The smell of coffee was what woke me up. That and the sunlight that was trying to break through the thin gray curtains. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and heard the door creak open. Standing in the doorway was Declan, holding two cups of steaming coffee, wearing his plaid pajamas with his hair messy from sleep. I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw it was eight in the morning.

“Good morning,” Declan said. “Mind if I come in?”

“Yeah, of course,” I said, sitting up on the bed. It felt a little odd giving Declan permission to enter seeing as it was his guesthouse I was sleeping in. After that night where we both knocked out on the couch, we both decided to sleep in separate beds, forgoing the pillow fort. We weren’t fooling ourselves anyway. The kiss we shared had threatened to undo me right there and then. Plus, there was no way a couple of Tempur-Pedic pillows were going to stop us from getting to each other, and (unfortunately) that just wasn’t part of the arrangement.

Not to mention, I had a major case of morning wood, and it was showing no signs of disappearing without some attention first.

Gah damnit, not now.

I made sure there wasn’t an obvious outline in the thick white comforter I covered myself with.

“You like your coffee with a good dose of cream, right?” Declan asked, completely unaware of the struggle going on between my legs right now. In fact, his presence was only making the situation harder for me.

“I basically like my cream with a little bit of coffee,” I said, grabbing the big red ceramic mug from him, thanking him for the kind gesture and thanking God for bedsheets. He took a seat at the foot of the bed, holding his mug which looked like a big blue-and-white Christmas ornament.

“My mom’s got a date planned for us later. I figured we could get some coffee in us and get ready.”

“Oh, that’s right. She was telling me about it yesterday. Wanted to keep it a surprise, though.”

“Yeah, she’s really taken by you.”

I took a sip of the coffee, Declan finding the perfect balance for me. Over the past three days, I had been warmly and completely taken in by the Rose-Covington family. There was still tension between us and the stepside of the family, but everyone else seemed to have loved me and welcomed me with open arms. Declan and I did briefly talk about the photo and decided to wait a few days before he confronted Bill. He didn’t know, but I was hoping I could pick up on something in that time. Working at Stonewall for so long had taught me that things never turned out how they initially seemed, and I was thinking that this case was no different. And so I spent the last few days on high alert, observing everyone while also being pulled into the family without me even realizing. They were those kind of people—the kind who would leave their doors open for anyone who needed a roof over their heads, and then they’d cook a warm meal, and by the end of the day everyone would have a new friend.

It was surprising, because I hadn’t felt that family feeling for a while now, and part of me had forgotten just how good it felt to be surrounded by loved ones. That had the effect of making me feel both really great and really shitty. Most everyone (minus the stepsiblings, from what I could tell so far), had genuine hearts and were always making sure I was comfortable and having a good time. Seeing their smiling faces every time Declan and I held hands was a feeling that warmed my heart and simultaneously froze it into a frigid block of solid ice. It was a constant reminder that we were lying to them, that this wasn’t real. It was hammered home the past few nights, when I’d go to sleep by myself in one bedroom while Declan slept in the other one—the one with the smaller and lumpy bed, but the one he insisted on taking. We weren’t idiots; we knew the second the both of us got horizontal together, something else of ours would get vertical.

Pfft. If I had woken up next to Declan with this thing, it’d be game over.

My still hard cock gave a rogue throb at the mere thought of waking up next to him. It served as another reminder that this wasn’t real. I couldn’t wake up naked next to him and play with him the way I wanted him to play with me because we weren’t a real couple. It couldn’t happen, and that really fucking sucked.

It sucked so much that my morning wood was even starting to go down.

“We don’t have to go on the date today,” Declan said. He had gotten so good at reading my expression over the past few days, I forgot to look away from him when the wave of sadness hit me.

“No, no,” I said. “I don’t want to let your mom down.”

“She’ll understand,” Declan tried to assure me.

“No she won’t,” I said. “What is she going to understand? That we can’t go on the date she planned because it’s going to make my feelings toward you even stronger?” And then I realized what I had just said and my face flushed red. “Not that I’m feeling anything real, obviously. This is an arrangement, and I get that.”

But I didn’t get that. And, if I were being totally honest with myself… I was feeling things. Powerful things. Things I couldn’t really explain, nor could I recognize. I’d never felt this way toward anyone before, not even my ex-husband.

Sure, initially I was as prickly toward the idea of dating Declan as a porcupine was when faced with a drooling predator. But that was, what… five days ago? A lot can happen in five days! Especially over these past three days, which had been filled with endless laughs and riveting conversations and stolen glances. Every moment I spent around Declan was a good one, and it made me realize just how much of a connection I had been missing with Barry. Even though we’ve only known each other for a few days while I had been married to the other for a year, I felt like I was more connected to Declan than I had ever been to Barry. Maybe it was from our talk a few nights ago, where we shared our scars and found that they matched. Or maybe it was simply in the way Declan looked at me, his eyes always drilling a hole straight through me and seeing down to my very core. Something Barry could never do—or maybe he just hadn’t cared to do it.

“Andrew,” he said, his voice low, in the register that sent delicious chills cascading down my spine. My dick twitched in my pajama pants. I had slept without any underwear on, so there was plenty of room for my morning wood to come back with a vengeance. “If this is too much, we can call it off. I can say you had an emergency at work and I can get you back home by three.”

It didn’t take me a moment to answer. “No. Absolutely not.” I don’t want to spend Christmas without you. “I don’t back down from things. I agreed to this crazy plan, and I’m going to go through with it.”

Declan’s eyes scanned me. He was looking for any cracks, but I wasn’t going to show them. I couldn’t show him how fast and hard I had fallen for him. It would ruin the facade, and I couldn’t have that. “You sure?” he asked, poking one more time.

“Positive,” I said. “But thank you, though, for the offer.”

Thank you for another reason to like you even more.

How twisted was that? I liked Declan more after he offered to set me free and break our fake relationship off, only because it showed that he cared. He could have been selfish about this entire thing and steamroll right on, dragging me through the date without thinking about the effect it could have on me. But he didn’t do that. He was always checking to see if I was okay, and I noticed that. It was something that had been drastically different in my (now defunct) marriage. Barry never checked in on me, even if I always did it for him. He never asked how my day was or if there was anything bothering me, even when my mood was clearly in the crapper. Even when I lost one of my closest friends at Stonewall, he’d barely comforted me. He’d held me for a grand total of five whole minutes while I sobbed, then told me it was part of the job and to move on. Oh, oh, and theeen he rushed outside because he thought he heard the landlord and he wanted to put in a maintenance request.

A maintenance request. The leaky faucet was more important in that moment than my devastated being.

I should have left then.

“All right, well, as much as it hurts me to say, the offer’s going to stay on the table. I don’t want you leaving early, but I understand if you feel like you have to.” Declan got up, the mattress moving as he stood.

“I won’t,” I assured him. Trust me.

“Good,” he said. His smile lit up the room, brighter than the sun that was doing an excellent job of breaking through the curtain. “I’m going to go start getting ready. Meet me outside in twenty?”

“Sounds good.” He turned to leave, and my eyes instantly dropped to his perky butt, looking like two holiday hotcakes being kept warm by his plaid pajamas.

Annnd my dick was back to being rock hard in seconds flat. He was one sexy fake boyfriend, that was for sure. The sexiest boyfriend I could have ever asked Santa for.

Fake boyfriend. Fake. Couldn’t forget that bit.