This… wow, okay. This was literally batshit crazy. I was looking from Declan to Tyler to Veronica, trying to put the pieces together. I was handed the pieces and even described exactly where to put them, but I still was having trouble seeing the bigger picture.

Until Declan started moving toward Tyler, his chest puffed and his fists balled. Things fell into sharp focus in that moment, and I knew I had to act. I lurched forward and grabbed Declan by the elbow, pulling him back. I wasn’t exactly sure what his intentions were, but I really didn’t like the almost visible steam coming out from Declan’s ears.

“I can’t believe this shit,” he said. I noticed Brooke, who I already didn’t like, standing off to the side with her arms crossed and a little smirk on her makeup-caked face. Seriously, that girl had enough concealer on I was sure I could make a snow angel on her forehead.

Er, concealer angel?

“Come on, Deck,” I said. It was the first time I’d called him that, and for some reason, it felt the most natural. He seemed to diffuse slightly, too. He dropped his head and grabbed my hand in his. “We’ve got some more decorating to do.” I turned to Tyler and Veronica and mustered up the most pleasant “nice to meet you” I could muster. I wasn’t even sure if I had officially met them, but honestly by that point, I really couldn’t care less about formalities. I just wanted to get Declan back to the guesthouse and away from his slithering snakes of his stepsiblings.

“And you,” Declan said, turning his attention to Veronica before I was able to get us into the sleigh. “You’re just a gold-digging monster. You dumped me when you saw my brother climbing up Rose-Covington’s corporate ladder, didn’t you? Holy shit, that’s exactly why you left me.” I could see realization start dawning on his face. “You left me a week after he got his promotion… how long have you two been together?”

“Not that long,” Veronica weakly reassured him. “Not long at all.”

I looked to Brooke, whose face said it all with her arched brow and quirked lip. She didn’t have a horse in the race, and I could tell she wanted to stir up as much trouble as she could.

“Fuckin’ shit. Both of you are fucked in the head, you know that?”

“Declan, I’m sorry.” Tyler’s apologies fell on deaf ears. We were already getting back into the golf-sleigh, and Declan was turning it on. For a split second, I was expecting us to roar off in anger, with a cloud of fake snow being kicked up behind us. Then I remembered we were in a golf cart and the top speed was fifteen miles per hour, and that was pushing it. We left the scene at a crawl, neither of us saying another word until we got back to the guesthouse.

When we got back in and shut the door behind us, the floodgates opened:

“This is a prank. This is fucking crazy. I can’t believe this. My ex-girlfriend? The one who broke my heart—she’s the one he has to date. They were probably seeing each other when we were still together. I knew it. I knew something was up, but Jesus, I didn’t think it was this.”

I stood to the side, letting him vent. There was a part of me that wanted to go and comfort him. To hold him and tell him to forget about that dumb blonde bitch who clearly had no sense of morals or proper human decorum. “I’m sorry…” I said, the only thing I could even think of saying. And it sounded so inadequate, too. “You don’t deserve that kind of treatment. From anyone, but especially not from your own family.”

Declan let out an exasperated huff. “Family. That’s a good one. Those people aren’t my family—they’re leeches that are trying to suck the life out of my family. That’s what they are.” He slumped onto the leather couch near the fireplace. I made my way over and sat down next to him, leaving some space between us. This was starting to get way messier than I was expecting it to, but I was weirdly okay with it. A little drama never hurt anyone, and frankly, my Christmas before Declan walked into my life was looking like a sad affair filled with overeating and oversleeping.

“I’m sorry,” Declan said, the sincerity in his voice surprising me. “I’m so sorry. I feel terrible for dragging you into this. I should have just been a man about it and showed up here by myself. This is a fucking disaster.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said, moving a little closer. “I’ve always wanted to live out my own Real Housewives fantasy. I’m being served a full plate of crazy drama, and I’m totally okay with it. I just feel bad that you have to go through it.”

Declan chuckled at that. “God, I hate those shows.”

I got up from the couch and started my way toward the door.

“Huh?” Declan asked behind me, still sitting on the couch.

“Sorry, Deck, but I’m cutting this short. Fake or not, I can’t be in a relationship with someone who can’t appreciate my wine-drinking and tea-spilling ladies.” I stopped at the door and turned with a big smile on my face.

“Get over here, you housewife,” Declan said when he realized I was joking. He patted the couch and smiled my way. It was a grin that had wormed its way into my heart from the jump. I loved seeing Declan smile.

I went over and took a seat again, this time forgetting about putting any space between us. There was a question that was tickling the back of my brain, and I wanted to ask it, but I wasn’t even sure how to. I couldn’t tell if it was my place to know, but then again, I was in a “relationship” with him.

“So…” I started, figuring I should just ask right out, “you’re bi, right?” My lids narrowed. “Oh god, please don’t tell me you’re some straight guy pretending to be gay. That’ll never work.” I was shaking my head. “Ever.”

Declan laughed at that, his cheeks getting red. I’d never really seen Declan blush before, but it seemed like this topic was throwing him off. “No, that’s ridiculous. Of course that wouldn’t work.” He smiled, almost bashfully. Something else I’d never seen from the well of confidence that was Declan Rose-Covington. “Yes, I’m bisexual. I’ve clearly had relationships with a woman, and I’m also clearly, and very, attracted to men.” He chewed on his lower lip and put a hand on my knee, which instantly flooded my system with endorphins. I got a fiery flashback to the kiss we’d shared only moments before, and I could feel my dick swelling in response. I broke our gaze and looked down at my hands in my lap, scared that I’d pitch a full tent right there and then. And not just a small backyard tent you get at Walmart for like sixty bucks; I’m talking a tent with a damn living room and open-concept kitchen.

“Do you see yourself being with a man for the rest of your life?” I asked, my curiosity taking hold. I knew all about the Kinsey scale and was well aware people could love and want whoever they wanted so long as it was consensual.

“Hmm,” Declan started, “no one’s asked me that before.”

“I’m not proposing a fake marriage if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Declan laughed at that and cocked his head. “Of course not,” he said. “We’d have to get fake engaged first.”

“Right, duh.” I didn’t want to laugh, but I still did. My smile was also growing wider and wider, and I hadn’t really noticed, but we were standing closer to each other, as if our bodies were slowly inching together without either of us even realizing it.

“Yes,” he answered, the confidence I knew he was filled with back in his tone. “Absolutely. I can see myself living the perfect life with a man by my side. Someone to take on the rest of life with me, start a family with me, and just live the happiest we can be together. And I can absolutely see that happening with a man.”

I was smiling so hard it almost hurt. “That’s good to hear.” But my head also felt like it was exploding. “So wait, have you dated guys before?”

“I have—that’s why my family wasn’t exactly surprised to see us together.”

I nodded. “I don’t have any problem with it,” I said, assuring him. “In case you thought you had to hide it from me. I get some people judge and other people, for whatever dumb reason, can’t wrap their heads around someone being able to love more than one gender. But I’m not one of those people, and honestly, I don’t think I’d ever want to be around one of those people anyway.”

Now Declan was the one beaming wide, his pearly white teeth on full display. “Thank you, Andrew.”

And then I remembered something that made it all come crashing down in a moment’s notice.

This wasn’t real. I had let myself get carried away, and I fell right into relationship mode, wanting to ease Declan’s pain with whatever I could say. I had become his, wanting to support him like a pillar underneath a roof being battered by a storm.

But it was fake. I barely knew him, and this arrangement had a finite limit to it. I could pull out a calendar right now and point out the date our “relationship” was set to end.

With a sudden and surprisingly powerful punch of disappointment to the gut, I looked away from Declan and moved my leg so that there was a defined space between us. I didn’t want to add on to his issues right now, or my own for that matter. I still had a freaking divorce I was dealing with; I couldn’t be dumb and let down my entire guard only so I could find myself making the same mistakes.

Except… I don’t think I could ever classify Declan as a mistake…

I would keep up appearances and put a smile back on my face, but for the moment, I had to look away and let the mask crack for a second. When he wasn’t looking at me. When he couldn’t see how much pain I was still carrying from Barry’s betrayal. It was a pain to which Declan’s kiss had seemed to work as a quick-acting balm, soothing the burn in an instant.

But again. The kiss, like everything else I was feeling toward him, was fake.

“I still can’t believe it,” Declan said next to me. I could tell his thoughts were still swirling around Veronica’s big reveal. “That entire family is a fucking mess. Brooke is a vapid monster, Tyler is a bloodthirsty shark, and Bill… huh, you haven’t met the head of the snake yet, have you?”

“No. That’s your stepdad?”

“Yup,” Declan said. He got up from the couch and crossed the room, going toward the book bag he had been carrying with him since he picked me up. I turned to him, the mask back on. “He was the reason why I went to Stonewall in the first place,” he admitted.

“Really?” This was news to me. I hadn’t really thought much about what had brought Declan to the agency in the first place.

“I’ve had suspicions he’s been stealing from my mother. She’s been complaining about missing things. Big things. Like jewelry-worth-more-than cars big.”

“Whoa,” I said. Declan was pulling a folder out from the black book bag.

“She has them in secured lockboxes with passwords needed to get in, and so she keeps thinking it can’t be anyone stealing from her, she must be misplacing them. She keeps blaming it on her brain fog, but I don’t believe it. I think Bill figured out the code and he’s been slowly siphoning valuables off of her and selling them, and I think my mom’s too taken by love to see it.”

My mouth gaped. “Holy crap. That’s… terrible. Absolutely terrible.”

“And if it’s one person you don’t fuck with, it’s my mom.” I could see the fiery aggression flaring up inside Declan. “So I hired Mark to tail Bill and keep an eye on him. My mom employs most of them in the hotels. Well, all of them except Brooke I guess. Bill works as a manager in the tech department, but most of the time he’s doing it from home, so it was a little difficult. But after a week, Mark got these pictures.”

Declan handed the folder to me. I opened and saw a glossy eight-by-ten photo. It was taken at night, with only a street lamp illuminating the scene, so it was a little difficult to make out at first. But then the details started to appear. I was looking at a man, and he was wearing a black ski mask. He had something in his hand, a heavy looking duffle bag, and he was going toward a sedan with blacked-out windows.

“What the…”

“That’s Bill under that mask. And I’m assuming those are my mom’s valuables in that bag. It was taken last week.”

“Holy shit. I mean… maybe he’s going for a midnight session at the gym?”

“Pfft, that man is allergic to the gym.”

The evidence was strong, but I’d been working at Stonewall long enough to know that sometimes things weren’t as obvious as they first seemed to be. My inner detective was kicking in, and questions started to breed in my brain like a bunch of bunnies on Viagra. “Does he his job ever require him going out at night?”

“No, it’s a cush nine-to-five unless something big is happening with the computer systems, which is rare. When my mom met him, he was between jobs; I’m not even sure what he was doing before he was handed his position.”

“You haven’t talked to him about this yet, right?”

“No. I’m torn about when I should bring it up. This retreat means the world to my mom, and I don’t want to mess things up. I keep second-guessing myself. Yes, the photos are pretty damning, but what if there is an excuse for them? Then I’d be blowing up my mom’s life for nothing.”

“Yeah, I get that.” I handed the photos back to Declan, who snapped the folder shut and zipped it back in the book bag. “Should you ask your mom first?”

Declan shook his head. “I want to go directly to Bill. I don’t want to give him a chance to come up with some excuse. I think catching him off guard with photographic proof is best.”

“I agree. Plus, your mom is in love with him; she may not see what’s right in front of her. Showing her the photos first could definitely backfire.”

“Now I just have to figure out when to confront him. It kills me that this potential thief is with my mom, but damn it, I don’t know what to do.”

I reached for Declan’s hand, another move that blurred the line between fact and fiction. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ve got your back.” I quickly added, “As a fake boyfriend, of course.”

“Of course,” Declan said and looked away, taking his hand back. Before he turned, I could have sworn I saw a flash of disappointment cross his face.

“I’ll do some light digging, too.” My inner detective was growing louder and louder. Declan turned, his expression slightly worried. “Don’t worry,” I amended. “I won’t do anything crazy. I’ll just keep my eyes wide open and ask a few pointed questions here and there. Zane told me once that he lets the guilty talk their way into their cell for most of his cases. A guilty conscience is the loudest.”

He nodded, the wrinkles of worry between his brown gone. “All right, let’s try and shake this shit off for now. I don’t want to totally ruin your holidays.”

“Oh you’re not ruining anything, Deck. You’ve actually turned Christmas around for me.”

He smiled then, and for a loaded moment, I thought we would kiss again. I was ready for it, my body aching for the connection, no matter how brief it was destined to be.

But there was no kiss. He turned and went for his coat hanging on the coat rack. “Let’s get out of here for a bit. We can explore the town. It’s a really cute Christmassy place.”

“Let’s do it.” I followed his lead and grabbed my coat. It was cold enough outside to fog up our breath but not cold enough to keep us locked inside.

“Oh, and I’m gonna need to take you up on that shopping offer,” I said, motioning up and down as we stepped out. “All I’ve got with me is, literally, the shirt hanging off my back.”

“Right, right.” Declan tapped his palm to his forehead. “There’s a great outdoor mall right around here. We can explore for a bit and then spend the rest of the afternoon there. My mom’s got a dinner planned for tonight, which is bound to be interesting.” He was standing underneath a ribbon of sunlight that was cutting through a tall tree and spotlighting his face as if he were some magical angel sent to make everything okay.

“Perfect,” I said, and for what felt like the thirty-seventh time that day, I caught myself falling harder than an ornament dropping from the highest branch of a Christmas tree.