by Sara Whitney
“That’s great!”
If only her optimism was contagious. “Yeah, but the bad news is he and my mom are moving up there while it’s ongoing. So now we’re losing our office queen too.”
“Office queen?”
“Mom says it sounds better than office manager.”
Thea grinned. “Cool. Does it come with a crown?”
“Don’t give her any ideas.”
Losing his dad in the business was one thing, but their mom was an equally important lynchpin keeping the company running. She kept track of bookings and inventory, sweet-talked angry clients, and generally solved problems and offered a listening ear for every person who came through the doors. His dad was the growl, but his mom was the purr. You needed both to keep things afloat, and Aiden was worried. Trip was taking control of the office-manager portion of the business right now, but it wasn’t sustainable. How long did they have before his brother pissed off some important customer? Aiden pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead where a stress headache threatened to form.
“So do we need a signed contract or anything?”
Her question stopped him cold. “I’m not sure that’s smart.”
“Not about the…” She circled her hand between the two of them. “But for the house stuff. Not that I don’t trust you.”
“But it’s still a business thing. I get it.” As he spoke, he hit print on the most recent paperwork he’d presented her and pulled the pages off the printer on the credenza behind him. “Here.”
He slid it across the desk to her, and her eyes skimmed over the line before she fished a pen with a unicorn topper out of her purse and signed her name. “Your turn.”
She’d signed in bright pink ink, which made him smile as he reached for his own blue ballpoint. “Unicorn writing utensils. Stain sticks. What else you got in there?”
She primly clutched the red leather bag to her chest. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” She hopped up and grabbed her coat. “I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again.”
She turned to leave, but some instinct propelled him up and around his desk. He caught her by a belt loop as she headed for the door.
“Wait just a second.”
She turned in surprise, her mouth forming a little pink O.
“Let me walk you out.”
He held out his hand palm up, and she stared at it but didn’t make a move to place her hand in his.
“We should be touchy in public. Unless I disgust you that much?” He kept his tone light, but a small part of him wondered what caused her hesitation.
Thankfully, she wasted no time smacking her palm against his and lacing their fingers together.
“Disgust? Hardly.” She tossed her hair. “I just find exceptionally handsome men a little intimidating. I’ll get over it.”
She met his eyes as if daring him to challenge her, and after a long moment, he drawled, “Well, well. Exceptionally handsome, am I?”
Her fierce expression dissolved into an eye roll. “You’re so irritating.”
She tugged on his arm to get him to move toward the exit, but he planted his feet and squeezed her hand. “Give me a second. It’s not every day I get called handsome and irritating. Would you say I’m exceptionally irritating?”
“Right now, yes,” she grumbled.
“Excellent.” He nudged her toward the door. “Let’s go, babe.”
“Irritating!”
“Irritatingly handsome,” he batted back. A glow bloomed deep in his chest at the revelation that she found him handsome. Exceptionally handsome. And she hadn’t even watched him swing a hammer yet.
Hand in hand, they left his office and headed down the hall to the open room that served as a lobby and display area for their selection of drawer pulls and tile and granite samples. Loud chatter drifted from the spacious work area in the back, and he paused at the opportunity to execute Stage One of his reputation rehabilitation plan.
“Are you okay talking to some of the guys?” He squeezed her hand, letting her know the true meaning of his question: Are you okay starting our charade right now?
“Sure.” She batted her lashes up at him. “Anything for you, sugar lump.”
He groaned. “That one’s terrible.” But they’d entered the lion’s den, where half a dozen of the nosiest guys on the Murdoch payroll were eyeballing the two of them. “Guys, this is Thea Blackwell. Thea, this is a pack of reprobates who hopefully know enough to behave themselves in front of my lady.”
His unsubtle hint didn’t work in the least, and the guys all broke into whistles and catcalls. “Oooh, your lady!” one hooted while another coughed out something that sounded like “ball and chain.”
“Hi, everybody.” Thea gave a sunny smile and did a little bounce and wave before elbowing him in the side. “Geez, if this is the company you were keeping before, no wonder you came knocking on my door, Adonis.”
The laughs around the room were even louder this time, along with a chorus of “Adonis!” Aiden closed his eyes as the knowledge that this was the only name he’d be called at work for the rest of his life seeped into his bones. But when he opened them again, Thea’s flushed face and delighted grin took away the sting of that new nickname. She looked so proud to have won the approval of a room full of rowdy guys that he wasn’t even mad. Instead, he lifted their linked hands and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Her flush deepened as their eyes caught and held.
“Get a room!”
Of course fucking Ben Mendez was the guy who’d take it a step too far. Thea blinked and broke their stare with a short, embarrassed laugh, and Aiden let their hands drop. “Actually, you guys are supposed to be building a room, aren’t you? Schedule says you’ve got three days left.”
“Three days for what?” Thea asked, eyes bright as she took in the partially assembled kitchen island in the middle of the open space.
“Our display for the Beaucoeur Home Expo,” he said. “We’re building a whole kitchen at our booth to showcase some of the newest products we’re using these days.”
“Oh right! I can’t believe I forgot that was this weekend.” Her lips twitched, and he knew she was internally celebrating her smooth cover-up of the fact that they’d never actually discussed the expo even though it was one of the company’s biggest promotional events of the year. “I’ve never been before. As a renter, I didn’t think I was allowed on the premises.”
“You’re with me now, hot stuff. I’ll get you in.”
That prompted another round of teasing commentary from the Murdoch crew, but Aiden didn’t care. Hadn’t he been wondering for the past few months what a real relationship would be like? This weird little trial run with Thea was turning out to be kind of fun. She knew the score and had zero expectations of him, so he could relax into this new role of boyfriend and try it on for size. Domesticity cosplay for the player.
“Okay, back to work. I’m walking this one out, and then I’ll be back to help troubleshoot the backsplash placement.”
He slung an arm around Thea’s shoulders and steered her out of the room. They passed Trip on their way out, hunched and scowling at the central command desk as he dealt with whoever was on the other end of the phone. Letting him fill in for their mom was definitely not a long-term solution. Trip gave Thea a jerky chin nod as they passed, his brows lowering when he noticed Aiden’s arm around her.
Great. Another thing for his brother to be pissy about later.
At the entrance, Thea stopped and slid on her coat.
He grabbed her hat from the pocket and plopped it onto her head, where it perched at a drunken angle. “Can’t have my lady getting cold.”
“You have to stop calling me ‘your lady.’” She adjusted the hat so it sat squarely over her brown hair. “It’s weird.”
“Okay, baby girl.”
He held open the door for her, but she stabbed a finger in his face. “Absolutely not.”
He just laughed and guided her out with a hand on the small of her back. She’d
parked on the street directly in front of the shop, and the frigid wind blasted them as soon as they stepped outside. Rather than jog back to his office to grab his coat, he crammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders to protect his ears, planning on a quick goodbye. “Will you need help with your move? I’ve got my truck, and we can dig up some boxes from the warehouse.”
She leaned against the side of her car and wrapped her arms around her torso. “You’d do that?” She tipped her chin up as he stepped closer to block the wind.
“Of course.” He reached out and zipped her coat the last three inches so it nestled under her chin. He could survive the cold, but he hated the thought of the chill touching her skin. “Anything for my new fake girlfriend.”
Her eyes drifted over his shoulder. “We have an audience.”
The family business was located in Beaucoeur’s riverfront warehouse district in an old distillery that had gone out of business during Prohibition. About thirty years ago, his dad had bought it on the cheap and renovated the massive space for the company’s needs. Normally Aiden appreciated the floor-to-ceiling display windows that showcased a selection of the company’s bathroom and kitchen fixtures to everyone who drove by. Today though, it provided the perfect vantage point for half a dozen nosy men to stampede from the work area in back to spy on his and Thea’s goodbye.
He sighed, his breath a visible cloud swirling between them in the cold. “I swear to God, carpenters, plumbers, and painters are the source of eighty percent of the rumors in this town.” He reached for her hand again. “I’m gonna kiss you goodbye now, okay?”
Her eyes widened a tick but she nodded, so he bent his head and closed the distance between the two of them.
Before his lips touched hers, he offered a final warning. “Gotta be convincing.”
Her eyes sparked as she whispered back, “Better make it good.” Then she shocked the hell out of him by twining her fingers around his neck and pulling his face down to meet hers.
When their lips met, two things became apparent: their kiss at the hockey game hadn’t been a fluke, and his out-of-the-blue bathtub fantasy from earlier wasn’t so out of the blue after all. Because kissing Thea was incredible. He wasn’t trying to move past this stage or thinking ahead to how he wanted to touch her next. Instead, he just focused on the press and slide of her lips against his and on the clean scent of her skin and the intimacy of sharing breath with another person. The February cold receded, and his plans for a quick goodbye fled as her tongue met his and her fingers tugged at his hair. When she tilted her head to give him better access to the heat of her mouth, he groaned and shifted closer, pressing his leg between hers and pinning her to the side of her car. She shivered and rocked against him, and Jesus fuck, were they dry-humping on the street in front of his place of business in the middle of the day?
He tore himself away but didn’t drop his hands where they cupped her face. Instead, he ran his thumbs over the crest of her cheeks, and a bolt of heat raced straight to his dick when her eyes fluttered shut and she turned to press a kiss into his palm. For a heady moment, he wanted to hustle her into the back seat of her car and pull off her clothes one by one to see if she went all warm and melty everywhere he kissed.
Then the sound of a hand banging on the display window brought him back to reality. For a moment he resented the audience that he knew had their noses pressed against the glass, but a split second later he said a silent prayer of thanks. Dealing with his hard-on wasn’t what Thea had signed up to do, and those idiots inside had given him a necessary reminder.
He took a step back, hoping the February air would do its job and cool his overheated body down.
But it didn’t help when Thea smiled up at him and said almost wistfully, “Hand-holding, pet names, goodbye kisses. We can survive a couple of months of this, right?”
He shifted to make room in his suddenly tight jeans. “Beats digging ditches.” By a lot. Kissing Thea beat digging ditches by a lot.
She laughed a little nervously and fumbled her keys into the lock. “Okay, um. Thanks.”
“Thanks?” he said out loud to himself as she pulled away.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
Ten
“Next time you want a coffee girl, call somebody else.”
Thea looked up from her precariously balanced cardboard coffee-cup holder to find Faith’s identical carrier about to implode under the weight of the full take-out cups.
“Suck it up!” she chirped. “We’re spreading joy.”
Her friend glanced down at her pearly white jacket. “We’re spreading coffee stains.”
“Grump. One of those cups is for you, you know.”
Faith leaned over the cups and inhaled. “It’s the least you can do.”
By now they’d reached the exhibit building in the Cavelier County fairgrounds, where Beaucoeur’s massive home expo was underway. It was only twenty minutes away from the official throwing open of the doors for the crowds to float from booth to booth, picking up ideas for spring home-improvement projects from the eighty-some vendors inside.
At the entrance, a bored-looking security guy stopped them. “It’s not open yet.”
Thea lifted her chin toward their ready-to-topple coffee deliveries. “Right, of course. But can we maybe deliver these to the Murdoch booth and then come back out to wait for the official start?”
The guard’s face lit up. “Oh, you’re with the Murdoch team! Sorry about that. Go right ahead.”
And like that, they gained entrance to downstate Illinois’s premiere home renovation destination.
“Wow,” Faith said as they weaved through the displays to the Murdoch kitchen in the back corner. “Is that what it’s like to be treated like royalty?”
“You tell me. You’re the daughter of the Fox empire.”
Faith shuddered, risking more coffee to the torso. “I renounced that filthy money years ago.”
Thea’s joking tone fell away at her friend’s genuine disgust. “Yeah, I know.”
Part of Faith’s post high school emancipation had involved walking away from a sizable trust fund after her overprotective parents sabotaged her relationship with the love of her life. She’d cried for weeks afterward, and Thea knew not a single tear had been over that money. They’d all been about the boy.
“So we’re both nobodies here to check out what’s new in residential siding. What a time to be alive!” Thea gripped her coffee and spun in a circle, giddily happy to be out with her friend at an event she’d never been to before. And truth be told, she was giddily happy to be walking in the direction of her fake boyfriend.
When they were a few feet from the booth, Thea said quietly, “Remember, you’re the only other person who knows about the…”
“The ridiculous scheme that will absolutely blow up in your faces?” Faith asked. “Yeah, got it. Not a word until I can say ‘I told you so.’”
“Thanks for the support!” Thea singsonged her response to cover her nerves. Aiden had just caught sight of her and waved in welcome, and damn, but he was nice to look at in his company polo and worn-in jeans.
“Morning.” He ambled over and plucked the tray from her hands, giving her a quick kiss that set her heart pumping harder.
This kiss didn’t come close to the one that threatened to scorch the paint off the side of Juniper on Tuesday, which was probably for the best. If they went around kissing like that whenever anybody needed to be reminded about their relationship, she was going to combust. His pheromones were off the charts, and she wasn’t going to survive if he kept turning them on and then switching them off again once the show was over.
Brain-scrambling kisses or no, it was time to be her breeziest, best-girlfriend-iest self. “I figured you’d appreciate some caffeine. We brought enough for an army.” She gestured to where Faith was handing out cups to the workers putting finishing touches on the under-cabinet lighting.
Aiden draped an arm around her and droppe
d a kiss on her temple. “This is really public. You good?”
His whisper stirred the hair next to her ear, and she whispered back, “I appreciate you always checking in with me, but I agreed to this. You don’t have to ask. You can just do.”
When his brows arched in amusement, she flushed as she replayed her words. She’d basically just given him carte blanche to do, well, anything, and she’d bet the title to Juniper that whatever he’d do to her would be better than anything she’d experienced with any of her actual boyfriends.
But this line of thinking wasn’t going to help her keep her cool around him, so with a short clearing of her throat, she gestured to the tray he was effortlessly balancing in one hand. “Make sure to grab one for yourself.”
“So thoughtful, honey bear.” He set his tray next to Faith’s empty one on the marble-topped island in the center of the Murdoch display and snagged a cup. When one of his workers called him over with a question, Thea took the chance to lean an elbow on the countertop and simply watch him as he listened to his guy and drank his coffee. At one point he tipped his head to down a long swallow, and her gaze zeroed in on the strong column of his throat.
Lickable, it was. Suckable. Bitable, even.
“Good morning, dear.”
Thea spun around and cursed her wicked thoughts when she found herself nose to nose with Aiden’s sweet-faced mother. “H-hi, Mrs. Murdoch.”
She was immediately enveloped in a soft, floral-perfumy hug.
“It’s been too long. And call me Gloria please.”
“Oh sure. Sure.” After an initial hesitation, she hugged Gloria right back, surprised by the warm welcome. “Would you like some coffee? I brought enough for the group.”
“Well, aren’t you sweet. But no, thanks. No caffeine for me these days.”
“Aiden told me about Mr. Murdoch. I’m so sorry. When do you leave for Chicago? Can I help with anything?”
Gloria’s smile dimmed, but she said quietly, “We leave on Wednesday, and it would be a huge relief if you”—her eyes cut over to her son, who was now frowning and gesturing at the display sink—“well, if you’d look out for Aiden. Make sure he’s all right. Make sure he’s not lonely.”