This was in no way, shape, or form good. Not only was I surrounded by huge animals that scared me half to death for reasons I couldn’t quite figure out, but now I was also facing a predatory lioness who knew she had us right where she wanted. She was looking at Declan like she had just freaking figured out where in the world Carmen Sandiego was.

That’s when I decided to speak. “I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to jump in here.” She looked at me, for what felt like the first time since she walked into the stables. “I can see what you’re trying to insinuate, and I’m honestly a little offended by it.”

“Offended?” She arched a threaded brow. “Kind of like how offended my dad was at being called a criminal the other night?”

Ah, so that was what this was about. “I already apologized for that,” Declan said. He had saddled up Alaska and was getting to work on making Chocolate Chip ready. “I even talked to him, Brooke. You don’t have to get involved.”

“Of course I do. He’s my father.”

“Who is married to my mother.”

“Yes, he’s married to her, not stealing from her.”

I could tell this wasn’t going to be productive. “And Declan and I are a real couple. There, everything is settled.” I clapped my hands and wiped them clean. The look on both of their faces, though, told me nothing had been wiped clean.

“Drop it, Declan,” Brooke said, her tone turning acidic enough to burn through iron. “Drop it or I’ll let everyone know about this crazy little scheme you cooked up.” She turned to me, shaking her head. “And what do you get out of it? A free week’s stay at a hotel of your choosing? Or is he paying you in cash?”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Declan said, claiming the attention back. “You’ve lost your mind, Brooke.”

“Oh please, don’t gaslight me now. I’ve got solid proof that this entire thing between you two is a fucking sham. Your entire story is made up, and I’m not the only one that knows it, either. So, if you want Robin to go on with her happy little Christmas retreat without finding out Andrew and her son are total and utter fakes, then drop your detective act toward my father.”

Before either of us could even defend ourselves, she turned on her heels and stomped off, leaving the stables and us behind, confusion and bitterness left in her wake.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked, looking to Declan for an answer neither of us had.

“I have no idea. What was she talking about not being the only one?”

“Maybe she and her husband overheard something between us?”

Declan rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, the words coming out muffled. “That could be it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I squeezed my hands and dropped my head, my shoulders slumping in defeat. It felt like the gig was up, and I was quickly realizing I didn’t want it to be. I thought I’d be fine with the finite nature of this “relationship,” but faced with the end of it, suddenly I was feeling like complete shit.

“For what?” Declan asked, instantly picking up on my plummeting mood. He reached for my hand, which in turn stopped my mood from jumping off the cliff.

“It’s probably my fault.”

“What? No way, don’t say that. We have no idea; she could even be bluffing. She’s just trying to protect her dad, and she knows the way to do it is by threatening something of mine. Don’t listen to her, Andrew. Everything’s fine.”

My head tilted to the side, doubt filling me up like helium getting pumped into a balloon. “She seemed pretty sure of herself.”

“She’d seem that way if she were arguing that the earth was flat. That’s just Brooke.” His hand squeezed mine before letting go and turning back toward Chocolate Chip. “Come, let me properly introduce you to my horse. We can go on our date and forget about my shit stepsister for a while. You’re going to love where we’re going.”

I laughed as I entered the pen, both nervously and because I genuinely found Declan funny. “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to get my mind off Brooke and the large, intimidating, powerful animal that was now standing in front of me.

Oh, and there was a horse in front of me, too.

“It’s a surprise.” Declan grabbed my hand and led me over to the side of Chocolate Chip. “All right, so some basic rules. Horses are very intuitive animals and they really react to your touch and voice, so always try to stay calm.” Declan started patting the side of the horse’s head. I followed suit, instantly surprised at how soft Chocolate Chip’s coat felt. I thought it would be courser or bristly, kind of like a sponge, but that was just me being a dumb city boy. In fact, Chocolate Chip felt almost like silk to the touch. “And don’t ever run up behind a horse or spook them—if you have to cross from behind, try to keep a hand on them or talk to them so they know where you are and that you aren’t a danger. That way you won’t get your ribs kicked in half.”

I chuckled nervously. “Oh great. Ha. Ha. Good to know.”

Declan, that smug asshole, was smiling. “Good, good, that’s a good girl,” he said, cooing toward the horse. He started to brush out some knots from her mane with his fingers, always being sure that he wasn’t hurting her in any way. Seeing this side of him, so caring and gentle, keeping control of the entire situation without ever once being intimidating, was doing something to me. There was really only one way to describe him right now:

A hot-as-all-hell horse whisperer.

And let me tell you, he could whisper my horse any day of the week.

“See, nothing to worry about,” he said, stepping back as I continued to pet Chocolate Chip. She wasn’t a huge horse, especially now that I was close up, which helped keep my intimidation levels low. Her big brown eyes were almost humanlike in their softness and expressiveness. I could see now why horses were used as therapy animals. Even with the fear I had walking into the stable, I was finding myself more and more at ease the longer I petted Chocolate Chip. My stress levels were still through the goddamn roof after Brooke’s confrontation, but at least I wasn’t panicking like I think I would have under other circumstances.

“All right,” Declan said. “Now that introductions are over, let’s get you on the saddle.”

Annnd my fear was back.

“You’re doing great!” Declan encouraged as we rode our horses down the dirt trail through a densely wooded area. We had spent the past hour and a half riding in small circles around a gated area, Declan teaching me basically how to drive a horse. I told him I got major flashbacks to being a kid and driving around an empty parking lot for hours with my mom, almost taking out three fire hydrants on the first day.

It was a good thing there weren’t any fire hydrants for me to run over on the trail. And Declan was right: Chocolate Chip was the sweetest horse I’d ever met. Granted, I really only ever met this one horse, but still, I could tell that she was the sweetest one by far.

We had the two horses at a slow trot as we wound our way through the woods. The tall pine trees that surrounded us were covered in a thin layer of pristine white snow, their branches looking like white, sparkling tendrils reaching out to the sky. It was serene and incredibly peaceful, something I didn’t think I’d feel as I rode on the back of a horse.

“I had a great teacher,” I said, adjusting myself in the saddle as I started to sway a little too far to the left. “So, we’re still on the ranch’s property?”

“Yup,” Declan said. I looked around and couldn’t see anything but trees, which went to show just how much land this ranch had claimed. The destination was also still a surprise for me, and it was making me antsy to figure out.

“Hmm... are there any lakes or anything back here by any chance?”

“Look at you, being a little Sherlock Holmes.” He grinned, instantly catching on to what I was trying to do. “No, there isn’t a lake back here, and no, I’m not taking you ice-skating.”

“I wasn’t going to say that you were.” I was.

“Trust me, you’re going to flip when you see where I’m taking you.”

“Tell me first! I hate surprises.” I didn’t. I secretly loved them.

“Nope, you’re not finding out.” He smiled in a way that almost had me falling off the horse. It didn’t help that he looked so freaking hot, his big muscular thighs gripping the sides of his horse like he was purposefully giving me a show. He was wearing gray pants that stood out from Alaska’s dark coat, making his thighs look all the more delicious.

Seriously, it was obscene how hot Declan was right now. Just to put it into perspective, my death certificate could say “suffocated by Declan Rose-Covington’s thighs” and you’d know I died a happy man.

Not to mention, the way he just casually bobbed up and down with the gentle movements of the horse, and the confidence he had in the way he was holding his reins with one hand, the other resting on his leg.

I was thiiiisss close to asking if Alaska needed a break so I could swap and take her place.

“We can’t be that much farther, can we?” I asked, trying to look through the trees to see if I spotted anything. The path seemed to continue to wind downward, curving around a bend and losing itself behind a cluster of pines.

“Nope, not much farther at all.”

That confused me. I was expecting to see some signs of a clearing coming up, or maybe a cute little log cabin he was taking us to, but there was nothing except the path and more trees, their thick trunks towering above us.

“Annnd, we’re here.” Declan pulled back on his reins, stopping Alaska. I was still getting the hang of it and didn’t pull hard enough, so Chocolate Chip went a few extra trots before realizing that she was dealing with a horse newbie.

“Huh?” I looked around, not seeing anything but more trees.

“I told you we weren’t that much farther.”

“I don’t see anything…”

“Look up.”

I looked up, and that was when I saw it.

Declan was right. I flipped.

“Are you shitting me?” I said, looking up at the massive tree house built across five different thick pine trees. It was tucked farther into the woods, not directly on the path. There was a ladder hanging off the lowest level of the tree house, leading up onto a porch with a red fence covered in snow. The tree house appeared to have two floors, but there looked to be an attic area that had a small balcony extending from a door, so it looked like three floors. It was made of a smooth, pale wood that gave the exterior a storybook quality. Not to mention the covering of snow that only added to the fairy-tale quality.

“Like it?” Declan asked, getting off Alaska and hitching her to a post

“This is crazy,” I said. Declan came over to my side and helped me get off Chocolate Chip. “Thanks,” I said, hopping onto the floor. In the process of helping me, Declan had managed to wrap his arm around my lower back, and now we were face-to-face, body to body. Our breaths fogged the air between us. We were wearing light coats, so I could feel some of his warmth escaping, cascading into mine.

“Let’s get up there,” Declan said, a smolder in his grin as he separated from me. He had to have known what that proximity did to me. What that smile of his did to me, how it set my insides on fire and kept that fire roaring.

Code red. Code red.

All my defenses were officially crumbling. And the second he grabbed my hand to lead me toward the ladder, my final wall fell. I was left walking next to him, bare and complete, and that was starting to scare me. Doubt-filled questions started hailing down on me. Should I be feeling this strongly for someone so soon after having my heart broken by another man? Should I be fantasizing about kissing Declan from his lips, down his chest, down to his goddamn toes? Should I have woken up from a wet dream the other night where Declan was taking me in all kinds of ways, leaving my sheets a sticky mess which I then had to sneakily wash myself?

Who knew. I sure didn’t. And that was what scared me the most.

“All right, after you,” Declan said, stepping aside and motioning up the ladder. It looked solidly built and well maintained, but it was a tall ladder. The entrance to the tree house had to have been at least twelve feet off the ground.

“Why do I feel like you’re secretly filming an episode of Fear Factor with me in it?”

Declan laughed at that. “You’re scared of horses and heights? What’s next? The Hamptons?”

“Yes, anything starting with an H, you can be sure I’m terrified of.” I looked at him, arching a brow. “And what if I am scared of the Hamptons? I don’t know what you rich people do there. It could be some kind of Illuminati headquarters over there.”

“I’ll have to take you there sometime,” he said. “We can get you initiated.”

“No, thank you,” I replied. “I already have enough with people trying to get me into Herbalife.”

Declan snorted at that. “All right, you goof, get up there.”

I peeled my eyes off Declan, who was making me regret this fake-boyfriend thing with every second that passed.

And, just to be clear, I wasn’t regretting my decision to come. I was regretting my decision to make it fake.

“Okay, just keep your arms open down here… just in case.” I gripped the rungs of the soft wood and pulled up, relieved to feel that the ladder was securely attached to the tree and didn’t wiggle a bit at my added weight. I went up the ladder, taking every step with extra caution and making sure I did everything but look down. I made it onto the porch, and Declan was up there right after.

“This is incredible,” I said, more awed now that I was standing on the house. It could literally function as a home, I was sure of it. The porch we stood on was big enough to hold us and two rocking chairs, with a few pots holding bright red poinsettias.

“It all started with me and my dad wanting something to do on the weekends.”

“You’re kidding. You guys built this?”

“Not how it is now—it’s gone through a lot of professional renovations. But the original bones were me and my dad. I was eleven and it was the biggest deal ever to me. I’d tell everyone at school that I was building a tree house with my dad. The other kids didn’t really get it; some of them asked why we just weren’t paying someone else to do it for us. But it didn’t matter to me. I knew I’d be as happy as could be the second my dad and I would start getting to work.”

“Wow,” I said, my mind still blown. Declan unlocked the door and opened it, revealing a living room that could have easily been featured on the cover of Architectural Digest for months on end. It was perfect. The room was big enough to impress but small enough to feel homey, with comfortable-looking couches draped in even more comfortable-looking knit blankets. The colors were all neutral, earth tones, with pops of blue and copper here and there. It was warm, making me unzip and pull off my jacket to place on the coat rack by the entrance. Across from us was a beautiful fireplace that I assumed was one of those electronic display kinds. Next to the fireplace was a full Christmas tree, the scent of pine heavy in the air, its branches drooping with the amount of ornaments and glittering snowflakes hanging off them. The walls were still the soft wood from the outside, but it was painted over with a glossy shine that made it feel extra luxe. In the center of the room was a small table covered in a white cloth and a bottle of champagne sitting in ice, the bucket surrounded by rose petals. Above the table, set a little to the side, was a mistletoe.

“Wooow,” I repeated myself. “A Christmas tree inside of a tree house—it’s like treeception in here!”

Declan laughed at that. Christmas music was playing through invisible speakers at a low volume. “Yeah, this was all clearly not done by an eleven-year-old and his loving dad who needed a hobby together.” He walked over to the trunk of one of the pine trees that were holding this thing above ground. His hand went over a carving. Two names and a date.

“Deck and Dad,” I read aloud, “December 23, 2000.”

“That was the date we finished. It was just one room, probably half the size of this, without any of the overhead lighting or West Elm pillows.”

I could feel a swell of emotion rise up without any warning. I looked away, pretending to admire more of the space but really just trying to cover the tear that fell down my face.

“Come, check out the upstairs.”

“Oh, right, there’s more than one floor here,” I said. There was a set of stairs toward the far end of the room, and that was where we headed, Declan in the lead this time. We climbed the stairs and walked out onto an open landing with a window that looked out into the woods, the glass frosted over. There was a small hallway with two doors on either side.

“Those are two bedrooms, and then that door at the end of the hallway opens onto another balcony.”

“I could literally live in here for the rest of my life,” I said, looking around with my eyes wide, still unable to believe that we were up in the trees right now. The big trunks going through the floor and ceiling did their part in hammering that fact home. “Seriously, this place is bigger than my apartment back in New York.”

“You’re more than welcome to come visit whenever you want.”

“Are you just trying to find reasons to bump into me?” I asked, smirking as I turned away from him, looking instead at a beautiful bookshelf holding a rainbow of book spines.

“I wish I didn’t need to look for reasons,” he said, his tone taking a lower pitch. It was a change that had me turning around.

“I…”

“I wish I could just reach out and grab you and kiss you, whenever I wanted.”

A breath hitched in my chest. My eyes instinctively dropped to the ground before I forced them back up, meeting the embers glowing hotter inside Declan’s gaze.

“I wish the same thing,” I said, the words surprising me. It was what I meant to say, but I thought fear would restrict me. Hold me back from saying the truth. It didn’t, though, and a huge crack appeared in the carefully constructed facade we had been trying to uphold for the past week because of it.

Then, before I could even blink, I was being pushed back onto the wall, Declan’s body on mine, his lips on mine, mine crushing his. My hands went up his shirt, gliding over the soft skin, the rippling muscles, my fingers digging into him. An entire dam of pent-up frustration blew in two inside me, turning my brain into that commercial where they fry the egg and compare it to your brain on drugs.

That was my brain. A fried fucking egg.

I ground hard against Declan, my boxer briefs pushing back on my stiffening dick.

And then it all ground to a halt. Declan stopped kissing me out of nowhere and took a step back. From the side of my eye, I could see the massive bulge in his pants, and it only served to drive me crazier.

“What? Is it my breath? I’m terrified of halitosis, too,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. He laughed, but I could tell something was still bothering him.

“No, it’s not your breath. You’re perfect. Everything about you is perfect. We… we just can’t do this,” Declan said, surprising me with his sudden change of heart. “I don’t want to mess you up.”

“I’ll stop if you really want me to, but don’t think about messing me up. I’m a full-grown man and I can make my own decisions, and right now, my decision is to give my fake boyfriend a very real, and very good, blow job.”

Declan’s smirk twitched wider, a smile growing, almost at the same pace as my cock, which was swelling and getting harder and harder. There was also a wince at the word fake. I saw it in him, and I felt it in myself.

Something was wrong. Hearing Declan’s words hit a part of me that I wasn’t aware was hurting so badly. It was a part of me that was longing for this to be real. A part of me that was there from the moment I’d met Declan, and one I was trying to silence.

I didn’t want to silence it anymore. “Deck… I don’t want this to be fake.” I took a deep breath, realizing in that moment exactly what I was doing but going forward with it anyway. “It’s been such a whirlwind time in my life, I honestly don’t know what’s up and what’s down. But, what I do know is that I have genuine feelings for you, and that’s something I can’t fake. I’ve never laughed so hard with anyone than I have with you over these past few days, and I’m constantly smiling when I’m around you. And I know this is just the crazy cherry to add on top of our insane sundae, but I… damn it, Deck, I’m really into you. I want this to be real. And with your sister starting to sniff things out… it just makes me realize I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want her to find anything because I don’t want there to be anything to find. I want us to be real.”

It felt like there was a trapdoor underneath me, and it was going to unhinge and swing open at any second. Like I was on some twisted (but also hilarious) game show hosted by Ellen DeGeneres herself. Declan’s face was difficult to read in the moment. His eyes were glittering, and a smirk was playing on his face, but it still could be going the way of “oh no, I think this is better off as a fake thing,” and that would feel like a gut punch delivered by the silverback gorilla Zoey and I had talked about.

Gah dammit, did I just basically run Grandma Lucy over with a reindeer?