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His green eyes smiled, then fell to her cleavage. “I like where your mind went, but I was thinking about your predicament and thought, What the hell?”
She folded her arms, putting it up as a barrier between them. “I’m not going to sleep with you again to make a point to my parents, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“When you sleep with me again it will be because you want to.” His voice was low and seductive, like verbal foreplay.
“That’s not going to happen. Look at how it turned out last time?”
“We blew the roof off this place.” He cupped her jaw and ran the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. “We were both there, angel,” he whispered. “And we both know it will happen again. Just look at the other day. This kind of chemistry is impossible to ignore.” The sheer conviction behind his statement made her body quiver. Traitorous body! “And when it does, you’re going to be screaming my name.”
She swallowed. “What do you get out of this?”
“Wow, that hurts,” he feigned, as if it cut deep when they both knew it did not. She leveled him with a look. “Fine. I need to prove to my family that I’m not a selfish asshole.”
“How does dating me accomplish that?”
“I told my brother that I could help with the Sierra Vista Cup. He clearly thinks I can’t do it, and then Lucas sent over this file, and it only took two pages to realize I’m in over my head. You’re the logistics expert. I’m a fast learner, I just need a coach.” The flirty playboy was replaced by a seriousness that felt incredibly intimate. “If you help me pull this event off, I will help you convince your parents that you’re moving on.”
“You don’t even live in Sierra Vista. How would this work?”
“I’ll be around for the next few weeks.”
That gave her pause. “What about your season? I thought you were leaving tomorrow?”
“I have a couple of competitions over the next two weekends, and I pulled out of the smaller competitions. That gives us plenty of time to make it look real.”
“So when you leave, people will just think we’re doing the long-distance thing?”
“If that’s what you want.”
What did she want? Lying felt wrong, but not as wrong as making her parents worry. Her dad needed to be healing and the doctors said that meant no stress. The amount of worry she’d cause by confessing didn’t seem to outweigh the impact of them discovering on their own that she’d made the whole thing up.
“I tried long distance and it doesn’t work.” Dillon taught her that heartbreaking lesson. “Long distance would worry my parents. Not that it will be real,” she added quickly. “I mean, this would be an arrangement for convenience, nothing more.” She couldn’t believe she was giving this serious consideration. “And I’m a horrible liar. How would we even convince people this is real?”
“We haven’t even gone on a real date and already people are planning our wedding. I think we can keep up pretenses for a few weeks.”
He was right. It had already gotten so out of hand, at this point corralling it would be like trying to wrangle the wind. “If I agree to this fake romance, then there would have to be guidelines so we both know what’s up and nobody gets hurt.”
“I’ve never been good at staying within the boundaries.”
“You’d better learn.” She mentally went through every romance novel she’d ever read and made a list of how someone might successfully navigate a faux-mance. “There will be no behind the scenes flirting, no verbal foreplay, and no sex. This is a faux-mance, nothing more.”
“Does that mean when we’re not behind the scenes, we can have sex?”
She poked him in the chest and her finger bounced back. There was absolutely no body fat there. He was sinew, muscle, and bad decisions all rolled up into one.
“And, for that matter, no kissing.”
“You were all into making it believable a moment ago. And if people are to believe us, kissing stays.”
“Fine. Kisses can stay. On the cheek.”
“Lips.”
With him a kiss would lead to sex and that might lead to feelings. Her heart was too vulnerable to engage in feelings right now. They had to make it look real without it feeling real. Zoe had wanted her to enjoy herself, not get her heart broken by an unavailable man.
“This isn’t a negotiation. But you’re right, cheek kisses won’t cut it, so I’ll agree to lips. But even a hint of tongue and the arrangement is over.”
His mouth twitched as if choking down a laugh. “Is there anything you are open to?”
