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“Yep. You owe me.”
Sunnie was confused. “Excuse me?”
“I wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t decided to take a walk on the wild side the other night and fought that guy for your purse.”
She matched his position, leaning toward him. “Oh no. None of this is my fault, Romeo. If you hadn’t laid that damn kiss on me in front of that reporter, that video wouldn’t have gone viral and we wouldn’t be in this situation. So really, it’s you who owes me.”
He shook his head, refusing to listen to her reasoning. “You kissed me at the April Fools party. We’re calling the kisses a draw.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought you didn’t remember the kiss at the party.”
Landon shrugged. “I lied.”
That response took her aback for a second. “I didn’t initiate that kiss.”
“Yes, you did.”
Sunnie tried to figure out how to feel about the fact he’d remembered the kiss. She really thought she’d dodged a bullet there. To find out that she hadn’t—and now he’d added his own kiss to the hot mess they were making of this friendship—was surprising…and interesting.
Landon was Mr. Rock Solid, meaning he was so reliable, so true to character, she could set a watch by him. She could pretty much predict how he was going to react to any and every situation.
Except this one.
She would have thought he’d hunker down and hide out while giving the whole viral thing a chance to blow over. That didn’t appear to be his plan. More than that, he was trying to game the system. That was a Sunnie move, not a Landon one.
“You’ve gone quiet. Not sure I’ve ever heard that lack of sound from you.” He laughed at his own joke, and her body responded to it in a very uncomfortable, hot-and-bothered way. Dammit. She’d really thought these past two weeks would help her get over all these…unwanted feelings.
She decided to hear him out, curious about where he was going with this whole “you owe me” thing. “What do you want?”
“You’re going to pretend to be my girlfriend until all this shit blows over and the lovestruck mob following me goes away.”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“Yes. You are. This ‘single hot cop’ thing isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse. The best way to tackle it is to go on the offensive. If I’m not single, if I’m, in fact, dating sexy nurse, those women hovering outside my apartment will realize I’m not available and hopefully back off.”
“And what if they don’t?” she asked.
“I’m not worried about that. You’re going to be a very jealous girlfriend.”
Sunnie rolled her eyes, waiting for the “I’m just kidding” that would prove this was all some big gag at her expense. “Did Finn put you up to this?”
Landon shook his head. “No. It was actually something your dad said at work. He was the one who pointed out the appeal of a single hot cop.”
“And he suggested we pretend to date?” Sunnie felt as if she should step outside to see if a meteor was streaking across the sky, headed for their planet. Landon had studied his predictable-as-the-tide skills under her father’s tutelage, the perfect Padawan to Dad’s Jedi master.
“Of course not. He just got me thinking that the best way to combat the problem is to take the word single away.”
“So go find a girlfriend.”
He tilted his head, raising his eyebrows. “I just did. You.”
Sunnie leaned back. “It’ll never work. None of our family and friends will believe it for a second.”
“I’m not trying to convince them. Just the strangers.”
“So what are you thinking…exactly? Spell it out for me. Give me the parameters.”
“Go out with me tonight. Dinner date.”
