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“Yes, I mean—no!”
“Well, I’m not averse to a few practice shags.”
Aaron almost winced, the word sounded all wrong coming out of Alice’s mouth. He had no problem with anyone else saying it, which made him a complete hypocrite, didn’t it?
“I have to get to first base before I can get to second base, right?” Alice chimed.
He shot her a dark glance. “Do you even know what that means?”
She beamed. “It’s a good analogy isn’t it? Sort of like climbing Everest. If I want to scale the dating mountain, I have to navigate the base camps.”
“There is another connotation.”
“Really?”
Was Alice playing with him? Or was she seriously this naïve? Alice didn’t play games, so it had to be the latter. Which made it even more imperative he didn’t let her throw herself to the wolves.
“As in, first base.” Aaron plastered his palms on his pecs; forced his eyes not to stray to her chest. “Second base is… lower…”
She cocked her head. “How much lower?”
“Like your…” He swallowed hard. “Like your…” Normally, if he was with the lads, he’d saypussy, no problem, but Alice and he had never had these kinds of conversations—at least, not in direct relation to each other’s bodies.
Aaron felt a flush of embarrassment riding up his neck. “It used to be called second base at school when you got inside a girl’s undies.”
Alice’s eyes skittered away but her lips tilted. “No wonder I’ve never heard the term before. I bypassed the school groping stage.”
Thankfully the need to reply was interrupted by the waiter arriving with a plateful of sushi. Aaron stared at the plates piling up on their tiny table. This flirting thing was a dumb idea. But then asking Alice to be his date in the first place, was—as she’d pointed out the other night—a pretty dumb idea too.
Maybe they should just forget the whole thing.
Then he thought about next Friday’s drinks with the partners and his stomach clenched. How would he explain the absence of a girlfriend when he’d said Alice was so excited to meet them?
He forced a smile. “How do you want to go about this?”
Alice wriggled forward in her seat. “Okay, well—I thought that for every date I have as your girlfriend, you could return the favour by giving me flirting tips.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know… I was thinking I could practise with you, like method acting classes, and you could tell me whether what I’m doingworksor… um…doesn’t. Sort of like my coach.”
“I see.” He didn’t. What he did see was trouble looming that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Or better still, since we’re supposed to be dating, we could practise ‘on the job’, so to speak.”
He shot her a dumbfounded look. Alice lifted her chin and returned his gaze, and still two bright pink spots rode her cheekbones. Aaron stifled the desire to call the waiter for the bill. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. As for the tightening sensation in his belly, if he’d been prepared to explore it—which he definitely wasn’t, since he didn’t believe in navel gazing in any shape or form—he might have been forced to admit that the thought of giving Alice flirting lessons wasn’tentirelyunappealing.
He binned the thought and picked up his glass. “Well, I guess we should toast to that.”
Alice flicked her ponytail over her shoulder. “To us. Fake dating and flirting lessons,” she said sweetly, and he watched as, once again, she sank the whole glass.
“To us,” he answered.
He hadn’t got a clue what Alice and he were anymore.
