by Sara Rider
She gasped. “I was saving that.”
“I’ll make it up by getting you a beer.” He leaned over and grabbed two bottles from the cooler beside him.
“Hey, woman,” Andrew called to Clover. “Get me one, too?”
“Get it yourself!”
“It never works,” Andrew said with an exaggerated sigh. He jumped to his feet, threw Clover over his shoulder, and plucked two beers from the cooler while she howled with laughter.
“Here you go, darling.” He settled Clover into his lap and cracked the top off one of the beers for her, and kissed her with just enough tongue to make Clem uncomfortable.
“Can I get anyone else a drink,” Jake offered.
Clem’s mom and dad accepted the beers, while Chastity, who was still nursing Poppy, opted for a bottle of orange juice, as did Mike out of solidarity for his wife.
“None for me, dear,” her grandmother said with a smile. “I’ll stick to lemonade.”
“I’ll take one,” Olive chirped, holding her hand out expectantly.
“Olive, please don’t,” Clem warned, knowing exactly what was coming next.
“Ugh!” The teenager jumped to her feet in a huff. “Why is everyone here trying to ruin my life? I’m not allowed to drink. I’m not allowed to date my twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend just because he’s in jail! Next thing you’ll be telling me that I have no right to get matching nipple rings or a tattoo of his face on my ass. Well, I’m not going to take it. It’s my body and I will drink whatever I want, pierce whatever I want, and sleep with whoever I want!”
Jake looked at Clem, silently begging for help. She responded by clapping her hands. The rest of her family joined in the applause.
“Brava, dear,” Darlene said. “That was very convincing, but I wouldn’t do the foot stomping next time. It was a touch overdramatic.”
“Olive is an aspiring actress,” Clem explained. “She was the lead in her school play last year, and next year she’s auditioning for the Vagina Monologues.”
Olive did a little curtsey. “I’ll take a Coke. Beer’s gross. So are boys. No offence.”
“None taken,” Jake said, tossing her a soda can.
“Okay, you’ve all had your fun now. Please leave Jake alone,” Clem begged. Her family hadn’t even made it one night without subjecting her pretend boyfriend to their inscrutable brand of humor.
“But we haven’t even had the chance to interrogate him yet,” her dad said. “How do we know if he’s good enough for you?”
She bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from screaming. Or crying. The thought that a guy as gorgeous and successful as Jake wouldn’t be good enough for her was absurd.
Jake set his hand on her knee. “It’s alright. Ask away.”
She swallowed back the awkwardness that had settled in her throat, trying not to let the heat rushing through her body from his touch show on her face.
“How’d you get into art dealing?” Her mom asked.
“Art dealing?” Jake asked.
Her mom frowned. “Is that not what you do?”
Oh shit. She could feel the color leaching from her cheeks. How could she have forgotten she’d told her family he was art dealer? She’d been so tired that day, her memory of everything was a bit fuzzy.
“It’s more of an auction house than a dealership,” Jake said smoothly, recovering from his shock a lot quicker than she did.
Clem let out her breath. “Can we switch subjects? No one wants to talk about work while they’re on vacation.” She had no idea if Jake knew anything about art, but she sure as heck didn’t want to find out the hard way.
“Sure. Where’d you grow up?” Her dad asked.
“Shadow Creek.”
Her dad took a sip of beer and leaned forward with one hand on his knee in his best imitation of a grizzled old cop on a TV show. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Hey, so am I,” Clover interrupted. “Where’d you go to high school?”
Shadow Creek was one of those places that couldn’t decide if it was a big town or a small city—too big to know everybody, but almost impossible not to find some sort of mutual connection. A good chunk of the population was connected to the nearby naval base where her dad used to work, which made for an easy talking point. “Northridge Prep.”
“Fancy,” Chastity said. “We all went to Carver High.”
“Wait a second,” her dad said with a frown. “You’re last name’s Donovan, right? You wouldn’t happen to be related to Alistair Donovan.”
Jake’s fingers tensed a fraction against her skin—so softly she might not have noticed if she weren’t hyperaware of his touch. “My father, actually.”
“No way,” Clem burst out before slamming her palm across her mouth.
“Wait a second, Sis,” Clover said. “You didn’t know you were dating a bajillionaire?”
Shit. She’d been so tired this morning after another awful night’s sleep, she’d jumped at the chance to pass out in the car when she should have been grilling Jake about every last detail of his life. Everyone in Shadow Creek knew who Alistair Donovan was. The former mayor turned real estate developer had his name on nearly every commercial building in the county, including the hideous mall downtown despite the widespread protests to save the historic school building that had previously occupied the land.
“I’m not a bajillionaire, or anything close to that.”
“But your dad is,” Chastity prodded shamelessly. “How does a bajillionaire end up dating a hermit like our sister?”
“Enough. No more grilling Jake.” Clem shook her head, still trying to process the fact the man who’d served her beer for the last three years shared a surname with the richest man in the city.
“Oh come on,” Chastity said. “We’re just having a bit of fun getting to know your new boyfriend. It’s only fair since we’re planning to tell him all the embarrassing details of your life next.”
Clem was done. Her gas tank wasn’t just empty, it had been lit on fire. There was no way she could handle five more minutes of this, much less an entire week. She grabbed her paper plate from the grass, stood up, and motioned for Jake to do the same. “Thank you for dinner. We’re going back to our cabin now.”
“But Aunty Clem, you promised us a bed time story.”
She looked into her sweet little niece’s face and tried to stay strong, but guilt split her from the inside out.
“It’s alright, babe. I’m tough enough to handle a few questions from your family. You go on and I’ll stay and finish my beer.”
Babe. She shivered as the word caressed her spine. He was so damn convincing, it was almost scary. She was the one who needed to figure out how to sell their act before her nosy sisters sniffed out the truth. Judging by the suspicious looks they were giving her, they were already on the verge of figuring it out.
“Okay, um…” Say something. Anything. “Fuzzybuns.”
She cringed as Jake choked on his beer. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who found the nickname less than convincing. Chastity, ever the skeptic, was watching her curiously, eyes narrowed into little blue slits.
She turned and grabbed her nieces’ little hands before she could do anything else that would come back to haunt her. It was hard enough convincing her family that a guy like Jake would actually date her, but first she needed to figure out how to convince herself.
8
Jake shut the cabin door and crossed his arms, not even trying to hide his amusement. “Fuzzybuns?”
Clem had two choices. Either bluster her way through the rest of this conversation, or let her mortification melt her from the inside out like a wax candle. “Sure. It’s a perfectly acceptable pet name for someone whose buns are…ah…fuzzy.”
“You’ve been thinking about my buns, Clementine?”
She winced so hard, the skin on her forehead hurt. “Fine. I may have panicked a little. I think Chastity’s getting suspicious.” She walked over t
o the fireplace and turned on the switch. The gas unit wasn’t exactly roughing it, but she’d never been one to complain about convenience, especially after an evening chill had seeped into the humid air.
“That’s because you look at me like you’re afraid I’m going to bite you.”
“How am I supposed to look at you?”
He stepped in front of her and tilted her chin with his fingers, forcing her to meet his deep brown eyes. “Like you can’t wait to get your hands on me. Like every time our eyes meet, you can’t help but think of the last time I made you scream so hard you forgot your own name.” Her breath hitched. He leaned closer, mouth brushing against her ear. “Like you’re obsessed with thinking about my fuzzy buns.”
He pulled away and gave her a wink.
She rubbed her palms against her thighs, trying to mask the fact it felt like he’d just tapped into her most intimate thoughts and repeated them out loud. “Well, I suppose I could just call you Sugar Puff or Snugglebum.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure that’s going to work any better.”
She followed him to the kitchen and accepted one of the beers he grabbed from the fridge. “So what do you suggest?”
He took a long sip and narrowed his eyes. “What does the character in that book you’re reading call her lover?”
She paused with the bottle at her bottom lip and felt her mouth go dry. “Master.”
He choked on his beer again, coughing into his wrist. “Yeah, maybe you should just stick to calling me Jake.”
“Okay,” she croaked while silently considering crawling back into the fishing boat and setting herself adrift.
“Hey,” he said after a few seconds, ending the awkward pause. “I have an idea.”
With his hand on her lower back, he steered her to the living room and pulled a Scrabble box from beneath the coffee table.
“Board games?” A touch of excitement replaced her earlier embarrassment. “I’m warning you now that I’m super competitive.”
“Good to know, but this isn’t going to be your average Scrabble game.”
Strip scrabble? She cringed internally. Why did her mind go there automatically?
Because he’s gorgeous. And you’ve pictured him naked more than once over the years.
A shiver rippled down her spine as she tried to shake the unwelcome thought out of her head. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
“We’re going to use this as an opportunity to get to know each other better.”
Her curiosity was definitely piqued. “All you’re going to learn is that I kick ass at Scrabble.”
He set the box on the coffee table and unfolded the ancient, well-worn board. “That’s already something I should know about you if we’re dating.”
“Because we’d be playing a lot of Scrabble?” She sat down in the armchair next to him and started flipping the tiles over in the lid of the box.
“Isn’t that something you’d do with your ideal boyfriend?”
Her mouth fell open, hand stilling just as she was about to flip over the Q. How did he know her better than she knew herself? “Yeah, it is. What about you?”
“I haven’t ever given it much thought, but I guess we’ll find out.”
Because his ideal relationship is no relationship at all, she reminded herself with a mental kick to the shins.
They picked out their respective seven tiles with the ruthless quiet of two people utterly determined not to lose. Clem held on to her poker face as she examined the combination perched against her little wooden rack: R, A, S, T, J, Y. Not great, not terrible either. She’d have to see what Jake started with.
Green. Not bad. Fourteen points. “I would have gone with genre.”
“I know. I bet you would have placed vertically instead of horizontally, too.”
Holding back a smile wasn’t easy. “It messes with people’s heads when you start vertically.”
“Interesting bit of psychology.”
She shrugged one shoulder and peered surreptitiously at her letters, devising her next move. Jag? Tear? “So, have you unlocked all my secrets yet?”
“Not even close. Now you have to tell me something about yourself that has to do with the word green.”
“Excuse me?”
“I told you this wasn’t an ordinary game.” He picked up his replacement tiles, not giving anything away with his expression. “Now spill.”
She crossed her arms. “Fine. My eyes are green.”
“I know. I’ve looked into them for almost three years while you pretend to consider the monthly specials before ordering a lager. Every. Single. Time. Now tell me something I don’t know.”
She toyed with her letters, separating the vowels from the consonants. “Hmmm. My first job was at a golf course.”
“That wasn’t on your resume.”
She glanced up, not expecting him to have remembered such an insignificant detail. Then again, it did provide a built-in excuse for taking more time to devise her next word. “Because I only lasted one summer before I realized it wasn’t for me. I was seventeen. It sounded like such a great job when I applied. Ride around in a golf cart all day and make sure the tee times flow properly. I always thought it was supposed to be this blissfully silent game, but it turns out amateur golfers love to talk. And get really drunk.”
“I know the type.”
“Really? You golf?”
“Mandatory part of being a bajillionaire businessman’s son.” His tone was light, but there was a tightness to his words, as though a river of history and emotions were pushing against them, looking for cracks to seep through. “Though we mostly golfed at the North Winds Club, not the public courses.”
“Any good?” She picked up the Y and considered her next move.
“Went to college on a golf scholarship, but I quit after sophomore year so that I could focus more on my studies.”
“Wait,” she set the tile back down. “You were a nerd?”
“No, but I knew I needed the knowledge from my degree to be successful in life and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. And for the record, my first job was working in my dad’s company, doing filing, which I was excellent at, by the way.”
“But—”
“No buts. If you want to ask me more questions, play your word.”
“Alright.” She laid out four tiles beneath the N.
“Nasty? That’s all you’ve got?”
She nodded and waited for his answer.
He shifted in his seat and stroked his hand along his jaw. “I have what you could call a nasty addiction to…” She sucked in her breath, waiting for his response. “Cleaning.”
“What?”
“Don’t go making that sour face. I’m serious. It’s terrible. Stick me in front of the nastiest, grimiest surface with a bucket of soapy water, a sponge, and some rubber gloves, and I’ll be the happiest guy on the block.”
“That’s…kind of weird.”
He nodded, but his smile didn’t leave his face. “That’s what Eli says whenever I try to help him clean out the kegs. He complains I’m taking work away from his assistants.”
“So you don’t like fishing or golfing, but cleaning is your hobby of choice?”
“Yep.”
“I guess that means I cook and you do the dishes in our fictional relationship.”
“Not a chance. I do the cooking. And the dishes.”
She crossed her arms and gave a mock scowl. “And what am I doing while you’re slaving away?”
“Relaxing. Reading. Getting pampered like a queen.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Somehow I think this fantasy is more about me than you.”
“Nah, this one is all for me because the only thing you’d be wearing while lounging around is sexy lingerie.”
He winked at her, cutting through the millions of jumbled thoughts suddenly whirring in her brain.
She cleared her throat. “Porn-star elements aside, that sounds a little too perfect to
be real.”
“That’s because it is.”
Right. Stop forgetting that. She picked up the four replacement tiles and arranged them alphabetically.
“But if it makes you feel better, you can do all the laundry. Folding, ironing—”
“Removing the lint from the lint drawer?”
He laughed. “All yours.”
She grinned. “Good, because I would fight you like a jealous tabby cat if you got between me and my lint.”
“Guess I know something nasty about you now, too.” He laid out his tiles and rubbed his palms together. “Vinyl.”
The ensuing discussion of record collections and music was so engaging they almost forgot about the game entirely, which was unusual considering she wasn’t lying about her competitiveness when it came to Scrabble. As the game progressed, she managed to find out he loved dogs, but didn’t have time to take care of one, had visited three continents before opening the Holy Grale, and at six years old he wanted to grow up to be a barber because he was fascinated by the blue disinfectant solution.
Even more surprising, she had revealed a few closely guarded secrets of her own, like the fact she slept with a stuffed platypus until she was nine and had a massive crush on Dan Rather as a teen. She just didn’t tell him that crush was still active. Opening up like this should have left her raw and exhausted. But for some reason, talking with Jake didn’t feel like driving with a punctured gas tank. If felt comfortable. Fun. Not at all like an interrogation. He had an instinct for how to draw her out of her shell.
He also had 257 points. Twenty-two more points than her.
But that was about to change. With only a few turns left, she’d picked up an utter goldmine. R, A, G, and S. Add that to her M, I and O, and she was set to unload her seven letters for bonus fifty points, as long as he didn’t take that much needed N on his next turn. She didn’t know what kind of insight the word “Organism” would give her, but she was willing to find out for a whooping seventy-two points, counting the double word score. With only a pair of tiles left in the box, she would be the guaranteed winner.
Her pulse kicked up like she was pounding her way through the last hundred meters of a marathon. His hand hovered near the free N and she wanted to scream. He pulled back and squinted, which drew attention to the thin lines crinkling around his eyes.