Page 38 of Personal Foul
“The date?” I look at him confused.
“Let me have my fantasy and pretend you’d go on a date with me, yeah? I know you wouldn’t be seen with me in public, but I figured we’re safe if we stay in here.”
The man has had a bath drawn for me on a cold night and ordered me hot cocoa. I would go on a date with him literally whenever he asks. I’m honestly ready to out this whole thing to Liv and Kenz just so that I can tell them what he’s done. Ask them if they think the real Easton has been body snatched and replaced with a second Ben who just happens to look like East. Because this kind of stuff? This is not Easton charm.
“Okay,” I agree, still confused about what’s happening.
“I’ll let you know when the cocoa’s here.” He places a whisper-light kiss against my jaw and then leaves the room.
I turn to the bath, pick up the lavender bath bomb and drop it into the steaming hot tub, watching it roll and unfurl the purple cloudy mist into the water. Trying to figure out what I’ve gotten myself into.
When I make my way out of the tub, wash my hair and get dressed for the evening—which is an entire ordeal because I have no idea what you wear to bed with your rich fuckboy would-be lover when you’re in a suite in the mountains in a hateship—I stop in my tracks at the sight in front of me.
Easton’s sprawling on the bed, shirt off with a pair of sweatpants low on his hips. He’s leaning back against the headboard, arm bent behind his head as he scrolls through something on his phone. That would be enough to stop my heart on a good day. But he also has a tray of candy and drinks set up, and the movie I missed the other night queued up on the screen across from the bed. The hot cocoa has finally come and is sitting there on a cart too. And now I am very sure he’s been taken by aliens or another dimension and replaced with a double.
Honestly, I wish there was a way I could sneak and grab my phone, snap a photo, and send it to Liv and Kenz because someday when I do tell them about this—and we all know I will eventually cave—I want photographic evidence. Otherwise, there is no way they will believe this ever happened. That he is voluntarily hanging out with me and watching a historical romance movie, instead of I don’t know, railing me hard over the chair or something. And now that image is in my head and my eyes are back on his body.
I take a few steps toward the bed and he glances up from his phone, smiling when he sees me tiptoeing my way toward my suitcase.
“Feel better?” he asks in a tone so soft it sends a shiver through me.
“Yeah. Warmer. Thanks.” I glance up at him as I put my things away.
“Is this the right movie? The one we were supposed to watch the other night? You haven’t watched it yet, have you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”
“Why not?”
I give him an incredulous little look, but he just raises his eyebrow at me in return.
“There’s going to be a lot of thick English accents and pining, and wide shots of the English countryside with voiceovers about how she wondered what he was thinking of at that very moment. That kind of thing.”
“And balls? Where they do that little coordinated dancing thing?”
“You’re familiar with the genre?”
“My sister went through a Jane Austen phase when we were in high school. I saw enough.”
“Jane Austen is not a phase,” I say as I climb into the bed next to him, fluffing the pillows to support my back.
“I mean she’s good, I think, but after all the pining you would think there would be some banging.”
“There was banging. It just happened off page.”
“Implied banging isn’t the same as real banging.”
“Thank you for that expert analysis.”
“Is this going to have real banging?” He grabs a handful of M&Ms and pops a few into his mouth.
“Probably. The woman has an affair.”
“An affair? Is that what you’re into? Cheating?”
“I mean, if her wealthy absent husband doesn’t love her or pay attention to her, and he’s off having his own affairs…” I shrug.
“Can’t they just get divorced?”
