“Do you have our room key, babe?” Jack asked, knocking her back into the present.
“What?” Hallie tucked her hair behind her ears as Jack gave her a knowing look, like he was absolutely sure of where her head had just been. She nodded and said, “Yes. Key. I have it.”
“Where are you guys?” Jamie asked. “We’re in 326.”
“Everyone’s on three,” Lillie said. “We blocked off the whole floor.”
Chuck asked Hallie, “What’s your room number?”
“Um.” She bit down on her lip before muttering, “I’ll text you.”
“What?” Her sister put her hands on her hips. “Why are you acting all secretive? What room are you in?”
Hallie glanced at Jack, who was giving her that sexy smirk, before saying, “Can’t a girl and her boyfriend move to a quieter floor without it being a criminal offense?”
“You’ve never been to this hotel. Why would you assume three is noisy?” Hallie could tell that for some reason, this pissed her sister off. Lillie asked her, “Did you change the reservation?”
“I did,” Jack said, picking up his carry-on and putting it over his shoulder. “We, uh, just wanted a little privacy.”
“Privacy?” Her sister looked confused. “You have your own room, for God’s sake.”
Jamie started laughing, and when Hal looked at her, it was obvious what she thought.
She glanced at the rest of the group and she could tell that they thought the same thing now, too.
They all thought that Jack had reserved a room on a different floor so he and Hallie could have a weekend of wild sex. She felt her cheeks get hot as they all stared at her, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Suck on that, Ben.
She picked up her own luggage, pulled out the room key, and said to Jack, “Shall we go get settled in, baby?”
He looked like he wanted to smile at the endearment they both knew she would never use for him, and he said, “It would be my absolute pleasure.”
As they walked into the hotel, he quietly said, “Is Scarf the ex-douchebag?”
“Yes.” She started laughing, so glad she’d brought him. “Scarf is.”
Jack
“I’ll just call the front desk.” Hallie dropped her bags and walked to the phone on the nightstand. She pressed the zero key and said with a laugh, “But this is hilarious. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of this actually happening in real life.”
Jack watched her kick back on the king-sized bed, twirling the phone cord like everything was fine. “You’ve never heard of a reservation getting screwed up?”
“I’ve never heard of an only-one-bed trope actually happening.” She rolled her eyes at him and said, “It’s a romance novel thing. You know, two people forced to sleep together in one bed because there’s no other option . . . ?”
His collar felt tight. “That is ridiculous.”
She rolled over onto her stomach and muttered, “You’re ridiculous. Oh, hi. My name is Hallie Piper, and I’m up on . . .”
As she spoke to the front desk associate, Jack set down his suitcase and walked over to the window. The room was amazing—stone fireplace, overstuffed reading chairs, wood floor with a thick rug, king-sized bed—but the view from the balcony was even better.
He opened the door and stepped outside. The Rocky Mountains filled the horizon, a breathtaking panorama, and a wide, clear stream gurgled below with a thick border of yellow aspens on either side.
He braced his arms on the railing and took a deep breath of Colorado air.
“I have good news and bad news.”
Jack heard her step out onto the balcony, but he didn’t turn around. “Of course.”
“The good news,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her cheek against his back, “is that we don’t have to move to a room on the third floor.”
Jack could feel every tiny movement of her fingers on his chest, could feel her voice rumble soothingly against his skin. He swallowed and managed, “Nice.”
He looked down at the ten pink fingernails that were spread out on his chest. Fuck.
“But the bad news,” she said, kind of giggling as she spoke, “is that we have to stay in this room.”
“What?” He turned around and stared down at her face. She looked startled by his reaction, and her hands fell to her sides as he said, “You’re telling me they can’t find a single room?”
She blinked. “Well, they do have a couple of rooms, but they’re on the third floor.”
He said, “So let’s move.”
“By my family.”
“So?” he asked.
“So we just made a whole big thing about wanting a private sex room.”
She was seriously going to kill him with her Hallie-ness. He sighed and said, “We never said anything about a sex room, for the love of God.”
“It was implied,” she said, as if he were the ridiculous one. “So how do I explain the change of heart? We didn’t want to have wild sex in the same bed, we like to use two? We prefer to sleep separately after we bang?”
“Will you stop saying ‘bang’?”
“You don’t like ‘bang’?” She smirked and said, “You, Jack Marshall, don’t like ‘bang.’ That’s right; you prefer ‘jostling’ and ‘railing.’?”
He sighed. “No one will have to know we’re down there.”
“They’ll know,” she said.
He tilted his head and cracked his very-tight neck. “I’ll make sure they don’t.”
“Can you just do this for me?”
“No,” he barked.
“Why not?”
He knew he must sound totally unreasonable to her. He said, “I just think it’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He very nearly yelled the word as he tried getting through to her. “Sharing a bed while pretending to be in a relationship? That doesn’t seem like it’s treading something that could fuck up a friendship?”
She shrugged, and something about the gesture made him want to pull her coat tighter around her body and make sure she was warm enough. She said, “I get what you’re saying. I mean, even though we don’t ever talk about it, this friendship means a lot to me and I’d hate if something got in the way of that. But . . . ”
He clenched his jaw together as he waited for her to continue.
“We don’t have a normal friendship. We became friends after we slept together. Sex and feelings can’t get in the way, because we drove over them right at the beginning.”
He swallowed. Why did it irritate him that she was so cool about it, so positive that more intimacy wouldn’t add feelings?
Dammit, he knew he was all over the place and making zero sense.
But the reality was that he hadn’t considered how much of a mindfuck the fake dating might be for him. He didn’t like that it felt real when she wrapped her arms around him, and he didn’t like the way he felt when he kissed her; it felt like everything he wanted. And since she was, in fact, faking it in accordance with their agreement, if he acted on his feelings under the guise of faking it, that felt like lying. Or fraud.
He wanted to tell her how he felt about her and then give her time to explore her own feelings and respond accordingly. But if he told her how he felt now, would she think it was part of the game? Or a result of the game?