by Emma Hart
“So,” Mom said, taking a napkin from the table. Without looking at us, she folded it and set it on her lap. “Where did you meet?”
“In a bar,” Adam answered honestly. “She was the only woman in the general vicinity who didn’t look at me like I was a meal ticket. Turned out, she had no idea who I was.” He peered over at me, lips twitching into a smile.
Okay, wow. We really were going to skirt the truth here.
I picked up my drink and looked at Mom. “It’s true. He could have been that guy who plays for that Spanish team and I still wouldn’t have recognized him.”
“Which guy?” Mom asked, frowning.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “If I knew, I’d have said his name.”
“Ronaldo?” Adam jumped in, saving my ass.
“That guy. Isn’t he in Portugal? Why did I think he played in Spain?”
“He does play in Spain.” He was visibly trying not to laugh at me at this point. “He’s Portuguese, so he plays for Portugal, but his club team is Real Madrid.”
I looked at Mom again and shrugged. “There you go. All I knew was that he was hot with his shirt off.”
Mom sighed. “You really didn’t know who he was?” She motioned to Adam. “Even I knew who he was when I saw him.”
“When have you ever seen me watch sports?”
“You were awfully interested in baseball as a teenager.”
“Yes. They wear tight pants. Every teenage girl is interested in baseball, and it’s not for the sport.” I rolled my eyes and took a sip from the drink.
I didn’t know if it was the gin, the rhubarb, or the ginger, but this drink needed to die in a fucking house fire.
“Eh! Ack! Oh no!” I sputtered and put the drink on the table, wincing as a shiver took hold of my entire body. “Oh no. Make it go away.”
Adam burst out laughing, while Mom simply sighed at my theatrics.
“Poppy, it cannot be that bad,” she said, picking up her glass and bringing it to her face. She swilled it in the glass, sniffing it.
Good lord. It was a cocktail, not a vintage wine.
Mom took a sip. Instantly, her face contorted into the picture of absolute disgust, and when she set the glass down, I swear, she almost looked mildly offended that she’d dared put it in her mouth.
“Oh, dear Lord,” she gasped.
Adam shrugged and looked at his glass. “I like it.”
“You’re outvoted,” I quickly said as Mom waved her hand for the bartender.
Oh no.
My eyes widened, and Adam’s foot nudged mine under the table. Our eyes met for a brief second, and he raised his eyebrows.
No bartender came.
Mom took a deep breath and grabbed all three glasses with some extreme skill.
All right, not extreme, but a move so slick I’d drop it them all if I tried.
“What is she doing?” Adam whispered, leaning over to me and resting his arm on my chair, his eyes on my mom taking the drinks to the bar.
I turned, peering over at her. “Well, if I know her, and I do—”
“I would hope so.”
I shot him a quick glare. “She’s about to tear one of those poor guys a new asshole for daring to serve her something so vile.”
“But…the cocktails were requested.”
“Yeah,” I said, meeting his eyes. “That doesn’t mean she’ll be reasonable about it. Have you learned nothing since you got here?”
“Well, between the fact you didn’t know who I was, your sister’s issue with the seating plan, and now your mom with the cocktails… I think I’m getting there, actually. I’m seeing unreasonable as a female family trait.”
I blinked at him. “If your face wasn’t so pretty, I’d punch you in it.”
He grinned, twirling some of my hair around his finger. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Are you sure? I’m pretty good with my right hand.”
One of his eyebrows quirked up. “I know.”
“That’s not—I didn’t. I mean.” I took a deep breath and glared at him. “Stop fucking with me.”
“I could, but I know you’ll fuck with me the second you get, so…”
Mom came back seconds later and took her seat. “They won’t serve that again,” she noted. “Pink lemonade margaritas next.”
Well, that sounded better than the gin shit we’d been given, that was for sure.
Mom refolded her napkin and set it back on her lap before smiling at us both. “So, talk me through your relationship. I’m surprised you never told me about him, Poppy.”
We’d already covered this.
“Like Adam said before, him being here was last minute. I didn’t want to tell you that I was seeing anyone. We were keeping it to ourselves.”
“Media attention and stuff like that,” Adam interjected. “I’m followed occasionally, and these past few months have been bad with the sports tabloids while I was in new contract negotiations.”
I stayed quiet. So far, so good. I hoped.
“I hoped they’d leave me alone after the team announced I’d signed another, but they saw me having dinner with my sister a couple weeks later and spun a story about a ‘mystery girl.’” He snorted. “After that, I was the one who said to keep it quiet to protect Poppy.”
He was good.
He was very good.
Even if the story was a little dicey—I mean, what if he’d been seen with real mystery girls? What if my parents knew that?
Right at that point, our next round of cocktails arrived, distracting Mom from responding. She narrowed her eyes and as she asked him a question, Adam nudged me under the table and winked at me.
He was a hell of a lot more confident that I felt. Even now.
CHAPTER TEN – ADAM
Lust and Lies
Poppy bit the inside of her lip and glanced down.
She was worried. I got it. I was fucking worried, too. I was the one sitting here, opposite the sharpest woman I’d ever met, lying through my damn teeth.
I didn’t even have a plan. I was making it up as I went along, praying like fuck it was a plausible story. One of my teammates had kept his relationship secret for that exact reason a couple of years ago.
I didn’t care if she thought I was lying. I just wanted her to believe Poppy was being honest.
She wasn’t, but that was beside the point. We’d been sitting here for all of ten minutes and I understood entirely why Poppy needed a fake date.
Why I’d agreed to be it… The jury was still out. It’d been an impulse, something to fill a free weekend.
Or maybe it’d been those fucking beautiful brown eyes of hers. Maybe even the adorably shy smile her lips curved into whenever our eyes met.
Whatever it was, I’d agreed, and I hadn’t been prepared for it at all. Neither of us had.
And I got the impression that she still didn’t forgive me for not telling her who I was.
“Pink lemonade margaritas with sugar,” the guy said as he set three glasses down in front of us.
“This place is completely private, isn’t it?” I double-checked with the bartender.
He blinked, recognition flashing in his eyes. He gave me a brisk nod. “Yes, sir. Anyone caught trespassing is detained by security until the police arrive.”
“Good. Thank you.”
He nodded again. “Your food should be out soon.”
“Thank you,” Poppy’s mom said, dismissing him.
She was efficient at that. I needed some fucking tips at getting rid of people on occasion…
“Are you worried about your privacy?” she asked, turning her sharp gaze on me.
“It just occurred to me that there are an awful lot of people here who know who I am,” I said slowly. “And all it takes is one social media post, and we could have a problem.”
“What? Your teammates will see photos of you drinking pink cocktails?” Poppy smirked. “Oh, the shame.”
I would be lying if I said the thought h
adn’t crossed my mind. “That’ll be the least of my worries if they bring their long-lens cameras and your ass is plastered all over the internets.”
She paused, then shrugged. “I squat for this ass.”
“Poppy!” Her mom pressed her hand to her chest. “My goodness!”
“It’s true! And unless your name is Chris Hemsworth, my ass is all I’m gonna squat for.”
I made a mental note to change my name… Or buy a cardboard mask of his face, just to see if she’d make good on that promise.
Her mom cut her a dark look then turned to me, a hint of compassion in her eyes. “I can ask security to keep an extra eye out, if you’d like.”
“I don’t want a big deal made out of it, but I’d hate Rosie’s wedding to be ruined because of a few nosey bastards.”
She nodded sharply. “Let me see the bartender and see if I can call the manager and ask him to come down.” She picked up the margarita and sipped. “This is good. I like it.” She took another big mouthful and got up, leaving the glass almost a third empty on the table.
Poppy looked at the glass, back at her mom’s retreating back, then to me. “You said that on purpose, didn’t you? To get rid of her.”
I picked up the margarita glass. “What makes you say that?”
“Because she’s gone,” she said matter-of-factly, her gaze just as calculating as her mom’s had been.
She said her mom had the eyes of a hawk, but she had them, too. And the biggest problem with Poppy Dunn was that she didn’t miss a damn thing.
“Maybe it was to give us a break from interrogation,” I admitted, “But after I said what I did…” I put the glass down without touching it and ran my hand down my face.
Poppy frowned.
Reaching over, I pushed some hair from her face, letting my fingertips trail across her soft skin. She met my eyes, and uncertainty shone at me.
“It’s a thing, Red.” I sighed, dropping my head. “I wish it weren’t, but it is. There are a whole bunch of teens here, and if teens love anything, it’s fucking social media,” I finished on a mutter.
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Why would you? You had no reason to.” My lips tugged to the side. “I also don’t want anything to happen to your sister’s wedding. She seemed stressed enough this morning without me being an issue for her.”
I also don’t want you wrapped up in anything you don’t need to be.
Poppy’s lips pursed as if she knew there was something I wasn’t saying. Her gaze darted back and forth across my face. She was figuring out if I was hiding something from her—like I was—and I knew she’d figure it out.
She plucked a straw from the holder in the middle of the table and put it into her glass. Leaning forward, she made sure her hair was out of the way and took the straw between her lips.
My eyes dropped to her mouth.
Fuck. I’d never wanted to be a plastic straw so much in my life.
Her eyes slid to me as she released the straw. “You want a photograph so you can keep staring even when I’m not here?”
“Depends what the photo is of.”
“Me giving you the finger,” she muttered.
I laughed, leaning right back in my chair. “Probably the easiest photo to get of you.”
Proving me right, she flipped me the bird and took another big drink. “By the way, I know you stopped yourself from saying something a minute ago, and by the end of the weekend, I’ll get it out of you.”
I picked up my margarita and shrugged a shoulder. “You can try.”
“So you’re admitting it?”
“Lying doesn’t do me any good now, does it?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’ll tell me. I’ll annoy the hell out of you until you do.”
“Do what?” her mom said as she joined us again at the table. “What are you doing?”
“Admitting that he was more interested in me than I was in him when we first met,” Poppy said without batting an eyelid. “It’s a point of contention.”
“Even if it were true, I’d never admit it,” I said, picking it up immediately. “God knows what you’d do with that info.”
“Hire Banksy to put it on the wall on the side of your house,” she quipped.
“Can you do that? That’s on my property which would mean I’d own it. That’s money right there.”
Poppy opened her mouth, something flashing through her eyes. She kept that expression for a moment before she decided against arguing with me. Snapping her lips shut, she grasped hold of her glass and leaned back in her chair, eyeing me with annoyance.
I grinned at her. Then, to rub salt in the wound, lifted my glass to her.
Her mom looked between us both, eyes flitting back and forth for a good few seconds. Then, she picked up her own glass, looked at me, smiled, and raised hers.
Well, well, well.
I just got the approval from her mom—one I didn’t need.
But, strangely, I was fucking happy to have it.
***
“That was torture,” Poppy said, dropping onto the sand. “And you! You traitor.” She shoved me the second my ass hit the sand. “You enjoyed yourself!”
I reached behind my head and pulled my shirt off with one tug. “What?”
“You enjoyed yourself!” she said.
To my stomach.
“Do you want a picture of me?” I pulled out her line from lunch.
“Ugh! You’re insufferable!” Following my movement, she pulled her tank top off and tossed it over me to join my shirt.
Her bikini top was white, showing off a weird pink-golden color to her skin, and she swept her hair around to one side, exposing the side of her neck.
She jerked to look at me. “Now who needs another fucking picture?”
I held up my hands. “Just because I got along with your mom…”
“This is not because she now adores you!”
“Adores me, eh?”
“She hugged you longer than she hugged me!”
“That’s because I was nice to her,” I reminded her. “You were, well, a human cactus.”
Poppy rolled her eyes and lay down, pulling her sunglasses from the top of her head to cover her eyes. “And you’re the worst fake boyfriend ever.”
“Hey, you know that isn’t true.” I knocked my foot against hers. “If I was a bad one, I wouldn’t be friends with your mom.”
“That’s the point, dumbass.” She rolled onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow, and pulled down her glasses to look me in the eye. “She likes you. Now, when this weekend is done, I’m going to have to field questions about you until I can come up with a viable reason for why the hell I’d break up with someone like you.”
“Someone like me? Want to elaborate?”
“No.” She dropped her glasses back in place and herself back onto her back.
I rolled onto my stomach. “Oh, come on. Even I know you’re gonna field her calls and avoid her when this weekend is done. You’ll avoid it until you absolutely have to, then tell her you didn’t want to tell her we’d broken up.”
“Oh yeah? And what excuse am I going to give her, Einstein?”
“I dunno, Red. Make me out to be an asshole. Say I cheated on you or something.”
She snorted. “Please. Look at your damn abs. You couldn’t cheat on a diet. You don’t get abs like that from cheating on a diet.”
“Actually, I’m great at that. There’s a reason I’m at the gym before you even wake up. It’s because I have a minor addiction to sugar.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean, you look it. I’ve never seen you not eating sugar.”
Laughing, I rested back on my elbows. “You laugh. When my eldest sister was pregnant, she craved Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes. One day, when her husband was away working, I went to get her one to take her the next day. I had to go back the following day to get another because I ate the entire thing by myself.”
“You’re so full of shit
,” Poppy muttered.
“Believe it or not, Red, it’s the truth.”
“Sure. It’s the truth.” She made air quotes.
I shook my head and turned my face into the sun. She wasn’t going to believe me, and I wasn’t going to fight her for it. She was stubborn and headstrong—I’d learned that much.
Yet, in a weird way, it made her attractive. She wasn’t afraid to say what she thought, and she wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in.
And let me tell you—groupies were a thing. They weren’t just for rock stars. They were for everyone with a bit of money and media star, and I’d come across more than a few of them who were interested in me for what I was, not who I was.
I hadn’t lied when I’d told Poppy that.
When she’d waltzed into my life at that bar, she’d been a breath of fresh air. I’d be lying if I said that hadn’t been attractive to me. It had been. It was a rarity and something I’d relished.
Not that I’d ever expected to find her at the end of my bed, staring at me the next morning. And I sure as hell hadn’t expected her to explain that she needed a date for this wedding.
But she had, and I was here, and I was starting to get uncomfortable.
Not because of her stern mother. Not because everyone here knew who I was when she hadn’t. Not because of the crazy grandfather I had yet to meet.
But because I knew one thing to be very fucking true.
Poppy Dunn, with her red hair and her brown eyes and her smartass mouth, was someone I could see myself falling for.
“So. What are you not telling me?” she asked.
“Not telling you?”
“Earlier. When you spoke about the media. There was something you never said to me.” She raised one arm above her head, bending it at the elbow, calm as you fuckin’ please.
Dropping my head back, I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you don’t. I’ll believe that when, oh, that’s right. I won’t.”
“You’ve got such a mouth on you.”
“Don’t get into the discussion of my mouth again. We’ve already had this conversation once, and if you need a reminder, then you don’t deserve to know what my mouth can do.”