Page 73 of The Hanukkah Hoax
“My boyfriend’s face is a huge hit.” Marisa’s voice had almost a euphoric tinkle to it as she drifted closer to him and hooked an arm through his, her chiffon gown whispering against his legs. She beamed up at him.
And that damn gorgeous smile of hers was enough to send his heart vaulting into his throat.
Bloody hell, the way she looked at him . . . it was a precious gift he didn’t deserve, one that had come to mean everything.
“You’re the hit. I’m just the packaging.”
“Pretty packaging, though.”
He chuckled. “If you say so.”
“Oh, I say so. So many so’s.”
Marisa rose on tiptoe to kiss him but skittered away when his phone began vibrating in his breast pocket, tickling her chest. “Hey, careful with the lace,” she admonished teasingly. “I just got this.”
“Noted. I’ll be sure to have the nimblest of touches when I peel it off you later.”
He winked as he took out his phone, then quirked a brow as Marisa chased another electronic vibration, this one from her phone that she had tucked beneath the table.
Odd.
It wasn’t until the color had drained from Marisa’s face as she stared down at her screen that a worried pressure began forming in his chest.
He unlocked his phone and gazed in horror at the social media post and its headline.
RUGBY STAR ALEC ELMS FAKES RELATIONSHIP TO SAVE DYING CAREER
Chapter 28
For a while, Marisa just stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The video was a dark, blurry concoction accented with neon lights that looked like they came from glowing beer signs.
Which made sense. The arms next to each other in the shot, only visible from the elbows down and filmed from above, were resting on a bar. She could practically feel the sticky furniture rings and sliminess of the paper coasters resting beneath the dirty martini glass gripped in the impressively manicured hand on the right.
A hand that was precariously close to the thickly knuckled one that had been holding hers all night.
Alec.
But that was where the fuzzy feelings ended, at least the ones that had been gliding her around through the best night of her life.
There were no faces shown, just the conversation’s audio transcription scrolling along the top as two unmistakable voices spoke.
“Since when do you notice anything that isn’t rugby related?”
Phoebe. Marisa would know that voice anywhere, especially the grating trill on the upward inflection whenever the woman’s indignation would fire up. Lord knows Marisa had been on the receiving end of that experience more than she’d wished.
The word notice ground on her quickly unraveling nerves, given the shocking headline of the video.
ALEC ELMS FAKES RELATIONSHIP . . .
With her. As in, Why did he bother to notice her?
The subtext was all over the sentiment, and the implications were quickly becoming a raging sea she had no hope of swimming through.
And just when she thought she’d calmed her limbs enough to keep her floating and stationary, Alec’s voice in the video sent her reeling against the rocks all over again.
“I was damn foolish.”
“I . . . know . . . the difference between right and wrong.”
