Page 3 of Faking It with the Firefighter

“Not just as my date but as my…um”—he cleared his throat—“…you know. My girlfriend.”

I blinked. “I’m not following.”

“So Donny’s fiancée, Blair,” he started, then stopped. “You know Blair?”

Me and two million other people, yeah. “Social media darling Blair Hollins?”

“Yeah. So you might not know this, but before she dated Donny, she was my girlfriend.”

It took me a second to process that information. Blair Hollis was a blond bombshell. Rex and her…?

“We got together when I came back to town after college, before she got big on the internet.”

Wow. I glanced over at him. What else didn’t I know about him? After my teenage crush died, I’d put Rex in a box in my mind and taped it up tight. But apparently I’d missed a few things about him these past few years, like the fact that he was willing to lie to my brother to cover for me, or that he dated women who were built like Barbie dolls.

“How’d she end up dating your brother?”

A sharp exhale and a flick of his fingers. “You know,” he said.

“Um. No, I don’t know.”

“Just one of those things.”

That explained precisely nothing. Was he still caught up on her? Why did that make me feel slightly weird? “So, what? You want to make her jealous or something by bringing me as your date?” I gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know how well that’ll work out for you, Rex. I’m not exactly jealousy-inducing.”

We turned onto my street, and Rex gave me an odd look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I waved at myself. “Town’s hottest hot mess? Hello?”

He tilted his head slightly, brow twitching. “Well, can’t argue with that,” he mumbled, and instead of feeling offended, I felt a flush of heat. It kind of sounded like he was calling me hot. But that was crazy.

Seriously, whowasthis guy?

Rex went on. “It’s not that I wanted to make anyone jealous,” he explained. “I didn’t want them to think I was salty about the whole thing or that I still had feelings for Blair, so I told them I was dating someone. It just kind of…came out.”

“‘It just kind of came out,’” I repeated dryly.

Rex stopped in front of my house and leaned an elbow on his window frame. Even through his aviators, I knew he wasn’t impressed with me. “You owe me, Abigail,” he said, and his voice was dark and dangerous and not at all Rex-like. “I bailed you out of jail, now you’ve got to get me through this wedding.”

Suddenly, I feltreallyhot. But that was just a remnant of a teenage crush. I wasn’tactuallyattracted to Rex freaking Montgomery right now.

I needed to get back on solid ground. This was my brother’s best friend. Good-guy Rex, who saved kittens from trees. Way too square and strait-laced for troublemaking me. I’d already tried marrying the good guy, and how had that turned out? I wasn’t going to let myself get burned again.

“Does that mean you lied to your brother?” I teased.

“Yeah, you know something about that, don’t you?” he jabbed right back. There was a bite in his tone that…

Oh, hell. I liked it. A lot.

That was bad. When I liked something, it was almost guaranteed to turn to shit.

But Rex had kept my latest run-in with the law quiet, which meant that Gabe hadn’t freaked out and gone all overprotective on me. Whatever was going on with me feeling a spark of attraction toward Rex Montgomery (of all people), it would definitely fade by the time Donny and Blair tied the knot.

“So I agree to be your girlfriend for the duration of this wedding, and then we forget about the whole bailing-me-out-of-jail thing.”

“Think you can handle it?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t be a dick about it, Montgomery. You need me right now,remember?”

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