Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
She felt a tiny bit better about things by the time they got to the Hartford venue, a theater on the edge of the town center.
A little tired from tossing and turning, but not quite as despairing about the whole business.
After all, if he could do it, so could she.
And she meant it, she really did. Until they got to the place, and someone from Harchester somehow met them in what seemed to be a tatty little dressing room.
At which point things started to go south pretty quickly.
The person wore a suit. His face was the color of a slate quarry.
He introduced himself as an assistant to someone on the board of directors, which seemed very bad indeed.
And especially when he looked so annoyed.
“Now, we’ve been informed by your liaison at our company that you are handling this situation.
But we are very concerned that you are not,” he said, once it was just them, surrounded by the remnants of glitzy costumes and bulbs around mirrors that no longer seemed to work.
And just as she was about to explain, Miller stepped in.
“Well, you can just pack that shit up and go back to where you came from,” he said. Followed by something even more astonishing. “Because there is no one better at this than my girlfriend.”
And yeah, he stumbled a little over that last word.
She felt as if she could see him internally wincing, no doubt over how teenager it sounded.
But the other part? The no one better part?
Oh, he really sold that. It came out of him with all the sincerity in the world—like it had just been waiting there inside him all along.
She heard it and honestly had to force herself not to shoot a wide-eyed look at him.
Instead she laughed, and sort of nudged him.
As if to say, Oh, you. Always exaggerating.
But then in response he said, “There’s no one in the world like her.” And he put his hand on her shoulder. And not even on the shoulder covered by the white-and-pink jumper she was wearing. No, he touched the bare one. The nude one.
She almost screamed.
Every hair on her head stood on end. How can you stand it, she wanted to ask him. But the moment the suit decided it was probably better not to challenge a six-foot-three-inch man with a face like a nuclear explosion, and turned tail and left in an incredible hurry, everything became very clear.
He whipped his hand away like he couldn’t. Like it was hell to do it. “That probably didn’t even look right,” he scolded himself, as he paced and shook his head over his ridiculous efforts. All of him so stressed about it that she didn’t know how to tell him he was correct.
The only thing she could do was tell him the truth: that it had been convincing.
Even though that meant he was definitely going to do it again.
Hell, he almost looked pleased with himself when she said it.
Maybe even gained confidence in his ability to casually touch his fake girlfriend.
Her only respite was when he added, “But just be sure to tell me if I do anything you don’t want. ”
Yet somehow even that didn’t feel like one.
Because now she was thinking about the care he was taking.
How different that was from even real relationships she’d been in.
And it made her almost unravel, before they’d even gotten a tenth of the way through this.
There were still hours to go, surrounded by people who were convinced of their passionate love.
More than convinced, really. They were all excited about it.
One of the members of staff there was wearing a T-shirt with an image of them grabbing each other emblazoned across the front.
Even though Daisy felt very sure that there hadn’t been time for people to get merch like that together.
She must have made it herself, she thought, as the woman excitedly babbled on about it being so wonderful to see true love win in these trying times.
At which point, he practically had to put a hand on her knee.
It was just good sense to. There was no other thing he could do.
It just didn’t feel like it, once his hand was there. Soft as a whisper, despite how not soft he typically was. Hot as molten lava, even through all that corduroy. Far bigger than it usually seemed, and certainly heavier.
It weighed on her, to an almost impossible degree.
She kept glancing down to see if flesh had somehow turned into stone.
And the urge to move it away was extremely strong.
She slid her hand close to his twice to do it.
But in the end she just couldn’t go any farther.
And not just because it might give the wrong impression to a fan of his.
There was also the impression it would give to Miller.
That this was affecting her somehow. Even though it wasn’t affecting him at all.
He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the feel of her knee beneath his hand.
Or the curve of her back when he skimmed his palm over it.
Or even her hand in his, once his event was nearly over and she was called onstage to play her part.
He took it like he had been doing things like this his whole life.
Instead of doing them so little that he’d freaked out the night before.
She could still see the shambolic way he’d gone about it, behind her eyes.
The rush, the way he had to force himself, the jerky grab and shake.
He hated any kind of contact of that kind, and yet he did it all as if it no longer fazed him.
Like it was becoming second nature to him.
Or even like he enjoyed it somehow.
Which was probably why things felt the way they did after his event. They got into the elevator that would take them back to the lobby, just the two of them, entirely alone. Side by side, his arm an inch from hers. Their hands back-to-back and barely a breath apart.
And she could have sworn he was going to close that gap.
The air between them actually felt electrified with it.
Pregnant with the promise of it, and more so with every second that ticked by.
She found herself looking up at the red countdown to the floor they wanted above the doors, willing it to go faster.
It seemed to crawl from five to four. Then stall between four and three.
And now that space between them wasn’t just fat and crackling with electricity. It was hot. It was heating up. It was setting her on fire—like in the car, but somehow stronger. More like it could force her to do something very stupid before she could stop herself.
Such as make the move he never would.
Take his hand, just to break the tension.
Even though that was ridiculous. He would think she had gone mad. She felt as if she had, just imagining it. She had to remind herself that this was her mortal enemy standing next to her. A man she hated, a man who had made her life miserable—and nothing had changed.
He was just pretending it had.
Doing tender things to make this work.
Only her body wasn’t apparently processing the tender things that way. It was just accepting them at face value—and to such a degree that she almost ran out of the elevator the moment it pinged. She came fairly close to shoving at the gap between the doors before they were even fully open.
He had to walk fast to keep up.
But he did catch up, because he opened the door to the lobby for her. Then the door out of there for her—the back one, to avoid the gaggle of press that had assembled round the front. And finally he did it with the whole-ass car door, too.
Honestly, if he opened one more thing she was going to lose it.
She almost told him so, as it was.
Stop doing things for me, she wanted to yell. But he did them anyway.
He tried to take her hand as she stepped up into the truck.
Just to help her, obviously, in almost the same way he’d helped her before.
Only now it didn’t just feel weird, or a little uncomfortable.
It shot ten thousand volts through her palm and right the way up her arm.
She actually stumbled a little, it was that intense.
But that just meant he said, “Whoa, easy there.”
Then caught her with those big hands. One of them on her waist, the other splayed over her back.
Both of them as practical and careful as anything about it.
Though, god, it didn’t feel practical and careful to her body.
It couldn’t possibly, because his hands were just so massive.
The moment he made contact, it felt as if he were touching her everywhere at once.
The curve just above her ass, the slide of her side into the soft spot underneath her arm.
Hell, he had such a big grip that his fingers almost seemed to get right around her.
One of them was definitely almost at the underside of her right breast. It felt as if she could have flinched and forced it all the way there.
And that was nuts.
It was too much.
She tried to twist away, automatically, instinctively.
But all that did was turn her in his arms. Then somehow her hand was on his shoulder, way, way too close to the nape of his neck, his shaggy hair.
She could have touched the beginnings of one little curl, without it seeming like a big deal at all.
Though it wasn’t this temptation that made her heart race even harder.
It was the way he looked in the dying light.
She had always known he was handsome, of course. But it had never really mattered to her. She had never let it matter. It was just a fact of life, like the sky is blue and the grass is green. Worse than that, really—it had annoyed her that he was.
Only it wasn’t annoying her now.
It was drawing her in, like a detail on a painting that didn’t seem like much at first glance. Until you looked closer. Saw its true intention. Realized it had meant something else all along. Then suddenly you just couldn’t look away.
Not even when he seemed to notice.