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“That you and one Hope Sinclair are the newest and hottest item in New York City? Yes. How the hell did you get her to agree to go out with you?” JD asked.
“It’s more of a slight misunderstanding.”
“Oh, do tell,” JD said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
I filled him in on what had happened as he got up and made a cup of coffee. By the time I was done he sounded more awake.
“Impressive. I never thought you would stoop to that level in order to get that woman to go out with you.”
“I didn’t do anything other than help her out,” I said.
“Uh huh. Totally believe you. I don’t care what you had to do, I’m just glad that you finally did something,” JD said.
“What are you getting at?”
“You’ve been into Hope for years and you’ve never done anything about it. I was starting to worry you never would. I’m glad to see that I’m wrong. Assuming you’re going to continue to date her, fake or otherwise,” he said.
“I haven’t talked to her yet, so we’ll see. I wanted to talk to you first, see what your story was so that we could coordinate.”
“You want to put this on me. I get it. Fine, if you need to, I will gladly be your fall guy. Please, stay with Hope, it would so save my ass,” JD said emphatically and sarcastically.
“I should have known you would land on your feet. I don’t know why I even called,” I muttered.
“Because you needed someone to tell you it’s okay. What did Walker have to say?”
“What makes you think that I’ve talked to Walker about this?”
“You two may not have been close but it’s getting better and no matter what, he would want to know that you’re okay. What did you tell him?”
“It was none of his or the company’s business and he not so gently told me how I was wrong. I agreed it would be best for the company and for the family if Hope and I continued to date. It would help to decompress your problems with Lizbeth and would make me and the company look good. If we were to say it wasn’t real, or deny it, it would only cause more speculation and interest.”
“Sure,” JD said, clearly not convinced.
“You disagree.”
“That’s one way to handle it, and it’s the way you should handle it because it works best with you trying to win Hope. You could have denied it, and if you had as soon as it came out, it would have been the end of it, that you didn’t, tells me you didn’t want it to go away. This is your perfect opportunity to be with a woman you’ve been in love with for years and you aren’t going to let it pass you by.”
“Nor should I,” I said.
“I couldn’t agree with you more. What are you going to do?” he asked.
“That is for me and Hope to figure out.”
There was no point in disagreeing with JD about my feelings for Hope or how I wanted to use this gossip to help me win her over. I just hadn’t been sure if it was wise or if I was doing something wrong. JD agreeing with me, or at least seeing what I was trying to do, made me feel better about the whole scheme. Somewhat. He was not known for staying within the lines of what was right as much as Walker was. I might have been manipulating Walker a bit to try to get him on my side, but with both of them agreeing with me, I would do it.
I had wanted to be with Hope for too long to let an opportunity like this pass me by. I didn’t know if we were right for each other, if we even had a future, but I wanted to find out, I needed to find out. With my brothers in my corner, I just needed to call Hope and start the ball rolling and hoped that she agreed.
Chapter 8
Hope
In the end, I chickened out and didn’t call Mac. I told myself he was already at work and the last thing he needed was to be bothered by a woman who was worried about how she looked on social media. Instead, I spent the day neck deep doing research for my book.
Now that I was done with school, I needed to figure out what I would do next. I was trying to decide if I wanted to write a novel set in World War II but before I even began it, I needed to have as much knowledge and background about the time that I could. I had been working on it off and on while I was getting my doctorate, but I hadn’t made much headway.
It was still in its infancy, but I had the basic idea for the characters, the setting, and a very broad idea for the plot. I had always wanted to write a novel, but I wasn’t sure if I could be an author. If I was ever going to do it, now was the time. Yet, I still had a hard time actually sitting down and doing it.
The morning had been semi-productive, but as the day had worn on, it had become less and less so. It had gotten so bad that by the early afternoon I realized I had been staring at the computer for the better part of two hours. All I had to show for it was random knowledge about World War II. I now knew that during the beginning of the war, tanks were classified by gender. Tanks with cannons were considered male, while the ones with machine guns were considered female. While interesting and eventually useful to help with the story, it wasn’t getting me any closer to my goal.
