by Nicole Helm
“My brother, Jacob. That Jacob?”
Again Leah nodded. Preparing herself for a lecture on being crazy or explaining how it would never work or anything besides understanding.
“Makes sense.”
Man, the McKnights sure didn’t make it easy on her to beat herself up. Both Jacob and Grace acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world for her to pretend Jacob was her boyfriend.
“Have you told Jacob?”
“Yeah.”
When Grace didn’t say anything else, Leah thunked her forehead against the table. “And this is where you’re dying to tell me I’ve gone batshit crazy.”
“No.” But a weighty silence followed and Leah braced herself for something. “And Jacob agreed to pretend, I’m assuming.”
“Yeah.” Leah shook her head, gave her forehead another thunk. “Say it. Just, whatever it is, tell me. I can handle it.” Maybe.
“Don’t you think it might be a little awkward pretending to be with Jacob considering...”
Leah straightened in her chair, the heat of embarrassment climbing her cheeks and forehead. “Considering what?”
“Well, you guys just have...a thing.”
“A thing?”
“Yeah. Like a weird energy. Like maybe there’s a little interest or attraction there. Kyle and I have both definitely noticed a thing.”
“There is no thing. We’re thingless! Well, he’s not. I mean, I assume he’s not. It’s not like I actually know. Oh, my God. Shut me up. Please.”
Grace was doubled over laughing and Leah wanted to disappear into the floor, but it was all so ridiculous she found herself laughing, too.
When was she going to accept this plan was stupid? Crazy? When would she accept lying probably wasn’t the best way to reunite with her family?
Probably never. Because she’d thought about this problem for months. Going over every detail in her mind. Every possible scenario, but none of them worked. None of them allowed her what she wanted. Nothing except this crazy scheme.
“Leah, be straight with me.”
Leah met Grace’s steady gaze and sighed. “Okay, maybe there’s a little thing. But it’s...nothing. It won’t be awkward. It’s a favor. We’re just friends, and I can’t imagine anything that would change that.”
Grace looked less than convinced, but she didn’t say anything more and that was why she was Leah’s best friend. “It’s just pretend. For a week. What could possibly happen?”
Grace shook her head, but before she could offer any worst-case scenarios, Jacob and Kyle walked into the kitchen.
In the end, Leah didn’t know if the interruption was a good thing or not.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN JACOB WALKED into the kitchen of MC, he wasn’t surprised to see Leah and Grace eating lunch together. The two had become close since Grace had moved in. But the pink tinge to Leah’s cheeks was weird, even weirder when it deepened to a full-blown red as she glanced at him.
What had they been talking about that would make Leah, of all people, blush?
“Are we interrupting?” Kyle asked.
Grace glanced at Leah. “You want to tell Kyle, or do you want me to?”
Leah made a go-ahead gesture with her hand, eyes never leaving her sandwich. Funny, Jacob couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the stain of color on her cheeks.
“Or should Jacob be the one to spill the beans?” Grace said in a syrupy sweet voice.
“What are you yapping about?” Jacob muttered, finally tearing his gaze away from Leah. “The favor I’m doing Leah?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“If someone would care to clue me in, I’d be appreciative,” Kyle said, sliding into the seat next to Grace. Grace leaned over and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek.
It was still a little weird seeing his best friend with his older sister even after months of getting used to it, but it was hard not to admit it worked for the guy. Kyle hadn’t changed into a different person overnight, but his tightly wound self had loosened a little.
And Grace loved him and was going to move back to Carvelle with him, the town they’d all grown up in. It was only fifteen minutes away from Bluff City, but it would be strange. Kyle had been his roommate since college and, until his relationship with Grace, hadn’t gone back to Carvelle since they’d left for school.
Still not something Jacob could wrap his head around.
“It’s no big deal. Jacob’s just going to pretend to be my...boyfriend while my family visits.” Leah pushed her plate around, never once touching the food on it. “It’s hard to explain, but it’ll help me out. And it’s not a big deal and we should all just agree not to talk about it as much as possible.”
“Your...” Kyle blinked a few times. Then he coughed. “Oh, I see.”
Awkward silence descended, and when Jacob caught Grace studying him, he crossed to the fridge. Anything to avoid his sister’s scrutinizing stare.
He didn’t need Grace reading anything more into this whole favor than just a friendly gesture. Or, worst-case scenario, telling Mom. That was another ground rule he needed to set with Leah. No telling his parents while they were trying to fool hers. God only knew what his guidance-counselor mother would read into the situation.
“I put an offer in on the house on Jasmine Street.” Way better to discuss business than anything remotely related to relationship stuff. Of the real or fake variety.
“Jacob.” The disapproval in Kyle’s tone was enough to loosen any awkwardness. Kyle’s conservative business nature, Jacob knew what to do with. How to circumnavigate it when he’d rather take a risk.
“Personal project.” Which Kyle very rarely approved of. Probably because they never stayed personal.
“You have a plethora of personal projects. What you don’t have are unlimited funds. Leah, tell him.”
Her body kind of jerked in response. “Why me?”
“He listens to you.”
She snorted, glanced his way and quickly looked back at her plate. Abruptly, she shoved her chair away from the table. “You know what? I gotta go.” She disappeared before anyone could argue.
Jacob ignored Grace’s frown and Kyle’s considering gaze and focused on making his sandwich. Even though he’d agreed to Leah’s plan, he hadn’t thought about the reaction from people they knew. What those people might think.
“Look, you two can get the pinched, worried looks off your faces. The thing with Leah is not a big deal.” And it wasn’t. A favor. A gesture. That was what friends did for each other. Why everyone was being weird about it was baffling.
“No big deal to you,” Grace said.
“What does that mean?”
Kyle and Grace exchanged a look. It was one that conveyed some shared idea, only Jacob didn’t know what it was. He hated that.
“Be careful with her,” Grace finally said.
It was the kind of admonition that irritated him. As if he was somehow careless with people. Just because he dated. A lot. “I don’t know where everyone got this idea I’m an ass to women. They do the breaking up—”
“You know Leah has a thing for you. You have to know that. And I think you’ve got a weird if not fully realized thing for her, and this pretending? It’s going to be messy. Leah’s been a really good friend to me. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
Jacob frowned. What a...weird idea. He just couldn’t imagine. Even for those seconds he’d imagined maybe, just maybe, Leah felt that weird attraction, too, he couldn’t imagine hurting her. Attraction or no, she’d never hesitated to kick his ass before. “Leah is tough as nails. How is she going to get hurt?”
“My point exactly.” Grace glanced at the clock. “I have to go to the gallery. Just... We can talk about this later.”
“There’s nothing to talk abo
ut,” Jacob called after her. “There’s nothing to talk about,” Jacob repeated before taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Ah.”
“What’s that ‘ah’ about?” Jacob demanded with a mouthful.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m sure it will be totally fine. And nothing will go wrong. And you two won’t...”
The way Kyle trailed off was meant to insinuate something, but Jacob wasn’t biting. “Mind your own business, Kyle.”
“It affects our business. The one we own together. And Leah is a marginal owner as well, if you recall. And then there’s the little fact that you weren’t exactly silent when Grace and I started...seeing each other. Maybe I am minding my business by speaking up.”
“So you guys don’t want me to do the favor she asked me to do because you think we’re going to—what? Fall in bed together and end up hating each other?” Which was really weird to think about. Both sides of that hypothetical equation.
Falling in bed together, well, it may have crossed his mind once or twice, but hating each other? They’d been friends for a long time. Friends who disagreed and argued and still remained friends. How would they end up hating each other?
“I don’t know the circumstances behind it, so I can’t say you shouldn’t do it. But I don’t think Grace cautioning you to be careful is unreasonable. There are some things at stake. Even more than Leah’s feelings, whatever they may be.”
“Because I’m such an asshole? We can’t even trust me to be around people?”
“Because...relationships are tricky. Especially when people are in business together. Because, though you are not an asshole, your track record with women is...less than desirable.”
“Everyone seems to be forgetting the fake part of this whole deal. It’s pretend. I’ve been around Leah for years without hurting these precious feelings she suddenly has. We aren’t really going to be dating. You guys understand that, right? It’s pretend.”
“But whatever...undercurrent runs between you and Leah isn’t.”
Grace said Leah had a thing for him. A thing. Whatever that meant. What could it mean? He was actually afraid to find out, because when it came to Leah, he wouldn’t be in control. So, he’d forget Grace had said anything. He’d ignore the things he randomly felt from time to time. They’d pretend for a week, then go back to normal.
“You guys are overreacting.” And they were. They had to be. Whatever “undercurrents” that were there had been ignored for this long. What would change just because they were going to have a few meals pretending to be a little more than friends?
Nothing. And that wouldn’t be hard. Not with a game plan. With a game plan, anything could be accomplished. So, that was where he’d start.
* * *
LEAH ATTACHED ELECTRICAL tape to the base of the light fixture she was rewiring to be put in the Council Bluffs house. The smaller work had always been her favorite part of being an electrician, even more so since she was working in restoration. Most of what she had to do was throwing away the old and putting in something new, but these smaller light-fixture projects meant making something old and past its prime useful again. It was all good work, fulfilling work, and it never failed to remind her how lucky she was.
These small projects also gave her the opportunity to work in her little shed office in the back of MC’s big house. She could blare her heavy metal and not listen to Jacob or Kyle whine about their ears or her mess. This was her domain.
She set the finished piece into some bubble wrap, then a box. The next few weeks would be slow until the planned trip to Council Bluffs at the end of January. She’d finished almost all her work on the Bellamy project and Jacob’s little side project downtown. She wasn’t needed on anything in the big house for a while. So, it was just light fixtures until mid-January.
The slowdown was purposeful for the holidays. Time to visit families, and most people didn’t want work done on their homes then, so it all made sense. In years past, she’d thrown herself into her own house, but this year she would actually have family around.
The thought filled her with equal measure hope and dread. Hope she could repair the lingering rifts with her family; dread this whole Jacob thing was going to blow up in her face in more ways than one.
She didn’t want Grace blabbing to Jacob she thought they had a thing or that Leah had admitted as much. Leah hadn’t been lying when she’d said she saw no scenario that would change her current relationship with Jacob. They might be friends and she might have a small investor’s hold in MC, but he was still her boss.
And she had a lot more secrets than being all but in love with him. Secrets that would change the way he acted toward her, that would kill any idiotic feelings she harbored. Jacob would hover. He would micromanage. He would ruin the life she’d built, simply by knowing and being himself.
Which was what she had to remember. Always. With her parents around, that shouldn’t be hard. In fact, worrying about this was silly. Everything would be—
A knock interrupted her pathetic attempts to convince herself she wasn’t an idiot.
When Jacob stepped in, she pointed a screwdriver at him. Antagonism was always the best shield against weakness. “You are not allowed in here, and you know it. Not after last time.”
“I was trying to organize—”
“And I couldn’t find my ammeter for a week.” She waved the screwdriver at him. “What do you want?”
“Can you turn that crap down so I don’t have to yell?”
Her music was not that loud, but she grumbled a complaint and walked over to push the off button. When she turned to him again, he was bending over to pick something up off the ground.
“You touch that I will kick your ass.”
He scowled at her, still bent over. “Because you’re leaving that screw on the floor for safekeeping?”
She merely raised a brow, and after a few seconds he grunted and stood up, leaving the screw right there. Oh, she so did enjoy winning. Especially against Jacob.
“At least take down the Joe Mauer poster. It’s not professional.”
“So? Clients don’t come back here. Besides, he’s dreamy. Don’t be jealous because the Cubs don’t have a decent-looking guy on their team.”
Jacob grimaced. “Girls are so weird.”
“Like you wouldn’t have swimsuit models plastered all over if you had a workshop.”
“I most certainly would not.”
“Lies.”
“Well, not all over.”
“Ha!”
“Listen, we need to talk.”
Leah’s stomach sank. Nothing good ever came from a sentence that started with listen, especially if it ended with needing to talk. “Um, okay.”
“We need a schedule.”
Leah furrowed her brow. “For what? The Jasmine Street project? You haven’t even bought—”
“For your parents.”
So, it was about that. Hello, awkward city. “Oh. Oh. Well.”
“We need a blueprint. We need to plan. We can’t go into this willy-nilly or we’re going to get burned.” He stood by the screw on the floor, businessman face on. This is what we’re going to do. It served him well as a business owner and contractor. She didn’t like it being transferred to real life, though.
“God, you and your blueprints.”
“You know I’m right.”
Ugh. He probably was. She’d been so worked up about asking him for the favor, she hadn’t fully planned out the how part. How was this going to work? What did she expect him to do?
She had to look away from him or that idiotic heat that had been stealing over her face a ridiculous amount lately would be blatantly obvious.
Yes, maybe a blueprint was the way to go. If they had a set way to deal with it, nothing could go...awry.
“Okay, so, what do you suggest?”
“Well, we need to think about how this is effective. I come to dinner with you guys once or twice? They come see MC? And how do we handle Christmas? I don’t think getting my parents tangled in this is a good idea, so we need to make sure there’s no overlap there. Mainly, we need to start thinking like a couple.”
Leah snorted. She might have the hots for the guy, but them seeing eye to eye had never been a strong suit.
“Hey, you’re the one who told your parents you were in a yearlong relationship with me.”
“Yeah. Probably because I wanted to strangle you that day, so you were the first name that popped out of my mouth.”
He shook his head. “Anyway, stay for dinner. We’ll get Grace’s help. No reason not to get extra help to think through everything.”
Leah couldn’t decide if Grace’s help would be good or bad. But what other choice did she have? “Thanks. You’re...going above and beyond here. Thank you. Really.”
“I like you grateful. It’s a nice change of pace.”
Leah rolled her eyes, but because she was an idiot, him liking anything about her made her feel weird and jittery.
“What were you talking about today?”
“Huh?”
“You and Grace, when Kyle and I came in... What were you talking about that had you blushing?” He leaned against the door, studying her face intently as if looking for said blush.
“I don’t blush.” But the heat was stealing over her cheeks and with skin as fair as hers there was no hiding embarrassment.
“You’re doing it right now.”
“It was nothing.”
“I’m finding that harder and harder to believe.”
“She just thought we had a thing and I told her we didn’t.” Before she told her they did. “And I told her nothing would ever change that.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” In a fantasy world? Sure. But she didn’t live in a fantasy world. She lived in a sickly, shorter-life-expectancy, didn’t-handle-smothering kind of world. Jacob could only exist in that world as he was. No amount of pretend could allow her to forget that.