Chapter 7
Autumn
Later that evening, when I’ve finished dinner with my father and Nessa, there’s a knock at the door of my room in the Hott Springs Lodge. I open it to find Tucker standing there, a suitcase in each hand.
The presence of the suitcases further defines his shoulder and arm muscles, and I have to rip my gaze away.
I should have guessed a bodyguard would be well built.
I mean, he does physical-protection stuff.
He has to work out and get buff and all that.
But Tucker is strong on, like, a whole different plane of existence.
I keep getting distracted by wondering things like whether I could get both hands around his biceps or what all that muscle feels like if you poke it or whether he had to take steroids to look like that and has teeny, tiny genitals as a consequence.
I peek.
Of course it’s impossible to tell for sure, but my preliminary investigation suggests he does not have teeny, tiny genitals.
I raise my eyes to his face to discover him watching me with something almost like amusement on his face.
I blush furiously. “I was just—”
But there is literally no way I can explain that train of thought. Instead I say, “We have to practice. Pretending to like each other. So you don’t make that face you made earlier.”
He scowls. “You said it was going to be okay. You said don’t try so hard and people see what they want to see anyway.”
“I said that to reassure my dad. Because I didn’t want him to be freaked out. Come in. We’ll work on it.”
He steps into the room and sets his bags down, taking in the exposed beams, huge split-pane windows, rough-hewn rustic furniture, and woven pillows, rugs, and blankets. I can see his palpable relief—shoulders dropping, exhalation—when he registers that there are two double beds in the room.
Join the club, dude. Just because you’re Thor’s stronger, hotter cousin doesn’t mean I want to meet your morning wood.
I can’t believe I let my dad talk me into this; I can’t believe I opened my mouth and all those lies poured out to my sister. Except I can because I knew I was desperate to make this wedding perfect for her.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do, and apparently I’ve now done it.
Time to double down.
“C’mere. Let’s go look in the mirror so you can figure out how not to make the barfing face.”
I grab his hand to tug him into the bathroom.
Which is a mistake because as soon as my fingers touch his warm callused ones, my nerves electrify.
I drop the touch as soon as we’re through the door and shove him in front of the giant mirror, also trying not to register how implacable he is. He’s a mountain.
We stand side by side in front of the oval glass, illuminated on all sides. The lighting reflects in both our eyes and makes us look demonic.
“So if I say, We met at a conference—it was love at first sight, what do you say?”
“I say, No it wasn’t. There’s no such fucking thing.”
I roll my eyes. “Tucker.”
“What?” he says. “I told you—there is only one me. This is the one you’re getting. And this me knows love at first sight is straight-up bullshit.”
“Haven’t you ever met someone and known right away that you wanted to know them better?”
He shakes his head. “No.” He crosses his arms, and his scowl deepens.
God, this isn’t going to work. There’s no way on earth this is going to work. No one will believe this guy has feelings for me. I can’t even convince myself there’s a world in which he could.
“You know what? I’m telling my dad no. No bodyguard. It’s not too late. My sister’s not here yet; I can tell her you got pulled away by a family emergency—grandma dying. And then things can gradually not work out between us in the next few weeks.”
I’m watching his face in the mirror as I say it, and the look on his face is pure horror.
“No,” he says. “No, we can make it work.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You obviously hate absolutely everything about this idea, but you won’t let me back out. Why?”
He shakes his head like he’s not going to answer, but then I see his shoulders slump.
“There’s…” he starts, then rakes his hand down his face. When he shows me his expression again, it’s lined with fatigue. “My grandfather left a will.”
The abrupt change of subject has left me dizzy. “A will,” I say.
“Yes. A will. The will was divided up into these letters that my brothers and I received. There are five of us,” he explains.
“Each of us got a different assignment. My grumpy-scientist brother had to work as a receptionist at a spa, my Hollywood-player brother had to stage his own celebrity wedding, my super-uptight-finance brother had to build a fun calendar for the family resort, and my cynical-divorce-lawyer brother had to be a wedding planner. Anyway, mine is—”
“Me,” I say, getting it suddenly. Why he’s here at all, why he’s still here.
“Yeah, basically,” he says. “I have to be your bodyguard and keep you safe through the wedding—”
“Or?”
“Or we lose our family’s land, and with it, Hanna’s business.” He grits his teeth. “And that’s not going to fucking happen.”
We’re still both facing the mirror. His face is grim—jaw tight, eyes dark, mouth a line.
My chest is all lumped up with unwanted sympathy. And also—I mean, he might be a grump, but he’s a grump who will pretend to be a stranger’s fake boyfriend so he can save his sister’s business. Which—those kinds of guys aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. We’ll make this work. We’ll figure it out.”
“I suck at acting. It feels like lying to me.”
“I mean, it kind of is lying,” I say. “But in this case, it’s for a good cause. Everyone gets what they want.”
“What about your sister?”
My sister has struggled so much for so many years.
But she adores Jane and Jane adores her.
And for one week, I want to make everything feel like a fantasy.
A dream. I don’t want her to think about how Mom isn’t here or how depression might be waiting to snatch her back down into its depths. I want her to relax and enjoy herself.
“She gets what she wants, too,” I say. “I promise.”
He nods. And in the mirror, his face softens a degree. His teeth unclench and his jaw loosens.
“I did a little bit of acting in both high school and college,” I offer. “Sometimes it helps to remember another time when you felt the thing you’re trying to pretend to feel. Like okay, so, yeah, I get it—you don’t believe in love at first sight, but you’ve been in love before, right?”
Something stormy moves across his face, then disappears as quickly as it appeared. He takes a deep breath and sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been in love.”
There’s a twinge in my chest; I tell myself it’s because of the pain in his voice.
“Channel that,” I instruct him.
He closes his eyes. I watch him in the mirror. Thick eyebrows, high cheekbones laced with a faint flush, lush lips, a trace of scruff across his jaw. I look away, not wanting to be caught staring when he opens his eyes.
“So I say, It was love at first sight,” I prompt him. “And you say…?”
His eyes meet mine in the mirror, pale blue and steady. “I say, She looked so beautiful sitting there at the bar by herself. I couldn’t stay away.”
Something shifts in the pit of my stomach. And then I tamp it down, because he’s slinging bullshit of the exact variety I asked him to sling. He’s acting—or, in his version of the universe, lying.
It just caught me way off guard, because…for the first time, he’s doing a really fucking good job of it.