Page 31 of The Player + The Pact = I Do

He’s holding his shot, waiting for me. I pick up the one still on the counter.

I raise my glass. “To pretending to be Mrs. Hart.”

He groans. “Oh god, you wouldn’t change your name, would you?”

I blink, trying to process what he’s saying. “You wouldn’t want me to?”

“No! Keep your own bloody name. I don’t get the name-change thing. It’s so old-fashioned. Why should a woman change her name just because she’s getting married?”

I swear to god, I just felt a tug in my ovaries. “Oh, you’re a feminist now?”

He shrugs and clicks his glass to mine. “Why not?”

Being here in his apartment has shifted everything. He’s no longer my boss, who I roll my eyes at when he leaves the room. No, now he’s the Leo Hart who loves comic books and makes me laugh. He’s the guy who gave me his number who I was actually going to call. And here, now, standing with Leo in the kitchen, I understand why I’ve hated him so much since that night at the party.

It’s because I liked him so much. And because for the short time we spent together at the party, I had allowed myself to hope I’d found something—someone—special.

“Let’s not drink to our engagement,” he says. “Within the walls of this apartment, we should be honest. Let’s drink to being roommates.” He eyes me from under eyelashes that wouldn’t look out of place on the cover ofVogue. I take a breath, trying to give off vibes that say his intense stare doesn’t do anything to me. “And to becoming friends,” he says.

A shiver passes down my spine.

Friends? With Leo Hart?

Maybe I can drink to that.

TWELVE

Leo

Jules is much better company than I expected. I thought she’d scuttle into her room as soon as I got home, and I wasn’t about to coax her out, but cooking with her? Chatting? Having a to-and-fro? It’s fun. And… not what I expected.

“That’s really nice tequila,” she says. “Get that imported too?”

“Ha, but no. I got it from Costco,” I lie.

“You did not,” she says. I like the fact that she calls me out. Most people, especially most people who work for me, would never dare. “I bet you’ve never been to Costco in your life.”

I chuckle at all her assumptions. She’s trying to put me in a very defined box and that never works. Not for anyone, in my experience. “You’d be surprised.”

She mixes the pasta into the sauce and I pull out an oven dish. “Thanks,” she says, a note of surprise in hervoice. Clearly an oven dish is “off-brand” as far as she’s concerned.

She pours in the mac and cheese and my stomach rumbles. Proper comfort food. There’s nothing like it.

“So surprise me,” she says.

I frown, confused. What’s she wanting? Me to dress up in a Spiderman costume for dinner? Or maybe Wolverine.

“You said I’d be surprised. You a Costco regular?” She sprinkles some grated cheese onto the top of the dish and slides it into the oven.

“Oh, right. Honestly? Not recently. But as a kid I would go with my dad all the time. He had a bakery in Brooklyn and we’d go a lot.”

A grin explodes on her face. She’s really fucking beautiful. I’ve always been vaguely aware that if you stripped off the thick-framed glasses and made her smile, Jules would be pretty, but I don’t think I realized just how gorgeous she is. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a girl in sweatpants who can cook mac and cheese.

I pick up the tequila bottle and pour out two more shots.

“So that’s why you know your way around a kitchen? It’s in the family. You said before that you didn’t come from money.”

“Not at all.”

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