Knox

I’ve read ninety-two fake fiancée books, which I can say with absolute certainty because I consulted my Goodreads shelves to make sure.

Favorite sexy fake fiancée read? Lauren Blakely’s Big Rock.

Favorite fake fiancée heroine? Kimmie in Jamie Farrell’s Sugared.

Sweetest? Rachel Harris’s Seven Day Fiancé.

The one most likely to help me survive my own fake engagement?

Hopefully all of them.

This wasn’t as hard when it was just for the sake of Parker’s reunion. One night, we can handle. Full-time for the next week?

I know the pitfalls—we could get caught, I could lose my job, we might accidentally fall in love, etc., etc.—which means I’m giving Parker the Knox Moretti Crash Course in Fake Relationships as we huddle in a back booth at a noisy pizza joint six blocks from the library.

It’s not sopapillas, but it has the best dark corners for plotting how we’re going to pull this off without any danger of being caught by Nana or anyone else. Because for a fling, we’re perfect. Long-term, though, we’d have issues. I’ve discovered she’s a workaholic, staying at the office until eight or later most nights unless she has band practice, and I know for a fact she was working before she came to the library today. On a Saturday. When corporate offices are closed.

I live with my grandmother to make ends meet, am probably going to lose my job, and I’m fairly certain Parker doesn’t want to be anyone’s sugar mama.

And then there’s the kid thing.

Unfortunately, I’m less interested in pulling off this fake fiancé thing and more interested in how I’m going to pull off Parker’s tank top, which keeps distracting me and making me hope lots and lots of sex is also on the agenda over the next week until we go our separate ways.

“Simple is better?” she prompts. She has a smear of pizza sauce on her chin and she’s shaking fake grated cheese all over her slice of pepperoni and mushroom, which is causing some jiggling action in her chest, and I have to give myself—and my dick—the stern reminder that we’re not an ogling Neanderthal.

“Yes.” I force myself to concentrate on her eyes. “Simple. As close to the truth as we can get.”

“So I fell for your loincloth.” She flashes a cheeky grin, and if I didn’t already know nearly everyone in my life will most likely suspect I’m trying to pull off a classic romance trope, I might consider grinning back. My mother’s going to read me the riot act when Parker and I have our staged split over her refusal to agree with me that Pride and Prejudice is the greatest romance novel ever written, which is the best I can come up with so far, since I’m not interested in getting into the real weeds on why we won’t work.

I shake my head. “I already told Gertie we’ve known each other for years. And your friends will almost definitely know something’s up.”

“Do you know what people love?”

“A good public humiliation?”

“A good mystery. If we don’t say when we officially hooked up, there’ll be a dozen hypotheses raging all over the internet within four hours, and people will forget which is true and which is just conjecture.”

“And at least six of them will be some variation of it isn’t real.”

Cynicism isn’t usually my thing, but this fiancé act?

I’m telling you, I’ve read the book.

She reaches under the table and strokes a hand from my knee up my thigh, my pocket rocket fires its engines, and a satisfied smirk crosses her lips. “I think we can be very convincing.”

I tug at my collar. “Is this an act, or can we go find a storage closet?”

“I’m practicing being Jane in public.”

The thought of her in a leopard-print thong and matching bra arouses me to the point of pain in my nuts. But the weirdest part? I almost don’t care if we don’t find a storage closet. Because watching her come out of her shell is better than any book I’ve read in the last ten years, that’s for damn sure.

“You know what the best part of being fake engaged to me is?” Parker says.

“If you’re going to say something about fake sex, I’m leaving.”

“I don’t read romance novels, so nobody can say I just want you for your books.”

Fucking sweet torture. The words physically sear my chest. “You know I’m going to change that about you.

“Go ahead and try, lover boy.”

Ninety-two fake fiancée novels, and not one of them has prepared me for her.

“You try that book I sent you yet?” Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me. One of my classic favorites.

She shakes her head. “No time.”

“You don’t commute?”

“Motion sick.”

Fuck. “I’ll get you the audiobook.”

Her phone dings. She licks her fingers—she’s fucking killing me—and pulls it out of her pocket, a frown creasing her brow.

“Work?”

“Your mother. She just invited me to your niece’s birthday party tomorrow.”

“My mother has your number.”

“Well, yeah. How else do you think she booked us for her party?”

Now my phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t grab it, because I have a pretty good idea what it’s going to say. When were you going to tell me you got ENGAGED?

“My sister-in-law does birthday parties like Macy’s does Thanksgiving Day parades,” I tell Parker. This is complete and total desperation to convince her not to come. To be busy. To not make us fake being engaged in front of my entire family and every single family from Abigail’s preschool class, plus probably most of my brother’s neighborhood. Fuck, even my college roommate will be there with his kids.

She can’t come. The fewer public appearances, the better. “You can’t see anything through the balloons, there are six times as many people as there should be crammed into a small space, and after Steph spends all week making tacos, she’s pretty much coming undone at the hinges.”

“Tacos?” she says brightly.

Shit. Fatal mistake. This is what her boobs are doing to me.

“Did you miss the balloon-and-too-many-people part?”

Her eyes narrow. “Do I embarrass you?”

Shit. Shit shit shit. “No. I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“You mean like you are right now?”

That sly little devil.

She just played me.

“You should come,” I say, taking a page from her playbook. “If only for the unicorn poop.”

“I will. For the tacos. And I’ll make sure you get a good picture of you and an adorable child and unicorn poop for your Facebook and Snapchat pages. More ultimate anti-dick moves, and even your new readers are going to fall a little more in love with you.”

“We need to talk about how we’re going to break up. The Pride and Prejudice thing might be too much.”

“Whatever it is, it’ll be all my fault, of course.” She shakes more cheese on her pizza, then folds it and points at me with it. “You need to look like a saint.”

I open my mouth to argue, and she sticks her pizza in it.

“End of discussion,” she declares. “And you’re going to do everything I tell you with your blog, now, because if you lose your job, you’re going to need another source of income stat. You should’ve had affiliate accounts set up ages ago, and on your regular readership numbers alone, you could be pulling in advertising revenue. We should talk about a YouTube channel as well. The camera has to love you.”

I’m not fucking turning my blog into a job. Maybe that’s what we’ll break up over. My father put himself into an early grave working himself to death. Hell if I’ll do it myself. Or let any woman I marry overwork herself either.

I bite off a piece of her pizza, powdered cheese and all, and swallow it down. “If we’re going to pull this off,” I say, leaning into her, taking in her widening eyes, the catch in her breath, and the way her eyes dip to my lips, because this is better than contemplating our break-up, “I’m going to need to know every single intimate detail about you.”

“Every one?”

“Every. Last. One.”

“Do you want a list?” She licks her lips, questions shimmering in those pretty eyes, and all my objections to this fake fiancé business are forgotten. “Or do you need to do hands-on research?”

I want to touch her. I want to lick her. I want to claim her. I’m so hard I couldn’t walk if I wanted to. “Hands-on. The sooner the better.”

“What are you doing at eleven?”

I huff out a laugh. “What are you doing now?”

“I have a gig tonight, which is why I can’t stay past five.”

“I have something better.”

Her pupils dilate and she licks her lips. “While I’m beginning to believe you, if I miss this show, all three of my friends and probably my brothers and Sia’s brothers and Chase will all come hunt us down, and they’ll make that little incident with Rhett the other night seem like a happy frolic in the park.”

“Where is it?” I ask.

Now it’s her turn for the no way are you coming to my gig panic. “Jersey.”

And now it’s my turn to stroke a hand up her leg. “You know what happens to sexy guitarists who lie to their fake fiancés?”

“You pull that librarian shit and figure it out on your own anyway?” she whispers as my fingers reach the apex of her thighs.

“Exactly.” I brush that sweet spot at her very center, wish she was in a skirt instead of these jeans, and lower my lips to her ear. “What are you wearing tonight?”

She’s panting in my ear and gripping my thigh. “Clothes.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Short shorts,” she amends. “Cropped tank top.”

“What color bra?”

“Pink.” Her hand’s working its way up my thigh again, and now she’s casually rubbing my hard-on.

“I like pink,” I tell her. “Matching panties?”

“Yes.”

“Damn. I was hoping you’d go without.”

Her breath’s coming in shorter and shorter bursts, which I can appreciate, because her hands are doing some pretty wicked things to my tent pole. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and still as a busboy glances at us.

Fucking best behavior. “You need to go change?” I murmur.

She nods.

“How about I give you a hand?”

“Or I could give you a hand,” she whispers.

And this is suddenly the best Saturday in the history of Saturdays.