Chapter 4
Molly
Well, that was easy. A little too easy.
I mean, let’s look at the facts: I found a guy who’s cute—more like smoking hot—seems kind, and is probably not a serial killer. And he agreed to be my fake boyfriend for this lunch even after I admitted I lied during an interview.
Honestly, I thought he was going to say no to me.
I would have said no to me. And under normal circumstances, I’d never have gotten into a vehicle with some stranger.
Maybe it’s the desperation or the fact that he looks familiar—and somehow trustworthy—but I don’t feel like I’m in any danger. I’m weirdly … excited.
The only thing I wish? That’d I’d met this guy under some kind of normal circumstances. Because if I had, maybe this could be something other than a giant mess of my own creation.
“What’s the catch?” I ask, rounding the front of the truck to meet him.
“Catch?”
There’s something about his tone. Like he’s trying to sound surprised by my question but is actually totally aware of what I’m asking and has a catch in mind. He sounds like he’s being coy.
“Yeah.” I cross my arms, leaning a hip against his truck. “You agreed to play along with my stupid lie—what’s the catch? Am I going to owe you some outstanding favor you’ll call in at a time of your choosing or what?”
He mirrors my pose, which drags my gaze from his bright-blue eyes to the way his arms test the limits of his sleeves. It’s quite the test. For quite a pair of biceps.
“Why does there have to be a catch?” he asks, and I jerk my gaze away from his arms.
“Ever heard the expression there’s no such thing as a free lunch?” I ask, offering him a wry smile.
“I thought this literally was a free lunch,” he fires back with a little grin of his own.
“It is. But the expression means nothing is ever free. Not really. Someone paid for this lunch even if it’s free for us.”
“Maybe it was donated.”
“It still would cost whoever donated it the ingredients and the time to make the meal,” I say, not sure why I’m arguing with him over this.
Maybe because it’s fun. And feels more like flirting than arguing. Easy, like we’ve done this before.
Again, the sense of familiarity tugs at me, a little niggle at the edge of my mind like the wisp of a dream just out of reach.
He runs a hand over his beard. “True. But the ingredients and time could also have been donated. A tax write-off.”
“Say that’s true and the ingredients were free and all human effort was freely donated,” I say. “At the most basic level, there’s still a cost. For example, if it’s steak, the cow is the one who paid the price.”
“Poor Bessie,” he says. “Laying down her life for a luncheon.”
“I’m serious,” I say, even though I’m fighting back a smile. I add funny to the list of characteristics in my new fake boyfriend’s “pro” column.
“I’m serious too. I don’t think it’s silly to consider the animals who died so we could eat prime rib or bacon. It’s respectful.”
I get the strong impression if he had a hat, he’d be holding it over his heart right now.
I roll my eyes. “I mean, I’m serious about what I’m going to owe you for doing this. You said yes really quickly. I thought I’d need to do way more convincing.”
He studies me for a long moment, and I try not to twitch or blink. His stare is intense. Outside of this situation, I wouldn’t mind him looking at me this way. All the time, in fact.
“Maybe I’m just a nice guy,” he says.
“Are you?”
He lifts a shoulder, lips curling into the kind of smile that hits me like a punch right to the diaphragm, stealing my breath. He looks like the naughty kind of nice.
“Guess you’ll find out. Now, are we going in or not?”
I narrow my eyes, studying him for a long moment. While I’m totally desperate for this job, desperate enough to lie in an interview, for heaven’s sake, this suddenly seems like a terrible idea. Worse even than it would be on paper.
Because there’s a thread of attraction tugging me toward him.
No time for attraction! Focus, Molly. You need this job. And to escape from your dad’s control.
Think about the end game.
But he must still see the hesitation on my face because my new fake boyfriend says, “Come on. You don’t want Bessie to have died for nothing, do you? The least we can do is eat a free-to-us lunch in her memory.”
Laughing, I step away from the car and toward the glass door with a temporary sign taped up reading Brightmark Studios. “Let’s do this,” I say firmly. “For Bessie.”
“For Bessie,” he says solemnly.
But then his serious expression shifts to something a whole lot more flirty, and he opens the door for me. As I pass, he leans close, making my eyes flutter closed and my sense of self-preservation blare a noisy alarm.
“After you, sweetheart.” His breath caresses my cheek, and something inside me tumbles down, down, down as goose bumps rise on my skin.
“Wait!” I stop in the middle of the doorway, and it’s not because I like standing this close to him. Or because I wanted to know how he smells.
For the record—he smells a little like worn-in leather and classic Old Spice. Not the new kinds with the goofy names.
“We need the unicorn,” I tell him.
“We’re bringing the unicorn to lunch?” he asks.
“It would help sell the story.” I don’t say that it would give me something to do with my hands. Something other than grabbing onto him for dear life.
He jogs to the back of the truck, grabs the stuffed animal, and deposits it into my hands.
“Happy now?” he asks, and the question seems weighted.
I nod, though I’m not sure happy describes my current mood. More like anxious and flighty. But holding a giant stuffed unicorn oddly does help.
We walk inside, and he splays his palm over my lower back, warm through the fabric of my cotton dress as he guides me into the building.
“Which way?” he asks, again leaning close enough for his words to brush my skin.
“I’m not sure, actually.” I’m sure of very little, other than a growing suspicion this plan—and this man—are a terrible idea.
“In that case, I guess we should just follow the noise. Come on.”
With steady pressure on my back, he urges me forward through the empty lobby and toward a hallway where I hear a tangle of voices. My whole body feels suddenly tight, like I’ve been placed in one of those car compactor things and it’s slowly pressing me into a pancake.
I slow my steps, clutching the unicorn to my chest. “Maybe this is a bad idea.”
“Probably,” he agrees, sounding almost cheerful as he continues urging me forward.
He really does have big hands. When I try to turn, his hand finds my hip and he marches us both toward the open door. The farther down the hallway we go, the more urging I need.
“Let’s go back,” I suggest, fighting against his grip. He squeezes my hip and okay—I don’t like this idea anymore, but I do like his touch. Even when he’s basically shoving me toward my own bad idea I no longer want to claim.
“But you said you really needed the job, right?”
“Yeah …”
“Then we’ve got this, sunshine.”
Oddly, this statement makes me feel better. I think it’s the we. We’ve got this. Not just me, all by myself, floundering and fumbling my way through a mistake. Which is how most of my life feels.
“Sugar, sweetheart, sunshine—are you really into nicknames?” I ask.
“I’m just trying to land on the perfect one for you, darlin’.” We reach the door, and I don’t get a chance to hesitate at the sight of the full room because he steers me forward. “That,” he adds, his lips brushing my ear, “and you haven’t told me your actual name.”
I haven’t. He’s right. The nervous flutters turn into anxious earthquakes. Because I realize that I don’t know his name either.
I’ve got my mouth open to remedy this colossal oversight of mine when a voice calls my name from inside the room.
“Molly! Glad you could make it.”
I glance up to see Kelvin seated at a mostly-full conference table where people are already eating. A table along one wall has a spread of individually wrapped sandwiches, chips, and drinks. Kelvin stands and heads our way.
“Now you know my name,” I say under my breath. “Your turn.”
“Nope,” he says, his dark chuckle against my neck making me shiver. “I think this will be fun.”
“Fun for whom?” I mutter. This does not bode well for my ability to sell this relationship as real.
“Kelvin,” I say, forcing a smile as he reaches us. “Good to see you again.”
“And you brought your boyfriend, I see.” He laughs. “He won you a giant stuffed animal after all. Classic.”
“I did bring … him. Them.”
I wiggle the unicorn I’m clutching, like this will somehow shake loose Mr. Biceps’s name like coins from a piggy bank. I’m about to do the kind of halfway introduction where you only use the name of the person you do remember when Kelvin does a double take and his mouth falls open.
“Whoa,” he says. “You didn’t mention who your boyfriend is. Okay. Wow. And I have to respect that you didn’t try to use this connection to land the job.”
Who my boyfriend is?
Who is he? And what connection?
Leaning away from my fake boyfriend, I study his bearded face a little more intently. I knew he looked familiar. Is he famous?
The hard thing about fame in the age of the internet now is how many levels of celebrity there can be.
Someone could be hugely YouTube famous with millions of followers but not a household name.
And if they’re big on one platform, they might be virtually unknown on another if they haven’t focused on creating content in multiple places.
My parents, for example, have no idea that I’m social-media famous.
Even when I arrived in the relatively small Austin airport, I had teenage girls and a handful of guys ask to take pictures or film a quick video with me.
Chase and Harper, who spend almost no time on social media, know I have a big following, but they don’t really get it.