Chapter 13
Chapter 13
The last thing Calvin expected, an hour after getting home from Mickey’s Bar, was his phone to light up with a call from Daphne. He’d already lifted her number from her employment file and saved it in his phone, seeing as she seemed to be hell bent on getting herself seriously injured as quickly as possible. He’d figured he might as well have a way of reaching her in case things went wrong, which they seemed to do often when she was involved.
Staring at the screen for a moment, he kicked his feet up onto the coffee table and swiped to answer. “How bad is it?”
There was a pause. “Excuse me?”
“You’re calling me after midnight, and I left you with all your limbs attached a little over an hour ago. Something must have gone horribly wrong.”
“This was a terrible idea.”
The phone went dead. Calvin stared at the screen, blinking. The woman had hung up on him. After she’d called him . Three seconds later, she answered his call.
“Forget it,” she said without preamble.
“Talk to me, Cupcake.”
“You’re making this exceedingly difficult.”
“If I knew what was going on, maybe I could make it easier.”
“I very much doubt that.”
Calvin leaned his head back on his sofa and stared at the ceiling, smiling. “Let me guess. You’ve reconsidered the vow renewal invite.” The pause that followed made him sit up. He frowned, propping his elbows on his knees. “Davis? You’re not ... Have you reconsidered the vow renewal invite?”
Her sigh ruffled through the earpiece. “I think we may be able to come to an understanding.”
“‘An understanding,’” he repeated, not sure how the word tasted on his tongue. She wasn’t exactly volunteering to jump into his bed. Then again, an understanding wasn’t a no.
“I might be persuaded to go to the event with you,” she started, “as a way to temporarily fight fire with fire.”
“I’m not following.”
“You saw our audience at Mickey’s. They were loving the tension. The more I denied things between us—and, by the way, the more you played into it, which I did not appreciate—the more everyone in town wanted to talk about it. I think if we pretend to be lovey-dovey with each other”—she paused for emphasis, and Calvin could very clearly picture the narrow-eyed look she’d be giving him if they were facing off with each other—“ temporarily , then we can stem the worst of the gossip.”
“An interesting hypothesis, Ms. Davis. How very academic of you.”
“I truly despise you, you know that?” Daphne asked, but there was no heat to her words.
Calvin bit back a grin. “So, what? We reconnected last week, and now things are moving quickly? We’re infatuated? The honeymoon stage?”
“Too juicy. We need to make this boring. It’s anti-gossip. Maybe we’ve been chatting for months. The job openings were the perfect opportunity to reconnect in person.”
“I don’t see how that’s any less juicy. The new sheriff hiring a consultant he’s been banging?”
“We have not been banging.”
“Cupcake. Come on.”
He could hear her footsteps, rhythmic and echoing. She was pacing. “Okay. Did you have anything to do with me getting hired for the consultant job?”
“The decision was made before they brought me on board.”
“Hmm. All right. That helps, but it still doesn’t look good. We wouldn’t have cleared the relationship with anyone, and it’s got just enough spice to keep people talking. We might have to go back to your original idea, as terrible as it was.”
“That we met on a desert stretch of highway, I pulled you over, and we’ve been tangled up in each other’s bedsheets ever since?” Calvin let his voice drop, but he didn’t expect his pants to get tighter at the images his words conjured up.
“Do you want me to go to this event with you or not?” Daphne snapped.
That tone of hers wasn’t helping the pants-tightness situation. He was discovering just how much he loved it when she got snippy with him. But there was only one answer he could give to that question. “Yeah, I want you to go.”
“Fine. So stop saying ridiculous things.”
“What was ridiculous about what I just said?”
“It was—the bedsheets—I’m not—” She stopped talking abruptly, and Calvin wondered whether she was blushing. Her pacing had stopped. She took a deep breath. “We’re taking things slow. Okay? We can go with the ‘reconnecting after you pulled me over’ thing, since everyone knows about the traffic stop already.”
“Can I ask why you’re doing this? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let this gossip die on its own? People will stop talking eventually.”
“Maybe I’m trying to be nice and do you a favor.”
“Hmm,” Calvin mused. “Nope. That’s not it. Try again.”
He could’ve sworn Daphne’s answering huff was almost a laugh. “I think we can make the gossip peter out quicker this way. I’m not a very exciting person. And besides ...”
“‘Besides’?”
“When we break up, it’ll give me an excuse to leave the island.”
Calvin blinked. Frowned. Stared at his coffee table until her words made sense. “You’re leaving? You just got here.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do know that getting my family to understand my desire to go will be hard enough without having a valid excuse. They’re ... worried about me.”
“Why are they worried about you?”
“They think I’m still hung up on my ex.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Hung up on your ex?”
“No! Anyway, it’s not relevant. If everyone thinks we’re going steady—”
“‘Going steady?’ Who says that?”
Daphne let out a cute little growl. “Having a conversation with you has got to be the most frustrating experience of my life.”
Calvin relented. “Fine. So, we convince everyone we’re a very boring couple with boring lives, you go to the event with me, and in exchange, I help you leave the island when the time comes?”
“All I ask is that you don’t trash my reputation. I’ll do the same for you, of course. We can say we discovered we were very different people and a relationship was never going to work, which everyone will understand because we are.”
A hum left Calvin’s throat. They were different, but Calvin wasn’t quite so sure he concurred with Daphne’s analysis. Agreeing with her scheme meant that he could take her to his mother’s vow renewal, which would save him from having to come up with some excuse as to why he’d lied to his mother in the first place. It would mean he’d get to keep an eye on Daphne and make sure she didn’t put herself in the way of an angry man with a mean left hook again. But it also meant there was a predictable end to the agreement, and that she’d use him to make her next escape off the island.
He’d only just admitted to himself that he wanted her. Now he had to give her up?
“Flint?”
“I’m here,” he said, frowning. The alternative was not getting to be with her at all, so in the end he had no choice. All he could say was “I agree to your terms” and then listen to the sound of Daphne’s sigh.
“Okay,” she replied. “Okay. Good.”
“We’re officially dating.”
“We’re taking things slow.”
“We’re banging each other’s brains out.”
“Flint!”
He laughed, wishing he could see her face. He’d bet her flush went all the way from her cheeks down to her neck. “We’re taking things slow,” he said, conceding.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“It’s only a few weeks.”
“A lot can happen in a few weeks,” she replied, sounding glum.
“That’s true,” Calvin replied, hoping she didn’t hear the eager note in his voice.
“Well. I’m going to bed. Nice doing business with you.”
“Same—”
Calvin pulled the phone away from his ear, clicking his tongue when he confirmed that she’d already hung up the call. He tossed his phone aside and exhaled, scrubbing his palms over his face until the image of Daphne’s blush had dissolved from his mind.
He was officially fake dating the woman he was already half in love with. And she was right about one thing.
It was a terrible idea.