Authors: Caitie Quinn
“He thinks he can just sleep around until he runs out of women, and then you’re just going to trip over your feet to jump into bed with him?” His eyes had narrowed to little slits as he glared at me as if I were the one running around sleeping with people and discarding them.
“Um, I guess he’d assume we’d sleep together, but the bigger issue is he thinks we’re getting
married
.” I rushed on because Connor’s ears were tipping pink at this point. “Or, that’s what Jenna thinks.”
Connor gave me a hard look, completely different than the at
-
ease one he’d carried when we’d sat down. “You’re not going to marry him, right?”
“Seriously, Connor? Of course not.” Why were even having this conversation?
“Good.” He sat back, dropping his arm across the back of my little seat and snorted. “As if there were any real competition there.”
I patted his leg, figuring everyone was way too out of control. “I know, right? I don’t know why he was worried.”
It took him a second before he realized what I’d set and let out an affronted huff.
Served him right.
NINETEEN
Basketball was surprisingly exciting when seven-foot guys kept running by you with a piece of hard rubber that could break your nose. Connor had a rough time staying in his seat as things got tight. He was all but trying to rush the court to help as we fell behind.
Most of the fun was from just hanging out with him. He’d been right about us going low key and not having to worry about people. Apparently being in the VIP section meant there was an invisible fence around us.
He spent a large portion of the night trying to win me over to the world of the sports obsessed. I was less than sad to disappoint him. At halftime, Connor pulled it together enough to ask me what I wanted to eat.
“Can I have a beer and a pretzel with cheese sauce?”
“A beer and a pretzel?” He looked like I’d asked for filet mignon and champagne.
“Well, I saw those other people with beer and pretzels and nachos and that looked good.” It felt very
what you eat at a game
to me.
He gave me a smile like I’d bought him a gift. “Do you want nachos too?”
“I don’t think I could eat that much.”
“We could share them.” He waved over the server who seemed to appear out of the nowhere.
“You’d share your nachos with me?” Most of my boyfriends weren’t much on sharing food.
“Sure. If we eat it all, we can just order more.” Connor gave our order to the girl. He turned back to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder while he grinned and kissed my temple. “You are the best girlfriend ever.”
I laughed, surprised that was all it took to make him happy. A basketball game and beer and nachos.
When the game ended, I was afraid of Connor getting mobbed, but we were pointed toward an underground exit just off to the side of the court.
We wove through the small crowd of people in the secure tunnel, pushing through the heat toward the cool night air.
“That was so fun. I can’t believe I’ve never been to a game before.”
“Well, sorry to have ruined you for all other games, but sitting courtside is pretty much the only way to do it.” Connor smirked, proud of himself for doing what no other guy had done…get me to a basketball game.
“That was a great way to spend one of our nights out.” Which, yes. I was keeping track in my head. A countdown back to normalcy, if you will. I needed it to stay grounded. “Thanks.”
“I was thinking we could grab some coffee and pie at The Brew on the way home. See what kind of chaos Abby is creating tonight.” Connor flagged down a cab, which of course stopped right in front of us.
Golden boy.
“Actually,” I put a hand on his arm to stop him as he reached for the cab door. “I have to go home and work. I need to get this outline and proposal to my editor by the end of the day tomorrow and with everything going on I’m really far behind.”
“Oh.” Connor looked at me as if this was a new idea. That I might actually work. “Right. You have to do stuff.”
“
Work
stuff,” I added because he looked as if he thought I was trying to blow him off politely. Especially since part of me
was
blowing him off. After talking to Kasey I realized I needed some space. I got that we were on a mission, but I’d never spent this much time with a new boyfriend and I just wanted some time away from him.
It wasn’t that I was falling for him. It was that I wanted to make sure I didn’t. Space was a good thing. For any type of relationship. Ever.
And moving to the Arctic was shockingly not an option.
“No. I know. Work stuff.” He grabbed the handle, and motioned for me to slide in before him. “I’ll just drop you off and you can see how much you can get done tonight.”
He gave the cabbie my address then picked up my hand, running a thumb over the back of it. As the lights went by, I rested my head against the back of the seat, trying to get myself in writing mode before I got home. I was behind. The downside of my faux boyfriend was that, unlike a real one, I couldn’t put him off for a few days. The deal with Connor meant meeting my obligations to the T.
Plus, he was just so much fun. I really enjoyed hanging out with him.
“How far behind are you?” he asked, sounding a little worried. Which was sweet.
Again with the sweet.
“Not horribly. If I just work late tonight and then deal with all of it tomorrow, I’ll probably have enough to hand in.” I was never late. I might push the very boundaries of what that looked like, but I was never actually late.
This wasn’t going to be the first time.
The cab pulled up in front of my house and Connor let me out on the sidewalk side, leaning in to tell the driver to wait.
“I’ll walk you up.” He motioned toward the door and waited for me to lead the way.
“You don’t have to do that.” Because, why should he?
“Yes. I really do.” Connor gave me a small push against my lower back to get me moving and, at the front door, took my keys to let us in.
We climbed the stairs, me already in my story world, Connor climbing behind me. At my door, he used my keys to let us in and paced the floor for a moment. I watched the nervous energy get caged while I hung my coat up and tossed my purse into my room, hoping it hit the bed so I could find it again later.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked when he did another lap around my little living room.
Connor stopped, glanced my way, and shook his head. “I’m thinking about how long it would take me to say goodnight to you if we were really dating.”
Yeah. Eye roll.
“Okay, got it.” I shoved him toward the door. “Out you go.”
“No. No way.” He stood his ground, becoming an immovable object. “There’s no way that if I was kissing you goodnight, you’d kick me out that quickly.”
“You’re actually paying a man to sit in a car and wait for you. Do you know how much that costs?”
“Less than my reputation.” He shot me a grin, as if his reputation were really worth all this and not the reason he was stuck pacing my apartment in the first place.
I stared at the clock, wondering just how long it typically took him to say goodnight. “There’s something wrong with you.”
“Right. We already established that.”
I rolled my eyes because, well, if he already knew there was something wrong with him, my work here was done.
“So, I’m pacing around your living room, wondering…just how serious are you about my body.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t glance at said body as I set my kettle on the stove to make tea and crossed to turn my computer on.
“I’m here, saying good night—”
“Paying a cab to wait.”
“Right, because, you’re worth it.” He winked at me and went back to pacing, which, with his long legs was three steps one way, three steps back. “And, I have to wonder, just how long I’d be willing to humor you and those crazy wandering hands of yours while I was paying this cab.”
I just stared at him, wondering how exactly that incredibly intelligent brain came up with this stuff. Giving him a push toward the door, I figured, there was only one answer.
“Again,” I said, as I pushed him out the door. “There really is something wrong with you.”
Or me, because unfortunately, I was thinking the idiot was adorable.
TWENTY
“Are you insane?” Catherine definitely didn’t sound like she expected a real answer to that question. “What were you thinking? You know this is fake, don’t you? This is my fault. This is definitely my fault. Hailey, I’m sorry. I should have known you couldn’t handle him. I’m fifty-two, have had three husbands and an affair with a diplomat who shall not be named, and I’m not sure
I
could handle Connor Ryan.”
So much for thinking I’d get the easy call out of the way first.
“Catherine, what are you flipping out about?” Not that I was sure I wanted to know.
“Have you
looked
at Twitter? Facebook? Anything?”
“Um, no.” Which was more on purpose than normal. As soon as I’d seen how half the girls with cameras had reacted to Connor being
off the market
when we’d been out and about, I knew the last thing I wanted to do was see the worst collection of candid photos of me possible and read the comments section.
She huffed out a breath on the other end. “There’s pictures of the two of you being all cute everywhere. Cafes, parks, sidewalks, coming out of the gym.” Her voice raised to a bit of a hysterical level on the last one as if going to the gym together led to a secret betrothal forced upon us by our fathers at birth. “Hailey you have to remember. This is a game to him. That’s it. You’re just a teammate. Not even. You’re like the ball he needs to kick in the net or the bases he has to run.”
“Beyond your slightly mixed metaphors, you’re just wrong.” I should have known this was going to be how my morning went. “We’re playing a part. Stop worrying. I can handle this. Trust me.”
Which may have been asking for too much if I was already worried about trusting myself.
“Sure. I totally trust you.” Catherine was typing in the background, which wasn’t uncommon. But you’d think when she was on a mission to protect my virtue she’d at least manage to do it without multi-tasking. “I just emailed you something. Why don’t you open that up and jump to about the minute and a half mark.”
“Okay.” I downloaded the zipped file and watched as it started playing shorts of me and Connor throughout the night. Him with his arm across the back of my chair, him leaning in to tell me something, me wiping mustard off his face from the pretzel. Him leaning over and kissing my temple when he’d told me I was the best girlfriend ever.
I looked dazed.
I’d been dazed.
Well, crud.
“Are you watching this?” Catherine demanded, as if I was sitting there silently on the other end of the phone doing nothing.
“Yes. I am. I’m not seeing a problem.” Because what I saw was a reminder.
I was sucked in by him. Who wouldn’t be? He was fun and thoughtful and attractive…let’s be honest, everyone was wired to be attracted to him. Brad Pitt who?
“Hailey—”
“Catherine,” I interrupted, because I couldn’t deal with this on top of everything else right now. “I appreciate you looking out for me. I realize you feel guilty about this. And, to be honest, you should. Connor is a friend and when this is over, maybe he’ll even be someone I stay in touch with. But he’s not a guy I’m going to fall for. That’s not a life I want. And, I have a deadline my insane agent is pushing so I really don’t have time for this.”
I waited of her response, afraid this was going to turn into an argument, but relieved when she just told me again to be careful and hung up.
Oh, I’d be careful. I’d be so careful I’d be mistaken for a human traffic cone.
I took a screenshot of my dazed face and saved it, forwarding it to my phone for when I needed a reminder.
Because when you didn’t realize how deep in you were, you could only fall further.
TWENTY-ONE
"Wow. You look great."
That was exactly the reaction I was going for. I'd tried not to let him see how happy his comment made me. I might have even succeeded because he was behind me when he said it. I glanced over my shoulder wondering what he was looking at back there.
"Surprised?" I figured he must be.
"Nope.” He gave me that cocky smile, the one that said he knew exactly where his place in the world was and it was at the top. “Just flattered you'd bring your A-game for me."
I shook my head. Of course. Leave it to Connor Ryan to make my appearance about him.
"Yup. I went through three hours of being plucked and blown out and made-up for you. It had nothing to do with wanting to look nice or the chance to dress up—which writers don't get very often. Or," I added, because I really wasn't looking forward to this part. "All those darn photos."
"That's okay.” He grinned, giving me another once over. “You keep telling yourself it's for the photos."
He looked so darn sure of himself. He looked the same way he looked when girls were flirting with him or slipping him their number.
Grabbing my bag off the arm of the couch, I made sure my keys, ID, lipstick, cell, and a mini Moleskin were in it—which pretty much packed the tiny thing full—and grabbed my wrap. Before I could wing it out and around to cover my shoulders, Connor had taken it from me and gently—probably even elegantly—laid it over my shoulders.
I stood, studying that face which had begun to look almost normal to me. The crinkles at the edge of his eyes from squinting into the sun, the light dusting of freckles that rode over the bridge of his nose, all the little things you couldn't see in the photos and didn't notice right away when you met him. Somehow in the last two weeks he'd become more…human. Less the ideal every woman seemed to hold him up to and more just a guy with a really different job.