2. Rex
TWO
REX
When a woman like Abigail Stone owed you a favor, the terms couldn’t be that cut and dry. She was feisty, strong-willed, and, at times, defiant. Yeah, she owed me one, and I knew she was desperate to keep her tire-slashing arrest from her brother.
In any case, her cooperation was a huge relief because I hadn’t been totally honest with her about what I told Donny. That conversation had been a nightmare of my own making. Turns out, making up a fake girlfriend on the fly makes me break out in a cold sweat and blurt out things I have no business saying out loud.
Abigail wasn’t exactly an ideal choice of pretend girlfriend, seeing as she was my best friend’s younger sister. And when it came to his little sister, Gabe was like a ferocious guard dog who bared his teeth at any guy who got near her. I was surprised when Abigail married Travis. Surprised that Gabe was okay with it. Surprised that that was who Abigail had chosen. But what did I know ?
I still had no idea how I was going to tell Gabe about this whole thing. How could I explain it without spilling the beans about her arrest?
I was the guy who kept everyone on the straight and narrow. Setting up some scheme with a fake girlfriend wasn’t in my wheelhouse. But it was definitely in Abigail’s.
As if she could read my mind—and the fact that I was completely out of my depth—Abigail glanced at me from the passenger seat and asked, “So, how’s this going to work exactly?”
“I’m thinking we don’t need to make a big deal out of it. Donny and Blair will be here in a few days. They’re going to be tied up with all of the last-minute wedding preparations. You’ll come with me to the rehearsal dinner on Friday and the wedding on Saturday. We pretend to be a happy couple and by Sunday, they’ll be off to Tahiti for their honeymoon. Simple.” Hopefully.
“Two dates? I thought you said I only needed to come to the wedding,” she hedged, and I sensed a negotiation coming. Now there was the Abigail I knew.
Despite myself, the corners of my lips kicked. “You know how weddings are. It’s not just one day, it’s a whole weekend. And two dates isn’t even an entire weekend, so you’re getting off easy.”
“You’re asking a lot for someone who needs to blackmail a girl into being their date for the weekend.”
“I’m not the one who went on a crime spree during the biggest night of the year in town.”
“A crime spree!”
I bit back a smile at her outrage. Getting a reaction out of Abigail was too easy. Ticking the items off my fingers, I said, “Pulling a fire alarm without due cause?—”
“I smelled smoke! And who said it was me that pulled the alarm in the first place?”
“—carrying a switchblade?—”
“For my own self-defense, thank you very much.”
“—property damage, including but not limited to slashing of a certain Maserati’s tires.”
“Which he thoroughly deserved for being a lying scumbag.”
“How would that argument hold up in court?”
“So you’re a lawyer now?” she shot back with a razor-sharp edge like I hit a nerve. How could I forget; her ex-husband was an attorney. The last thing I wanted was to remind her of that jerk.
I threw my palms up. “Two dates seems like a fair trade, is all I’m saying.”
“Two dates,” Abigail repeated. Her reluctantly conceding scowl made me want to grin. Why did it make me want to grin? I shouldn’t have been enjoying myself this much. Even being in this truck, talking to Abigail like this, made me feel like I was on thin ice with Gabe.
“Why’s Donny getting married at the botanical gardens, anyway? Doesn’t he have a gazillion dollars? He can afford something nicer.”
I huffed. Donny spent money like it was going out of style. I could see the way he and Blair lived, and it didn’t exactly compute with Donny being injured for most of his NFL career. I was pretty sure my little brother was teetering on the edge of flat broke, with his soon-to-be wife’s internet career propping them up. But I didn’t want to say that to Abigail, so I replied, “Maybe he’s sentimental.”
She gave me a flat look and said, “Fine.” Abigail folded her arms and gazed out the windshield. That was something I liked about her: as unruly as she could be, she was always herself. Unapologetically. I wished I could be like that sometimes. It felt damn near impossible to show up as anything other than New Elwood’s fire-safety do-gooder.
“So what about after the wedding? This is a small town. Don’t you think folks will talk if we act like a couple?”
“Um…hmm.” She had a point. “I hadn’t really thought that far.”
Abigail smirked. “I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“You’re not very good at this lying thing.”
“Some women would consider that a very attractive quality,” I noted.
“Yeah, it’s adorable.” Abigail sat back and gave me a long look. “Are you sure you want to go through with this, Rex? You really think you can keep up a lie of this magnitude for the entire weekend?”
“I think it’s too late now.” I’d already told Donny I was bringing a date. I’d told him a hell of a lot more than that, actually. And making sure that no one thought I was hung up on Blair was definitely the best thing for everyone.
Besides, I wasn’t hung up on Blair. We’d dated when I came back to town after college. She was a few years younger than me, and we ended up together when we were both at crossroads in our lives; I was trying to settle myself in town and make sure my mom and brother were taken care of, and she was trying to figure out how to start her life as an adult. We broke up because she had dreams of glitz and glamour, and I wanted something simpler. My hometown, a nice house, and someone to grow old with. We weren’t compatible. It had hurt, as any breakup did, but I’d known it was for the best.
Now, when I saw the first photo online of her and Donny together…
That had felt worse.
I’d called him, and he’d admitted they’d started seeing each other a few months after we broke up. The timeline was…hazy. Short. Awkward. Since then, our relationship hadn’t been the same. Not bad , exactly, but just not the same.
In the end, I decided that it was my job to take the higher road. I’d seen what resentment could do to a family; my father had resented being married to my mother, and it had poisoned our entire existence. I became an expert at figuring out his mood and adapting. I tried to go out of my way to be good, to keep the tattered scraps of our family together while I could. When he died, it’d been a relief. We didn’t have to pretend anymore. Didn’t have to walk on eggshells all the time.
My role in our family unit of three cemented itself. I was the glue. I held us together.
Resenting Donny for falling in love with the wrong woman would go against everything I believed in. It would go against who I was.
So I let it go.
Now I found myself needing a girlfriend on my arm to keep up appearances and to make sure that Donny didn’t think I was mad at him or his wife-to-be. I was covering the truth with a lie, just to make sure our fraying family relationships didn’t break completely.
And I was relying on the most unpredictable, explosive, impulsive, devious woman I’d ever met in order to do it.
There was no way we were pulling this off.
Abigail glanced at me, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the way she looked in the passenger seat of my truck. Close enough to touch. “All right. Well, if I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut from now on. Once you’ve spun a web of sticky lies, it’s hard not to get caught up in them.”
I shrugged. “You’re the expert.”
Her jaw dropped. “Rude! That was so rude !”
This time, I couldn’t help my grin. “Was it?”
She frowned at me. “Who are you?”
I laughed. “Get outta here,” I said, nodding to her house.
Abigail shook her head, unbuckled her seatbelt, and opened the passenger door. “So we’re really doing this?”
“Yep, I’ll pick you up on Friday at six for the rehearsal.”
She smiled, and it felt like it always did when Abigail smiled at me. Like I’d just stepped into a beam of warm sunlight that was shining just for me.
“Okay. Then after this, we’re even, right? No more favors?”
“We’re even.”
Abigail hopped out of the cab. “Just so you know, this is the strangest favor I’ve ever done.”
“Good,” I said. “I know you like to keep it interesting.”
She scoffed and shut the door, and I watched her walk up to her door in her dust-covered jeans and work boots. Her pretty blond ponytail swung back and forth with every step. She waved to me once more before disappearing back inside, and I let out a long sigh.
The first hurdle was cleared. Now I just needed to get through the wedding.