’d thought I was going to spontaneously combust.
Then our fingers brushed when I took the phone from him, and suddenly I wasn’t all too concerned with the fact that I’d have to lie to my family for the foreseeable future. Because even fake dating Beau for a while was better than never dating him at all, right?
“Um, excuse me,” Layla said, stomping over to us, “did I seriously just find out through the grapevine that you two are dating, and that it’snota business arrangement?”
I looked over at Beau and he winked, turning my insides to mush.
Let the games begin.
* * *
An hour later, Beau took off to skip rocks and drink beer with his fellow Marines by the pond. But not before he’d insisted we wait on the contract for a time when we could have a little more privacy.
We’d also introduced him to my grandmother and parents, who’d given me several not-so-stealthy nods of approval while chatting with him. And my mom had even pulled me aside afterward to let me know how proud of me she was for finally telling Beau I liked him.
Of course she’d known about my crush. It’d been a long year, and doing some harmless gossiping about his swooniness with my sister and mom hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time. But now it kind of felt like one since I had not, in fact, told Beau I liked him. If anything, I was very much pretending I didn’t, while simultaneously pretending I did. My mind was spinning from the effort.
And all of that would have been bad enough, but he’d also insisted on not one buttwoslow dances in the name of keeping up appearances. I was still reeling from what it felt like to be held by him as we danced to two of my favorite love songs when Layla and Shelby came up and pulled me aside.
“I was just about to sneak off for a little break,” I told them. “Wanna take a walk?”
“Gladly,” Layla said with a laugh. “Clara’s over there holding court talking about all the cute stuff she’s going to have at her wedding. I feel like I’m on an episode of that old show where the brides attended each other’s weddings and ranked them on a bunch of different categories.”
