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“This wasn’t part of the deal.”
Her entire body—all five feet of it—tensed like a live wire, and I prayed nobody in the crowd could read lips.
“Then you didn’t read the fine print,” I said.
Her eyes darkened. “Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t recall hashing out the parameters of our relationship, do you?”
I chuckled, enjoying the way her cheeks reddened with her anger. “No. Because if you’d read the fine print in the NDA and the contract, you would’ve discovered that it basically said I get to define us. What I say goes. Our relationship. How serious we get. How much we see each other. Public functions and media coverage. All of it is controlled by me. Every. Last. Thing,” I said, tapping her nose playfully.
As realization sank in, her tiny hands balled into fists. “You didn’t even give me time to tell P.”
“Um, that’s a good thing. Had you told your friend, you’d be in breach of contract.”
Scarlett opened her mouth, then closed it again. Clearly, she’d forgotten about the nondisclosure clause.
“But I tell her everything,” she spluttered, and I could practically hear the panic leaching from her voice. “We don’t lie to each other, ever. Sharing my secrets with her is like breathing. She’s my best friend,” she said. “I can trust her.”
“Sorry,” I said, though I didn’t sound sorry. Maybe because a relationship such as she described was completely foreign to me. “But with this, you can’t. No one must know. Not a single soul, not even your parents.”
“What if the people closest to me don’t believe me? I mean, it’s a little far-fetched for normal people to believe that I’m dating Thorne Roberts. Stuff like that doesn’t just happen to normal girls out of the blue!”
I shrugged. “The most important part is convincing the media and the rest of the world. If we act the part, that won’t be hard. Trust me. And if I’m posting pictures of us together online, your parents and friends, and whoever else will believe it too.”
“Trust you?” she said, her tone incredulous.
When I didn’t so much as bat an eye, she growled. “Fine.”
She tilted her chin, looking up at me, and I had to laugh because, for someone so small, she was awfully fierce.
“So what exactly is the story, then? Shouldn’t I know? You just showed up here out of the blue. People are going to ask questions.”
“I’m hashing it out. We’ll go over it after school. I assume you’re free?” I arched a brow, instinctively knowing this would annoy her.
“I guess I have to be, don’t I?”
“Meet me at my locker, and we’ll leave together,” I said.
“What about my—”
“I’ll bring you back for your car, and until further notice, I’ll be picking you up for school from here on out.”
She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t be serious.”
“I hold the puppet strings, remember? What I say goes, and if we want this to look real, or at the very least, like we’re serious, then I should be driving you to and from school.”
She tensed, and I could practically see the war waging inside that pretty little head of hers as her gaze flickered back out to the crowd. “Okay, but what am I supposed to tell people in the meantime?”
“Just be evasive. Can you do that?”
She nodded, even if a little reluctantly.
“And if they really press, then just tell them we met at the bakery. Got it?”
She let out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, which locker is yours?”
“It’ll be the one with the giant crowd around it.”
She snorted. “Ego much?”
