Page 46 of Pretend for Me

Dev Menon

I’m leaving this chat and changing my fucking number. Don’t try to find me.

Dean Meyer

Don’t worry, we’ll follow the trail of hair. Oh wait . . .

[Dev Menonhas left the chat]

[Dean Meyerhas addedDev Menonto the chat]

seventeen

dev

Lassoing A Wave

My eyes glaze over the work email on my laptop screen, unable to focus on a single word. I’d have better luck reading Martian with how little I’ve grasped over the past half hour.

I’ve been hiding in my office since I heard Ralph bring Piper home this evening. Yes, as part of the agreement to live with me, I also had her agree to let Ralph become her full-time driver because I don’t trust her to watch her surroundings enough to know if someone is following her. Call me paranoid, but I’ve dealt with enough paparazzi to know that with our engagement now public, they’ll be swarming her like squawking seagulls. It’s for that same reason I have extra security around her salon.

I try to read the email again, but seconds later, I’m back to wading through my thoughts about the brunette living in my house. That smile of hers could cause a highway pile up.

I hear her chatting with my housekeeper Suzanna in the kitchen, their giggles floating through to my study. But it’s her laugh—distinct, throaty, and free—that has my fist clenching on my desk.

“Fuck,” I groan as an image of her in her oversized sleepshirt flashes behind my lids. Aside from her short-shorts and cropped tank, it’s the one she wears to sleep some nights. The one that practically shows her entire ass every time she so much as reaches for something.

The one thatdefinitelyshowed the tiny lavender fabric nestled between her ass cheeks when she bent down to pick up her damn scrunchie as I walked into the kitchen this morning.

I spun around so fast, I nearly gave myself whiplash, mumbled a string of curses under my breath, and all but ran back to my room like my ass was on fire.

I’d seen her wearing it once earlier this week, and each time has been like a jolt of electricity plugged right into my stomach, bottoming it out.

What the fuck was she thinking walking around in that thing? I’ve been faltering between springing a boner and having a heart attack each time.

And as sexy as she looks in that T-shirt or those short-shorts, she was absolutely devastating in that emerald dress last night—something she really ought not to have worn, because I swear I found it hard to breathe, to think . . . to keep my damn hands off her.

There were a lot of things she really ought not to have done last night.

Like giggling while playing Connect4 with my sister for an hour after we put Mom to bed. I had business to discuss with Dad, but I’d barely heard a word he said as I watched my fiancée from my seat in his office, captivated by her little squeal of victory every time she won.

Like embracing my mother as if they were long-lost friends. In all the time Mom had known Camila, their connection had never sparked the way it had with Piper. Instantly. Fortuitously. And though I knew my to-be-wife was pretending, not a single person in the room could tell it was a rehearsed act.

Like the way she’d placed her soft lips on mine to seal our deal with the briefest of kisses.

Or the way she told me she wanted me to fuck her.

I’d practically gone catatonic.

Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. Stopped functioning completely.

Wrapped in emerald when she’d emerged from her room earlier that evening had already made me feel concussed, but then she said the one thing I never expected, rendering me speechless. My brain had blue-screened like it was Windows 95.

Not to mention the way her citrus scent filled my car, the way her cheeks tinted pink, or the little gasp she couldn’t stifle, surprised by her own audacity.

I’m not an idiot, nor am I blind. Over the past weeks, I’ve gathered that Piper is attracted to me, at least physically. The way she reacts to my touch—oscillating between pulling away and leaning further in. The way her eyes linger on my lips, with her wetting her own, or her nervous rambling.

I’ve become familiar with her tells.

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