The Real Deal

Theo nearly stumbles, and his eyes go wide as the sea. “You win.”

“He had a bachelor pad that he took me back to. He had a whole believable storyline about not being able to spend the nights together due to a sleep disorder. For three months, I bought into it. Until Xavier spotted him out with his wife.”

“The XMan busted him?”

I nod. “He sure did. I’m glad, but it also absolutely sucked to have all his lies shoved at me.”

Theo’s expression darkens, and his mouth turns into a thin line. “Yeah, that would suck. I’m sorry, April. You deserve so much better.” He unleashes a deep sigh of frustration. “Like I said to your cousin—you’re sweet, smart, and kind. What I didn’t say to your cousin is this: You’re feisty and fiery and funny and beautiful. You deserve the world. You deserve way better than a guy like that.”

Hummingbirds dance in my chest. They take flight, and so do I. I’m floating, rising, and I don’t want to come down ever. Each sweet word breaks down my resolve to stay away from men. Correction—I don’t want to stay away from this man. I want to get closer, and that scares the hell out of me.

I cast the spotlight back on him. “Your story?”

“Let’s see. It’s not as bad. But I dated someone I worked with. She was a market researcher, and she promised me all sorts of work. Mystery shopping and such. And then we grew closer, and I shared some of the things I’d been through in my life.” He swallows harshly. “The next day, she was done—and all the work was gone, too. It was a slap in the face, and a warning sign, too. People don’t want to really know you.”

I tilt my head to the side. “I don’t think that’s true. Some people do.”

“Yeah?” he asks skeptically.

I nod, and those hummingbirds flap inside me again as I say, “I like getting to know you.”

He offers a faint smile.

“Sounds more like she was a jerk,” I add.

“I’d say the same for your ex.”

Point taken. I’ve been lumping all men with Landon, but that’s not entirely fair. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s start a club for horrible exes.”

“We’ll be charter members, and no wonder your family wants to set you up. It’s kind of sweet,” he says, his voice soft. “It’s nice that they love you enough to worry about you.”

“Yeah?”

“April, it’s nice that you have a family to worry about you,” he adds, and that’s the true punch in the gut.

I wince. “Sorry if I sounded ungrateful.”

“Not at all. I’m just pointing it out.”

As we turn back toward the inn, the bag on his arm, I see the back of a sandy blond head and a pair of square shoulders outside the hardware shop. I squint for a second, trying to remember. “Calvin,” I say out loud.

Theo asks, “Who’s that?”

“Oh, just someone my mom wanted to set me up with.”

Theo points to the man setting up a clapboard sign. “Him?”

“My mom was dying for me to have cinnamon rolls with him.”

“Cinnamon rolls?” he asks as if it were a foul, dirty thing.

“She wanted me to have coffee and cinnamon rolls with him. She said he really wants to get to know me.”

“Of course he does,” Theo growls under his breath.

Calvin fusses with the sign, but then he’s a blur, because Theo drops the bag, cups my cheek with one hand, and backs me up to the wall of the florist shop, which hasn’t yet opened. My heart hammers. It’s the loudest it’s ever been in my whole life. He raises his other hand, holds my face, and brings his lips to mine.





Chapter Nineteen

April

It’s slow and soft and tender.

An exploration. As though I’m something curious he discovered, and he needs to turn the object over in his hands, consider it from all angles. Taste, touch, brush.

His lips are so gentle that for a moment, they’re barely there. Then he kisses more.

More everything.

Closer. Firmer. More insistent.

This isn’t the two-second kiss on the porch. But it is a kiss for the sake of an audience, and I fear I’m going to like it too much for my own good. I should stop it. I really should.

I raise my hands to his shoulders, and nearly push him away. I don’t want all these pretend kisses that trick me. That feel too real. But when my hands make contact, my fingers curl over his shoulders instead of shove him away.

Stupid, stupid body wanting what’s only a facade.

Dumb brain, too, because it goes haywire, like a TV station tuned in to a fuzzy channel as he kisses me harder and everything becomes a haze of static. Bodies and sensations, right and wrong, fake and real. It’s all just one big gorgeous mess in my head right now.

This isn’t real.

This isn’t real.

This isn’t real.

But the tingles everywhere tell me it is.

The flutter in my heart says this is no ordinary kiss.

The goose bumps that sweep over my skin are 100 percent genuine.

I’m dying to know if this is real, or just a show for him. I squint open one eye, scanning for Calvin. He’s gone. It’s just us and the sea breeze, and the sound of a car trundling down the street not far away.

There’s no audience now, and that ought to reassure me.

But Theo’s back is to Calvin, so he must not know the audience has left the cinema. Theo’s probably just being thorough. He’s playing the alpha, the this is my woman role.

Right now, I believe it. I buy in to it, and I’m ready to cast my Oscar ballot for him.

The winner for Most Convincing Fake Kiss is Theo Banks. For his performance in The GigsForHire Boyfriend, the Academy proudly presents him with this top honor. Did you see how he kisses her into an amazing state of bliss?

I sink into his kiss.

Floating takes on new meaning.

Turned on is the state of my soul.

If this is being kissed, nothing else has ever counted.

This is how women should demand to be kissed.

Someday, when I am old and brash and wear a red hat, I will tell young women the lesson I learned one fine summer morning on a street in my hometown: Don’t settle for less than you deserve. Don’t settle for second best at work or in life—or in kisses. I’ll make speeches and deliver my rallying cry: “I’ve no patience for boring kisses after Theo Banks. Nor should you. Kiss like the world is on fire. Kiss like nothing else exists. Insist on it. Demand kisses that make the world disappear.”

With his stubble and his ink and his edgy attitude, I expected rough. But he takes his time. A soft moan falls from his lips. I catch it in my mouth and swallow his sound. He slides a hand up my neck, and when he reaches my ear, he rubs his thumb over my earlobe.

My breath hitches.

My entire body lights up. I am a bright neon sign. I blaze in cherry red, in electric blue, in the hottest pink. Who knew his thumb on my earlobe would flip the switch in me from kiss to full-body swoon. It’s like that moment when a violin solo shifts into a symphony, and I’m played everywhere. A tuning fork has been struck, and this is an all-over vibration. My senses go into overdrive, and I can hold only one thought in my brain.

Kiss me again.

He reads my mind.

He seamlessly slides into the role of a man who wants the same thing. Inching closer, he presses against me, ropes his hand through my hair, curls it around the back of my head.

I feel this kiss in my knees, in my bones, under my skin.

As his lips explore mine, the kiss takes on a new urgency. Lips press harder. Tongues slide. He demands more of me, and this fake kiss feels so real, so damn real, as he steals my breath.

He breaks the kiss. “This is how we kissed the first time,” he says in my ear, his breath hot against my neck.

I try to devise something witty, something clever, but all I can manage is, “We didn’t stop.”