Page 77 of Tempting Me

Which is funny because I sort of am as of lately.

“We need to talk.” He marches right past me to my kitchen.

“O-kay, what’s wrong with you?” I ask, following him.

“Oh, what’s wrong with me? So, so many things.” He drops to sit in one of my kitchen table chairs, cradling his face. “Where do I start?”

“There’s a whole story? Hell yes.” I clap and start to make some coffee. It’s not Brooke’s, but it will have to do for now.

“So, you know my thing with Cherry, right?” he starts.

The number one reason we avoid hooking up with tourists. Of course I know her.

“Yep.”

“You know I wanted to avoid her.”

Because Miles forgot about our number one rule last summer.

“Yep.”

“Well, turns out Quinn wanted to avoid some guy, too.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

I need details. Does he not know me?

“Still doesn’t matter. Anyway, she told her friends, who I don’t think she should call that, that she was dating me.”

“What? She just made it up when she saw them?” I chuckle.

He shakes his head.

“No, she told them last summer.”

He lost me already. Last summer? That’s odd.

“You’ve been dating since last summer?”

“No. Pay attention.”

I hold my hands up in surrender. It’s early, and this is a lot to take on with my own Shay thing going on.

“I’m trying.”

“She told her … people that she was dating me so that they’d stop trying to set her up with this guy. Fast forward to this summer and those people show up here to get married at the lodge, so Quinn came to me with a plan that both validates her story and helps me keep Cherry away.”

“And that was …”

“To fake date. We are fake dating.”

“I fucking knew it!” I stand so fast that my chair flips onto its back. “There was no way she fell for your grumpy ass that fast. Not to mention, you’re always a dick to her.”

All right, so I didn’t know they were fake dating, but I knew something was up with them.

---