Page 4 of Hired By the Enemy
I duck behind a crowd of noisy tourists with strong Australian accents, my hand tightening around my sign.
Shit, I don’t want to lower the sign in case William turns up and wonders where I am.
There’s a good probability that if Liam does see me, he’ll just ignore me. That’s what we’ve mostly done since high school if we’ve ever found ourselves in the same place. Pretend the other is a glitch in the metaverse, a black hole in the universe.
He’s moved over to the side, and now I can see him through the Australians. He seems to be scanning the area.
To my absolute horror, his scanning pauses when he reaches my sign.
His eyes light up and he steps forward. Then he raises his gaze to meet mine.
He stops dead. Shock and horror frolic over his face.
My mind spins. Surely this can’t mean…it can’t mean…
Liam’s full name is William. A fact that helpfully decides to slide back into my mind right now.
Oh, holy shit.
My stomach lurches.
No way. No way.
This can’t be happening.
This is not just a well-played prank. This is the best-played prank in any version of reality that has ever existed.
When the agency sent me the profile of my replacement date, I’d tried to click on the link, but the file had corrupted, and I’d been too busy to follow up.
Which right now seems like a monumental oversight.
My fake boyfriend continues to wear an expression of complete and utter shock as he stares at me.
For a few heartbeats, we just stand there, blinking at each other.
Then Liam smothers on a smirk, one I’m so familiar with I can map out every smug inch, and takes a few steps to close the remaining distance between us.
“Well, this just got interesting,” he drawls.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is abrupt. My hand holding the sign drops to my side, limp.
“I was sent by an agency because apparently you need a date for a week?” He quirks a mocking eyebrow that, once again, I know too well.
Really, I am so fluent in Liam Jamieson’s mockery techniques that it’s almost something I should include on my resume.
My heart races like it’s trying to escape my body and flee this scene. I don’t blame it.
In all my panicking and thinking through the worst-case scenarios for hiring a fake date, I never imagined a catastrophe on this scale.
Because of anyone to turn up and be my pretend boyfriend for a week, Liam Jamieson is the last person I would choose. Iwould probably take my chances with career criminals and murderous dictators ahead of him.
Liam grew up next door to me in our small hometown of Bainfield. And it’s impossible to fully describe our feelings toward each other. Hatred isn’t deep enough.
He’d been the popular jock who excelled at everything sports related. I’d been the nerdy, scrawny kid who couldn’t throw a ball to save myself.
But it wasn’t your typical jock-bullies-the-nerd scenario. I’d fancied myself as the hero of an epic movie titledWhen Nerds Fight Back.
After he moved next door when we were eight and Liam started his campaign of insults and spitballs aimed in my direction, I’d fought back with more creative and sophisticated pranks. Pranks that had escalated to an all-out war.
