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“If you win, I will begrudgingly accept your wish never to speak to me again after this weekend.”
“Even if we happen to run into one another?”
“I will smile and do that little chin jerk thing men do.”
“Ah, the one where they think they look cool. The ‘’sup’ one.”
“That’s it. The ‘’supjerk,’, and I’ll not say a word to you.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like the answer to this.” I tapped the pen against the notebook. “And if you win?”
The biggest self-serving, shit-eating, smug grin spread across his face, and I knew exactly what the smarmy git was going to say before he said it. “We stay friends.”
I stilled. “Just friends?”
“Did you think I was going to bargain for more?”
“The shit-eating bastard of a grin on your face suggested it.”
He looked over my shoulders and over my upper body, frowning.
“What are you looking at? What are you doing?”
“I was looking for your brain-to-mouth filter. It’s missing,” he replied wryly.
“Oh, good luck with that,” I replied with a sigh. “I’ve been looking for twenty-eight years and have yet to find it.”
“I thought as much. Well?” He met my gaze expectantly. “Do we have a deal?”
“Are you promising you won’t try and hit on me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then no deal,” I replied. “I will begrudgingly accept a deal of being friends after this hellish weekend, but nothing more. I have no interest in dating you. No offense.”
“No, it sounded like a compliment.”
“I didn’t—” I covered my face with my hands. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He dropped his arm from the back of the sofa, wrapping it around my shoulders, and pulled me into his body while he laughed. “I know how you meant it. To my great disappointment, this relationship will always be fake.”
“Great disappointment my arse,” I muttered into my hands.
My cheeks were flaming—both with embarrassment and the lie.
William wasn’t the problem.
In fact, I had the sneaking suspicion I was liking him a bit more than I should have been.
All right.
It was no suspicion.
I was far too comfortable with him. Even now, with his arm around me as I hid my face and he laughed… it felt like the most natural thing in the world. The way his thumb had stroked my ankle during our conversation and the tenderness in his voice when I’d told him about my mum had… Oh, God.
There really was no other way to describe it.
It was just… comfort.
