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“Why do you say that? Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” He didn’t mean for the words to take on a grating edge, but he couldn’t stop his old, hidden wound from festering.
Calm the hell down, man.
“Yeah, there’s something wrong with you,” she countered. “And it’s my number one dating rule. You’re a musician, and I don’t date musicians…anymore.”
Anymore.
“What’s the second rule?” he pressed.
She rolled her eyes. “Do not date a musician,” she repeated. “It’s every rule. I’d date a psychopath before dating a guy in a band.”
Jesus! Message received.
But tonight wasn’t about dredging up the past. Tonight, he’d help her forget, and he’d rely on her to help him do the same.
His career was hanging in the balance, and Aria was days away from moving in with him.
Shit was about to get real—but not yet.
“You could never be my real fiancée either,” he fired back, giving her a dose of her own feisty medicine while keeping it light.
She narrowed her gaze. “Why?”
He tipped up her chin, then ran his thumb across her pouty lips. “I don’t date bonbons.”
“But you like kissing them,” she countered. “And eating them. I tasted chocolate and butterscotch when you…” She touched her lips. “When we…when that kiss…”
He couldn’t blame her for not being able to form a cohesive thought on the topic.
He didn’t have words to describe the kiss either.
He’d never kissed anyone like that before, but he had to play it cool.
He shrugged. “If I’m in the mood, I’ve indulged in a bonbon. What about you?” he continued. “You don’t date musicians, but do you kiss them?”
She gazed up at him through her eyelashes. “If I’m in the mood, Bartholomew.”
Bartholomew.
“How did you know my middle name?”
A lock of her chocolate-brown hair fell forward, and she allowed it to shield her gaze. “Is it Bartholomew? That’s funny. I was just bullshitting. What a coincidence.”
That was a lie.
“It’s not a coincidence. How did you know it?”
And then he figured it out.
She had to be a fan.
“I must have read it somewhere. I don’t know,” she snapped, brushing the errant lock behind her ear.
Dammit!
He didn’t mean to embarrass her. Oddly, he liked that she knew it. He liked imagining her singing along with him.
He softened his expression. “It was quick thinking, Harper. I appreciate you covering for me. I don’t want to be recognized tonight.”
