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She worked her fingers through her messy braid, making it even messier, so the light brown strands framed her face.
Not that he was noticing that. Nope.
“I don’t think they’d expect you to be with me. I haven’t seen them in years.”
“And why is that?”
When she only pursed her lips, he leaned forward on the table, trying to catch her eye. “Don’t you think they’d expect me to know what the source of the problems you guys had is?”
“I...” She shook her head and swallowed. “It’s really complicated and I don’t think it’ll come up. I... Jacob, we just don’t get along. And part of that is because I was a shit teenager, and I...I wasn’t a good person to them. Okay, so let’s just go with it’s my fault and that’s all you need to know.”
“I can’t see you being shit to anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
“They didn’t.” She was so emphatic. “I was... Things were different. I’m a different person and I owe them...so much. Probably the truth, but I’m not sure I can keep being this person if I give them that. So here we are.”
The whole conversation was so vague, but the obvious anguish and guilt in her words kept him from pressing further. After all, she was right. It wasn’t as if her family was going to sit around rehashing all the bad stuff between them with him around.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from being curious. Or concerned. Well, that wasn’t his place, either. He scrubbed his hands over his face, then focused on his calendar. “Okay, so you don’t need me Friday. What about Saturday? Sunday and Monday are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so I’ll want to spend the majority of those with my family. We should definitely do something Saturday. Dinner?”
Leah nodded. “Yeah. Mom will want to cook for you.”
“See? This isn’t so hard. Now, we need to cover some basics of our relationship.”
“Our fake relationship.”
“The key to fooling anyone is believing it. Trust me.”
“Why? You’ve pretended to be something you’re not so often in your life?”
He shrugged. Maybe he hadn’t pretended to be someone else, but he’d done plenty of pretending. Plenty of fooling people he loved. “I know a thing or two.”
“Please.”
Thankfully Grace chose that moment to walk in with the food. “All right. Sustenance. I see you’ve started without me.” She plopped the bags on the table and went to collect plates and silverware. “How’s it going so far?”
“Jacob is telling me all the tips and tricks of fooling people. Because apparently he’s an expert.”
“Jacob? Pretend?” Grace glanced at him, a screwed-up expression on her face. “What are you even talking about? I hate to give him a big head, but one of Jacob’s greatest assets is his honesty.”
“See? You’re no great pretender.” Leah helped herself to a drumstick and some green beans, apparently quite pleased with herself.
“Caught me.” He managed a laid-back grin, one he didn’t feel at all. “But I still think we need to cover all our bases.”
“Can’t hurt,” Grace agreed, biting into a biscuit as she looked at the calendar. “You sure your family won’t expect to see even a little of Jacob on Christmas? My parents expect to see Kyle.”
“But Kyle doesn’t have a family of his own or anywhere else to be.”
“Well, yeah, but if you had a boyfriend, wouldn’t you want to spend part of the day with him? I mean, especially if you’ve been dating an entire year.”
“I haven’t seen my family in many years. As far as they know, I’ve spent every Christmas with Jacob. Trust me, they won’t question it. And if they do, I’ll tell them I wanted to focus on them.”
“It makes sense,” Jacob said, even though Grace was frowning.
They ate their chicken and discussed the day after Christmas. Planned out a time for her family to come see MC with Jacob around but not too many other people. The fewer people they involved, the better. At least on that they agreed.
The back door opened and after a few seconds Kyle stepped into the kitchen.
“Hey, you’re back early,” Grace greeted, all way-too-wide smiles.
Kyle nodded, and Grace grinned at him and then he grinned back. Jacob grimaced, glanced at Leah, who had her nose wrinkled and mouth all screwed up.
“You guys need me for anything else?”
“I think we’ll manage without all your genius contributions,” Jacob muttered.
Grace grinned, popping out of her seat. “Great.” Her and Kyle exited, Grace’s laugh echoing down the staircase.
“How do you live with that lovey-dovey crap?”
“It’s a very big house and I hide a lot.”
She kind of half laughed, but her expression as she looked at where Kyle and Grace had disappeared wasn’t so much amused or disgusted. No, it looked a lot wistful. And it echoed his own feeling on the matter.
It’d been almost six months since he’d been in a relationship, and he missed that ease with someone. Sure, he’d never been in a relationship as long as Kyle and Grace, but it was nice to always have someone to call up and spend time with instead of hiding from his sister and best friend feeling each other up all the time.
“You want to go to a movie?”
“Huh?”
“It’s early. They’re...” He grimaced. “Doing whatever. Unless you have plans. Let’s go do something. That way if your mom asks what we did on our last date we can say, ‘Oh, we went and saw Boneheads.’”
“I am not going to see Boneheads.”
“It’s supposed to be funny.”
“It looks idiotic.” She pushed some hair out of her eyes. “What about Incoming?”
“An alien movie? Are you crazy? Those things are creepy.”
“Oh, poor Jacob is afraid of a few little fictional creatures.” Leah pouted, clearly mocking him, and why that made him smile was completely beyond him.
“You better be careful. I’ll wrangle you into a chick flick.”
“Oh, please. Aliens over chick flick any day of the week.” But she stood from the table and went over to the mudroom, where her coat was hanging. “What about the one with the race-car driver? The main guy is hot and I hear he gets naked.”
Jacob shrugged into his coat. “Why do you have to say things like that?”
She laughed, an uninhibited rumble, and something cross wired in his brain, suddenly making him think about her naked. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not allowed.
He glanced at her as they stepped outside. It was not a date. It was a distraction. A precursor to their ruse at best. Definitely not a date.
But it kind of felt like one.
* * *
WHAT THE HELL was happening?
It seemed innocuous enough, and it was. A movie. Friends went to movies all the time. Even friends who were going to pretend to be a little more than friends for a few days. This was normal.
Leah stared at the seat in front of her while sex noises filled the movie theater. Friends might do this all the time, but it was so not normal.
Planning their fake relationship out over dinner had actually helped alleviate some of the weird. It seemed way more doable to say they’d pretend for two dinners and one afternoon at MC rather than pretend for a whole week. So, he’d been right and things had started to feel more manageable and less...freaky.
And then they’d sat down in a dark movie theater next to each other and watched a movie that seemed to have a whole hell of a lot of sex in it.
Luckily no one could see in the dark that her face was bright, bright red. It wasn’t as though she’d never seen a movie with sex in it; it was just...watching it with Jacob. Occasionally accidentally bumping arms. Oh, God, it was so weird.
When Jacob leaned over and whispered in her ear, she nearly jumped out of her chair.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Right.” She awkwardly twisted sideways so he could get by. She glanced at the movie screen where the main couple was really going at it. Oh, Jesus. She couldn’t do another second of this. She really couldn’t.
She scurried out of the seat and down the aisle. The lobby was bright but lacking the grunting and “oh, baby” chorus, and she felt as if she could breathe again.
She situated herself near the exit of the men’s bathroom. When Jacob finally appeared after what felt like hours, he gave her a quizzical frown.
“I’m sorry. I can’t sit through any more of that movie with you.”
Relief washed over his features. “Oh, thank God. Let’s go home.”
“Yes. Please.”
The entire drive home was awkwardly silent. The stupid movie just kept playing over and over in Leah’s head. Boobs and groans and butts. She couldn’t erase it. It would be etched there for the remainder of time.
“Just FYI, we cannot tell my parents we saw that movie.”
Jacob’s laugh was a little rusty. “Noted.”
“And we should probably never go to a movie we don’t know much about without doing some research first.”
“Agreed.”
He pulled his truck into the back lot of MC. She didn’t dare look at him. Didn’t dare say anything else except a goodbye.
“I...should head home.”
“Right.”
“Right.” She pushed out of the truck, hopped onto the concrete. Her truck was parked up front, so she started along the walk in that direction.
“Leah?”
Oh, God. She didn’t know why him calling her name filled her with dread; she only knew the last thing she wanted to do was turn around and answer him. Face him. But what choice did she have?
“This is going to come out all wrong,” he said, walking toward her. He cleared his throat, stopping a couple feet away. In the dark, it was hard to see him, but the streetlamp gave her a general idea. “But that did get me thinking your parents are going to expect a certain level of...intimacy between us.”
What? What? “But—”
“I’m not talking about sex,” he was quick to say. Really quick. “I just mean, you’re not very demonstrative as a rule. You don’t even hug Grace, but they’re going to expect you to hug your boyfriend. Hold hands. Kiss on the cheek at the very least.”
Which was all true, but she didn’t know what that had to do with...intimacy. Between them. Ahh. “Okay, so what’s your point?”
He cleared his throat, took another step toward her. Made the throat-clearing sound again. “We need to be able to do that without you blushing and me clearing my throat like an eighty-year-old with a cold.”
“And how do we do that?” she squeaked.
“You also can’t squeak.”
“Jacob.”
“Maybe we should give it a go a few times with no one else looking or paying attention. Just so we can get those nerves and weirdness out of the way.” Again he took a step toward her. She wanted to bolt. Run for the safety of her truck.
“I don’t think that’s possible.” But it was sensible, and that was the only thing that kept her rooted to her spot as he advanced. Maybe she could at least get over the squeaking or the blushing. Or the insane urge to run in the opposite direction for fear of making a fool out of herself.
But once he was close. Really close. Like she could reach out and touch him and vice versa close, giving it a go seemed like the worst possible idea ever thought up.
His hand rested on her shoulder and she jumped.
“Oh, come on. It’s not like I’ve never touched your shoulder.”
“Well, not with, like...intimacy intentions!”
He chuckled at that. “Fake intimacy intentions.”
“Right. Well, they may be fake, but it’s still weird.”
“Suck it up because it’s about to get weirder.”
And it did, but probably not in the way he thought she meant. He merely brushed a kiss across her cheek. His arm never strayed from her shoulder; he didn’t linger. It was nothing, really, but her body did not seem to understand that at all. It heated from the inside out. It wanted to lean in. It wanted to press her mouth to his to see what that would be like.
Luckily she’d spent a lot of time making sure her mind ruled her body and not the other way around.
“Maybe we should try that again and this time you don’t act like I gave you an electric shock.”
Oh, God, again? She might spontaneously combust. “Maybe it’d be easier if I did it.” She’d be in control, of the cheek kiss and herself, so it wouldn’t be so...stupidly amazing.
“Okay.”
Jacob wasn’t that much taller than her, but she still had to kind of go on her toes to lean in while keeping herself far enough away so that their bodies weren’t touching. Because that might kill her.
He smelled like sawdust and popcorn, which shouldn’t be appealing but somehow was. How was this happening?
“I can’t.”
“Oh, just do it. I did it. You can do it.”
Well, true enough. If she thought about it like a competition. If he could do it, so could she. She certainly wouldn’t give Jacob any kind of upper hand.
No matter what kind of warped upper hand this was.
She leaned forward, balancing her hand on his shoulder as lightly as she could possibly manage, and quickly brushed her lips across his cheek. Enough to feel the stubble. Enough to feel and that was so bad. So very, very bad.
She swallowed, still kind of half standing on her tiptoes. Too close. Her mind told her she was way too close and it was time to step away, but for the first time in years, her body simply wasn’t listening.
Even in the dark she could make out his eyes on her face. Maybe even her mouth. No, he would not be looking there because—
With no warning, no preamble, he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers. A kiss. A real on-the-mouth kiss. Brief. Brief enough she couldn’t even react or reciprocate, and, oh, thank God for that.
He pulled away. “There. Now that’s out of the way. Good night.” And he stalked to the back door of the house.
And she...she was pretty sure she died.
* * *
JACOB STOOD IN the mudroom and scrubbed a hand over his face. He kept thinking if he scrubbed hard enough he could make some sense out of what had happened.
But he couldn’t. He rubbed a little harder, then gave his hair a quick tug. Nope. He’d still kissed Leah. On the mouth. He’d done that.
And he could pretend it had been to get over the jumpy nerves between them. He could maybe even, after a few hours, convince himself it was completely platonic. It was all about the fake relationship.
And nothing about the way her lips had felt on his skin, the gentle pressure of her hand on his shoulder, the smell of old house that lingered in her coat.
But he’d need a few hours to get there and to get the images from that damn movie out of his mind. Out of his imagination somehow tied up with Leah.
“Are you okay?”
Jacob laughed. He couldn’t help it. Just the weirdest damn night of his life. He looked up at Grace standing at the top of the stairs and knew he had to manage a way to not seem guilty. She might think he couldn’t lie, but she really didn’t have a clue.
“What were you two doing?”
“What?”
“I heard your truck pull up at least fifteen minutes ago. What were you doing?”
If she was teasing him, maybe it wouldn’t bother him, but she had that concerned big-sister look on her face and it blanketed all the uncertainty and weirdness and even the kind of giddy confusion.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? I’m worried.”
“We were talking. That’s it. Don’t make this into something I’m doing to hurt Leah. Because I’m helping her.”
Right. Because kissing her was a real big help.
“Jacob, I don’t know why you think I’m trying to hurt your feelings by being worried about you and Leah. I’m not saying you’re a jerk. I’m only saying Leah looks at you a certain wa—”
“Just don’t.” And he walked away. Because if he didn’t, he’d get angry, or worse, he’d want to know all the ways Leah looked at him. He’d had enough angry this year, and he had no business thinking about his friend that way.
Not when Grace was right. For whatever reason, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t make relationships work. And having something not work with Leah was never going to be an option.
CHAPTER SIX
LEAH DECIDED TO skip working on rewiring for the morning and focus on errands. Errands that could plausibly wait until, oh, say, next year, but she wasn’t going to let herself dwell on that.
Because, yes, of course she was avoiding Jacob after last night. What the hell else would she be doing?
Leah sighed heavily and glanced at the stoplight. It was getting close to lunchtime. Usually when she was doing errands downtown around lunch and Grace was working, she’d text her and see if she could take a lunch break.
Leah didn’t feel much like seeing Grace right now, either. Or Kelly or Susan, the rest of her MC family who would be back at the big house with Jacob, Susan doing her administrative duties or Kelly working on the interior design of the Council Bluffs project.
If she went back to MC and talked to them, she’d be tempted to tell them about Jacob kissing her and hell to the no.
She didn’t know why she kept saying it like that. He hadn’t really kissed her. Okay, he had, but it was his let’s-get-the-weirdness-out-of-our-system plan. Because if it was a real kiss you didn’t say, “Now that’s out of the way” directly after as if it was some dreaded chore you’d finally crossed off your list.
But damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Quick. Surprising. Completely out of left field, and she still couldn’t stop playing it over and over in her head. She hadn’t even reacted in the moment. She could not read anything into it.
But that was exactly what her idiotic mind was doing.
The play of shadows. The contrast of cold air around her, except where he’d touched his mouth to hers.
Aw, crap, this was trouble.
Maybe what she really needed to do was plan a breakup. It was still a lie, but she wouldn’t have to do this stuff.
Of course, then her mother would hover. Ask if she was okay. Start hinting Leah should move back to Minnesota so someone could watch after her. Just in case.
Just in case.
As an adult she could find more understanding in her mother’s smothering. As a teenager it just felt like an affront, but now she could see it through the lens of a mother desperately worried about her daughter’s health. A legitimate worry considering.
Leah wanted to be able to let that understanding make her easy with it. Accept it without having to make up a boyfriend. Maybe even accept it enough that the thought of moving back to Minnesota didn’t make her throat close up with anxiety.
But she lacked whatever decency would allow that.
She needed her space, her autonomy. She’d never be considered 100 percent healthy, but she was the healthiest she’d ever been. She managed her allergies and her asthma, except for when she was cleaning the other night. She took her medication, only occasionally indulged in alcohol. Ate rightish. Exercised more often than not.
It had to mean something. Not just that she could take care of herself, but that she wanted to. Needed to in order to be happy.
Leah drove back to MC with a heavy weight in her chest. It was strange that this impending visit from her family could twist her up in knots, push all those old insecurities and suffocating feelings to the forefront when all she wanted was the family that had caused those feelings.
She wanted Mom to send her care packages with homemade nut-free cookies. She wanted to talk with Dad over a car engine. She wanted to tease her big brother about being as straight as an arrow stick in the mud.
She’d lost all that in the self-destructive years. The support, the comfort, the family. She didn’t want their suffocating ways of showing they loved her, but she did want their love.
Maybe it was too much to ask for. Maybe she simply wasn’t cut out for it.
She groaned into the silence of her truck cab. Once she pushed it into Park, she rested her head on the steering wheel.
She was not going down the self-pity hole. If the past seven years had shown her anything, it was that she was capable of building the life she wanted. So, all she had to do was keep working at it.
And if that meant things getting momentarily weird with Jacob, well, she’d survive it. She’d survived a lot more than some weird inappropriate crush and a fake relationship.
On a deep breath and determined shoulder straightening, she stepped out of her truck and walked into the back entrance of MC.
Voices drifted through the mudroom from the kitchen.
“You’re so good with babies, Jacob.”
Leah stepped into the kitchen and immediately wished she’d gone to her work shed instead. Because Jacob standing in the middle of the kitchen holding Kelly and Susan’s one-month-old girl was just... Was this some kind of karmic punishment for lying to her parents?
But of course, there he was, holding a freaking adorable baby on his hip. Might as well have a puppy lying at his feet and dinner he made on the stove. While doing the ironing.
Well, not with the baby nearby.
Get a grip, you lunatic.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me it was a baby day. I would have put off errands.” Probably not, but she was happy for her friends. Adopting little Presleigh had been something the pair had been working toward for a long time.
And here they were, a pretty little family. She’d focus on that instead of Jacob cooing at a baby. Because, really, karma was a bitch.
“You want a turn to hold her?” Kelly asked.
“Oh, she’s going to need to firm up a bit before you let me near her.”
Susan rolled her eyes, but smiled.
God, babies made her uncomfortable. All that love and need and...expectation. She’d done a pretty good job of hiding that fact from Kelly and Susan, using humor to mask her discomfort. Lack of experience to excuse holding or interacting too much with the gorgeous bundle of blankets.
“How can you be afraid of babies?” Jacob demanded, smiling broadly at Presleigh.
Leah was pretty sure this was killing her. “I’m not afraid. They’re just all soft and...bobbly. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“It’s easy.”
“Oh, don’t push her. It is something to get used to if you haven’t been around babies much. I think it took me a week to stop shaking every time I picked her up.” Kelly gave Leah a reassuring smile.
Presleigh fussed and Jacob easily maneuvered her onto his shoulder, crooning soothing words and patting her back.
Leah was pretty sure her ovaries exploded.
And then the baby spit up a bunch of white curdly goo down Jacob’s shoulder and back. Ick. Ovaries back in place.
“Well, that is unpleasant,” Jacob said, though his tone was amused rather than upset. He handed the baby off to Susan, grabbed a rag out of a drawer and tried to wipe off the offensive fluids.
“Give me a hand here, huh?”
Aw, crap, he meant her. Leah crossed to him and took the rag and gingerly wiped at the spot on Jacob’s back. He glanced over his shoulder at her, and for the love of God, why was she blushing at that? Because you are loony tunes, Santino.
“There,” she muttered, handing the rag back to him, avoiding all eye contact.
Jacob’s phone dinged. “Conference call,” he said, and since she refused to look at him she had no idea if he was looking at her or what. And then he left, thank God. Her whole body relaxed, until she turned to face Kelly and Susan.
Susan stood next to a sitting Kelly, who was now bouncing the baby on her lap, but all three of them were staring at her, heads cocked in identical scrutiny. Okay, not the baby, but Leah wouldn’t put it past the itty-bitty creature with big blue eyes to be scrutinizing, too.
“So...” Kelly offered.
“So what?” Leah crossed her arms defensively.
“Did you guys sleep together or something?”
“What?” Leah screeched.
“That was weird. Like...sex weird.”