Chapter Two
TWO
The hand that Ginny touched was on fire. Shepherd shook it out, stuck it in his pocket, took it back out. Had he grown an extra hand? He had so many hands, it couldn’t be right.
A confused but hopeful chicken pecked at his aglet. If that was the universe’s way of shoving a metaphor at him, he wasn’t going to acknowledge it.
Shepherd swallowed and settled on shoving his hands in two of the pockets of his khaki shorts.
His khaki shorts had seven pockets; most of them were empty, but one had a chewed-up piece of gum wrapped up in an old receipt, and another had a mostly broken Swiss Army knife he’d gotten for Father’s Day three years ago. “Your, uh, your what now?”
“My boyfriend,” Ginny said, slowly, stretching out the word and adding at least one extra syllable. “Please. You’re Obi-Wan. I’m Princess Leia. You’re my only hope.”
His heart stuttered. “How dare you bring Star Wars into this!”
She bit her lip, a smile etching itself across her pretty face.
“How would me being your boyfriend even help? Also, hi, hello, like ten minutes ago, you were saying how I didn’t have a chance with you. Remember? Back there, at the bar?”
“Right, yes, that was a thing I said. I’d only need you to pretend to be my boyfriend long enough to convince my mother that it’s real. She’s a romantic, you see.”
“A romantic?”
Ginny nodded, her shiny auburn hair spilling out over her shoulders.
She was close enough that he could smell her coconut shampoo, and Shepherd wondered if her hair was as soft as it looked.
“She’s been married four times. Sure, twice were to my dad, but still.
She’s always pushing me to date more. And if she sees that I’m in a serious, committed relationship, with an owner of a restaurant who obviously can’t just pick up and move the restaurant to Miami, she’ll back off. ”
“Your mom?” he said, looking at the woman’s profile through the window.
She was still sitting at the bar, her posture ramrod straight, talking to Noah.
Noah, for his part, seemed to be handling her intense icy stare much better than Shepherd had, but that wasn’t saying much, as Noah handled most things better than Shepherd did. “She’s scary, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Ginny said. “What about it?”
Shepherd’s brain was already three steps ahead, running through worst-case scenarios.
What if Ginny’s scary mom saw through the pretense?
What if it backfired spectacularly, as all things he attempted impulsively tended to do?
He didn’t have a Pretend to Date Your Employee plan in any of his binders.
“So what do I get out of lying to her? Is what I’m asking. Like, what’s in this for me? If this pretend-boyfriend thing goes wrong, blows up in your face, which, it probably will—”
“That’s inadmissible, you have no way of knowing—”
“I’m just saying,” Shepherd said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and holding up empty palms. “I’m just saying, what’s in it for me?”
Ginny licked her lips, narrowed her eyes. They were the same color as her mother’s and yet infinitely warmer. How did she do that? “You want to be bribed.”
“I want to be compensated. For my effort.”
“It’s really that much effort to pretend to be my boyfriend for an afternoon?”
“A whole afternoon? Ginny—”
“Shepherd!” She tapped her toes, her whole body jiggling most pleasantly. “Shepherd, please. I’ll owe you. Isn’t that enough? I can pay you my tips for the day or something. You can pick the song I sing at karaoke. I’ll wash your car. Name your price. Good God, man. I’m desperate here.”
He touched his chest. “I feel the love right now, Ginny, I really do. I can tell how much I mean to you.”
“Please, Shepherd.” Her bottom lip quivered, her chin dimpled, and, damn it, he caved.
With a loud sigh, Shepherd hung his head. “I want your tips from today, plus I get to pick out your karaoke song, and you wash my car. I want all three of those things.”
“You’re gonna make me sing something terrible, aren’t you?”
He grinned at her white Keds. “Oh, baby, you know it.”
Those white Keds stepped on his foot. Shepherd glared at her halfheartedly. “I don’t like to be called ‘baby,’” she said. “Mom will know that. Try something else. ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘love’ or something.”
“How about I just stick with Ginny?”
She nodded, chewing on her lip. “Yes. Keep things simple. You want me to take their order?” She pointed her thumb at the couple Shepherd had blown off.
“No, no, I’ll take care of them. You go handle one of the other dozens of tables we’ve been avoiding while talking to each other. We’ll meet up when the lunch rush is over and, I don’t know, wing it, I guess.”
Ginny held out her hand. “To winging it.”
He shook her hand, a deep frown twisting his mouth down. “I am going to regret this, aren’t I?”
The cruise-ship crowd had only begun to thin out when the bell above the door jingled. Mr. Martin walked in with a crooked smile under his graying mustache.
“Shepherd, my man,” he greeted in a bellow, his voice louder than the regulars arguing at the bar. “How are you this fine day? This first of the month?”
“Zito doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Regular One was saying to the TV mounted above the bar that played nothing but the NHL channel. His beer sloshed over his fingers. “He just got lucky, is all.”
“Lucky?” Regular Two replied. “Yeah, right.”
“I think we’re missing the big picture,” said Regular Three. “Our best enforcer is injured. That’s more troubling than the management, you have to admit.”
Regular One finished off his beer and waved for another. “I admit nothing. Except for the fact that you are a turd.”
Shepherd wiped his hands off on his apron, stepped away from the table where he’d delivered a meat lovers’ pizza. “Mr. Martin! Yeah, I got the cash for you back here. Come to the bar with me.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me twice. Pour me a coolada while you’re at it?”
“You got it, Mr. Martin.” Shepherd wasn’t about to deny the landlord a free drink. Besides, he liked Mr. Martin. Sometimes he showed up for karaoke night and absolutely slayed the competition, much to the annoyance of Ginny, who herself had a terrific singing voice.
He grinned while he poured the coolada. He was going to pick something she’d hate to sing.
Maybe something slow and sexy. But no, that wouldn’t do his blood pressure any favors, especially after all this hullabaloo with her mother.
And don’t forget the lying. He was terrible at play-acting, even worse at lying.
He’d make her sing some Wiggles song about hot potatoes or something—the unsexiest song on the tracklist.
Ginny, though, was so pretty and so talented that she’d make even the dumbest songs worth listening to.
Shepherd slid the landlord his drink and opened his mouth to talk, but Mr. Martin was already talking.
He was talking to Ginny’s mother.
Alarms started sounding off in Shepherd’s head. Flashes of red light and deep, constant beeping—the whole deal. He stood frozen behind the bar, fingers twitching at his sides, completely unsure of what to do next.
He did not have a plan for this.
Increasingly, he had fewer and fewer plans.
All the things he prepared for, that he worried about, that he braced himself for impact over—those things never happened.
Instead, Ginny came in like a hurricane and pummeled everything, leveled every last bit of structure he had in place, until she was his fake girlfriend, and his fake girlfriend’s mother was unabashedly flirting with his real landlord.
Maybe this was a good thing? Maybe if she was so busy with Mr. Martin, who was a similar age to her and incredibly wealthy, maybe she wouldn’t care so much about what Ginny did.
If she stayed or if she went. The romantic might get swept away in her own romance, and he wouldn’t have to pretend to have feelings for his employee that he definitely did not have. Obviously.
Ginny barreled into his side.
Shepherd sidestepped and let out an “Oof!” which drew the attention of both mother and landlord.
Ginny wrapped her arm around his back, rested her temple against his shoulder. “Please excuse us one moment, Mom, and then we’ll be right with you. Mr. Martin. How are you today?”
“Very well, thank you, my dear! This lovely creature is your mother? Why, I would’ve thought that the two of you were sisters!”
Ginny’s mother giggled. Full-on giggled. Cheeks pinking, eyes crinkling. “Oh, please. Do be serious, Michael.”
“I am being serious. I am only ever serious about beautiful women, Deandra.”
Ginny dug her fingernails into Shepherd’s side. He hissed, and she pushed her hip against his, forcing him to walk sideways out of the bar and towards the kitchen.
Noah watched them walk by—their sides practically glued together, Ginny’s arm around him—with his brows knit and his mouth wide open.
Ah, utter confusion. At least, Shepherd wasn’t experiencing it alone.
“I don’t want to go in the kitchen,” Shepherd said. “It’s hot in there!”
“Don’t want to go in the kitchen, don’t want to wait on tables, don’t want to talk to customers. Why did you even open a restaurant in the first place?”
Shepherd shrugged the shoulder that didn’t have Ginny’s face pressed against it. “I like pizza. Plus, I thought of the restaurant name which is so a pun.”
“It is, you’re right.” The kitchen doors swung open, and she finally let go of him. Shepherd’s stomach swooped. In relief, not disappointment, obviously. He didn’t like her touching him or being that close to him. Obviously. He certainly didn’t dream about it all the time. Obviously.