AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I would.”
“That’s what you’re doing here, isn’t it? That’s your real reason for helping me. You’re trying to pitch your app.”
Jake scoffed. “I don’t need to pitch my app,” he said. “Have you forgotten how successful version 1.0 was?”
“Not successful enough to stop you from talking about me like I’m some financially incompetent shoe hound in front of Michael Sanders,” I said. “You know that isn’t me. I handle my bills really fine, and I don’t ownanyexpensive pairs of shoes.”
He was unrepentant. “Maybe not,” he said. “But that’s how men talk about their wives, right?”
“Men who arejerks, maybe.”
I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day. Even when we had finished our work and were heading back out to the car, I had nothing to say to him. It was lucky for him that he didn’t try to put a hand on me as we crossed the parking lot this time because I might have tried to break his fingers. And, given that he was a retired Navy SEAL and my fitness routine consisted primarily of jogging and yoga, I had a sense that an altercation like that one wouldn’t have ended well for me.
We got into the car, Jake behind the wheel because we had decided at the start of this arrangement that it made the most sense, even though it was my car. Jake had told me that no Navy SEAL would let his wife drive him around, and I’d given in because it didn’t matter all that much to me.
Today, though, I wished I was driving. I would have gone ten miles over the speed limit to get him home and out of my face.
When we pulled up in front of his house, we both got out of the car. I held out my hands for the keys.
He didn’t give them to me. “Sure you don’t want to come inside?”
“I’d rather eat live snakes,” I told him.
He laughed. “Sure you would. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about what happened between us at the hotel.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” I told him. “I’ve thought about the fact that it’s definitely never going to happen again.”
“I know you had a good time,” he told me.
“I did.” I wasn’t going to try to lie about that. “But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to let it happen again. Absolutely not.”
“Okay,” he said. “But you said you didn’t want me to touch you at all anymore. And that didn’t last very long at all, did it?”
I snatched the keys out of his hands. “Stop talking about your stupid app to Michael Sanders,” I told him. “He doesn’t want to hear about it.”
“I don’t know,” Jake said. “I thought he seemed pretty interested.”
He was entirely too much.
I got in the car, started the engine, and drove off.
When I glanced into my rearview mirror, I noticed he was watching me drive away.
Chapter 6
JAKE
“So,who’sstarringinthe movie?” Danny asked.
We kept our voices down because we were at the gym, and we both knew how gossip spreads in LA. Anyone in this building could be a member of the paparazzi, and if we weren’t cautious, we might say something that would reveal that Olivia and I weren’t really married. We could blow the whole plan.
“So far, I only have two names,” I told Danny, putting down the dumbbell I’d been curling and shaking out my arm. “Brian Ford and Chris Harton.”
“Wow,” Danny said. “Big names.”
“I know, right? If word got out that someone like Brian Ford was using Branches, thousands of people would download it just to look cool.”
“And once they tried it, they’d be sure to stick with it,” Danny said. “The app speaks for itself once you’ve got the hang of it.”
