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Oh!
My!
God!
No. It couldn’t be. He had to be joking, right? In her rush to jump off the FOMO train, had she accidently slept with a guy and didn’t even have the right name? Even worse, the right brother? No, it had to be Lucas. He’d been wearing slacks. A button-down. His shoes were so polished they reflected the overhead lights.
If it was Jax, and by the look on his face she had a good idea it was, then had he known from the start that she thought he was Lucas and played along like it was some kind of joke? Ha-ha, wrong twin! And more importantly, what did she say now? To him. To her parents. And what did he have to say for himself?
Apparently nothing since he was staying tight-lipped on the subject. Her mom was confused, her dad looked homicidal, and Milly was equal parts embarrassed and angry. She didn’t like being played. She’d been there before and wound up with a broken heart.
The problem was she didn’t know if he was an innocent bystander or guilty of catfishing her. Either way she had a precious few seconds to fix this and prevent her father’s second heart attack. The wheels in her brain were spinning so fast they might strip a gear.
Fix it, Milly. The problem was she wasn’t sure how to convince her parents she wasn’t making rash decisions. Because while sleeping with Lucas—um, Jaxon—was a spur of the moment thing, it hadn’t felt rash. It felt right.
He’d come along at the right moment in her life and they’d shared something amazing. Or so she thought.
“Jax?” she laughed, elbowing him in the gut, willing him to say just kidding and laugh with her.
He didn’t laugh. He stood tall and straight like a towering pine. The very way he held his posture told her he was livid.
As if smelling the tension wafting off them in waves, her dad demanded, “What the hell is going on here?” Then he sent her the look and Milly’s wrist itched and her lungs felt as if they were being strangled. She’d seen that look, but never aimed at her.
She looked at Jax who was looking back, something inquiring burning in his eyes, which were clearly transmitting a message: Yeah, what is going on?
How should she know? She’d swiped right and look where it landed her. In a total Zoe situation—standing in her parents’ kitchen with a half-naked mystery man. And Milly had spent her entire life trying not to add stress to her parents’ plate. She loved her sister with every fiber of her being, but Zoe had been a magnet for trouble and chaos—and was responsible for every gray hair on her dad’s head. And the last thing Milly wanted was to have her parents thinking she was as reckless as her sister in bringing home the wrong man—or as desperate as to make up a fake boyfriend out of thin air.
“I know who you are,” Gennie said. “You were friends with my Zoe.”
She knows my name, Jax’s expression seemed to say. But when he spoke to her mom, his tone was tender and warm. “I was sorry to hear about Zoe, Ms. Smartt.”
“Why, thank you.” Gennie gave Jax a pat on the arm, then squeezed his bicep before looking him up and down. “Well, didn’t you fill out nicely. Snowboarding really agrees with you.”
“Mom!”
“So you two are dating,” Gennie said, a warm smile slowly spreading across her face. “Oh, Milly, we’re so proud you’ve put yourself back out there and found a nice man. Isn’t that right, Howard?”
Howard snorted like a bull to the matador.
“I mean after everything that happened with Dillon and the news that he is now—”
“Mom!” Milly said again. Today was embarrassing enough without Jax knowing that the man who had loved her enough to get down on one knee had dropped to his knee yet again, proposing to another woman just months after breaking Milly’s heart.
This was a disaster. A complete disaster. She could already tell by the challenge in her dad’s expression that he wasn’t about to buy what she was thinking of selling.
So her story had to be nothing too elaborate. Keep it simple, to the point and as close to the truth as possible. Except when she got nervous, she rambled and rambling led to spilling the beans. And these particular beans needed to stay in the can. At least until she and Jax had a conversation about what the hell was going on.
Until she was proven differently, she was blaming Jax for this whole mess. Yes, he’d never said his name and, no, not a single one of his buddies called him by anything other than Macintyre, but he’d been in slacks. And acting like a responsible adult. And if this was some kind of switch-a-roo, then she’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
Milly didn’t make a habit of running from confrontation, but then she thought back to her sister’s letter about finding her happy. She really wanted her family to think she was happy and holding on instead of being worried about her all the time. So she held on all right, taking Jax’s hand in hers, lacing their fingers, and in a moment of desperation, blurted out, “We kind of crashed into each other and nostalgia just kicked in.” Which was the truth, the whole truth, and … Oh hell, who was she kidding? She was a big fat liar.
“Did you hear that, Howard? Nostalgia kicked in,” her mom said with an excited hand clasp to the chest.
Jax’s lips thinned and his eyes blazed with something that pierced her heart—hurt—but then he smiled up at her parents and said, “Yeah, nostalgia can be pretty surprising sometimes.”
“Well, when did this all happen?” Gennie asked, practically glowing with joy.
Milly’s brain farted and her mouth betrayed her good sense. “It’s new,” she said, her smile too bright.
