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We both turned to the caterer working behind the bar, who was a very pretty young brunette woman, probably Jax’s age.
“I’ll take an iced coffee, if you have it?” Jax asked her.
“We do,” she said, blinking up at Jax, clearly enamored with him. “Do you want any cream with that?”
“No need. Thank you, so much.”
She got busy making his drink, smiling wide at him again as she passed it over. She asked if he was from California, and she seemed very excited when he told her he was local and lived right down in Boulder. I finally asked for another apple cider, which she offered me in a much less flirty way.
“God, she wanted to devour your ass,” I said under my breath as Jax and I walked off.
“Who?”
“That bartender. Come on.”
Jax turned back to glance at her again. She gave him a little wave, which he politely returned. “For fuck’s sake. I’m clueless when it comes to this stuff.”
“There they are,” I heard Kim’s voice from behind us as we walked toward the edge of the lobby. “Charlie, Jax, I want to introduce you to Terry Winwright, the head of marketing at the network.”
Jax and I shook the hand of the short, grey-haired man who beamed up at us.
“You two,” Terry said, pointing at both of us with his eyebrows raised, “are pure money.”
I didn’t quite know what he meant by that, but luckily Jax was the master of a polite smile-and-nod.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Money,” Terry repeated. “I’ve never seen comments roll in so quickly online. The kiss at that festival, then at the bar—there’s even a very vocal young demographic of women online who have blogs dedicated to you two. They write little stories about you! Hah! It’s brilliant. The best marketing is the kind we don’t have to pay for, right, boys?”
“How have you been enjoying your visit to Colorado?” Jax asked, politely sidestepping talking about online gossip. “You’re from Los Angeles, right?”
“Oh, I love Colorado,” Terry said. “I go to my cabin in Aspen every December to ski. Great place. Boys, let’s get a photo, yes?”
Soon Kim was whisking us off toward the backdrop in the corner, where we took a few photos with Terry and then a few more with some other execs she introduced us to. After some more chitchat, she and Terry broke off to go talk to Nathan and Shawn, and I finally felt like I could exhale.
“Oh, no, they’re not really a couple,” I overheard Kim saying to Terry as they walked off. “Decoy relationship. Yep. All for the promo. He’s young—22—doing Charlie a huge favor. Great catch, right? Perfect guy for a pretty, boy-toy type vibe.”
“Even more brilliant than I thought,” Terry said back to her with a chuckle before they disappeared into the crowd.
Jax’s gaze met mine. He’d overheard them, too.
“Guess we’re doing our job right,” Jax said. “Even that guy thought we were together.”
His expression wasn’t as light as usual, and I knew he had something on his mind. It made me uneasy. Jax was so kind and selfless that I knew he might keep it hidden from me if he started to feel bad about our arrangement, and I was always on high alert, waiting for any potential moment where he stopped wanting to do this.
Part of me thought that it might finally be hitting him, now.
“So, uh,” I started, “want to go talk to Kace? Maybe—”
“I just hate that,” Jax blurted out, furrowing his brow as he glanced back over toward Kim and Terry, now at the other side of the room.
Shit. Here it was.
He was about to call the whole thing off. It had been fun, but I knew our fake relationship couldn’t last forever.
“If you want to stop, we can stop,” I said, swallowing hard. “I know faking everything is a lot of work.”
He turned back to me. “What? No. Hell no,” he said. “I meant that I hate Kim being so dismissive of us. ‘He’s doing Charlie a huge favor?’ Fuck that. If this relationship was real, I’d be the best boyfriend ever. Why did she even mention my age? I’m 22, you’re 29, it’s not that big of a gap. And we look hot as fuck together, anyway.”
For Christ’s sake.
Not falling for Jax was getting harder and harder each day.
Especially when he said shit like that.
Watching him get more and more rambly and incensed became so endearing that I thought my heart was going to burst. I’d thought he was about to call everything off, when in reality, he was steadfastly defending our relationship.
Fake relationship, my brain played on a loop in my head, but at this point I kind of wanted to ignore it.
I couldn’t keep a gentle smile off my face. “You’re, like, big mad about this.”
He looked at me, his brow still adorably furrowed. “I am not. I never get mad. What does ‘big mad’ even mean, anyway? That’s not how English works.”
