“So much for the perfect weather tonight!”

I frantically rubbed my hands over the goosebumps on my forearms, my teeth chattering as I climbed into the passenger side of Nate’s car. After the heavens opened above us five minutes ago, we’d made a mad dash back to the parking lot, but we were already soaked through to our skin before we even made it halfway back.

I hadn’t been expecting the sudden change in weather at all, seeing as how October in San Diego was usually quite warm and dry most days, so all I had on was jeans and a thin knit sweatshirt that ended at my elbows. A heavy wind was gusting outside too, and I was absolutely freezing as a result of that blowing over my wet clothes.

“No shit. It’s weird,” Nate said, reaching into the back seat. “Here. Put this on.”

He handed me a big navy blue jacket, and I smiled gratefully. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He leaned down and tapped at his cell phone for a moment. “Freak tropical storm coming in off the ocean. Jesus.”

“No wonder it picked up so fast,” I said, peering outside as the rain hammered on the windows. “God, I can barely even see.”

Nate drove several miles under the speed limit, carefully steering the car through traffic and slippery roads as we headed back up to his place in Del Mar Heights. I anxiously watched the wipers on the windscreen, wondering how he was managing it. Between the bucketing rain and dark sky, there was barely any visibility.

As we drove, Nate’s cell phone began to ring. It was sitting between us in the center console, but he was too focused on driving carefully to even look at it. I glanced down at the name on the caller ID. Robert.

“Um… Robert is your brother, right?” I asked tentatively.

Nate nodded. “Yeah. Just ignore it.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I’ve got no idea why he’s calling, and frankly I don’t care. We’ve got nothing to say to each other.”

I nodded and waited for the phone to stop vibrating. Then I looked curiously over at Nate. “What happened with him?” I asked. “I know he stole your money, but… how?”

I immediately wanted to tape my mouth shut forever. It wasn’t my business to be asking such personal questions, even in the name of getting to know Nate as part of our fake-dating scheme.

But he didn’t seem to care. He explained it all to me, and I nodded along as he told the story.

“So where is Robert now?” I asked when he’d finished. “Not still working for your brokerage, is he? Seeing as nothing has been proven.”

Nate snorted. “Hell no. He quit three weeks after all the shit went down. I’ve barely spoken to him since, and he’s been trying to start his own brokerage in direct competition with mine. Says it all, really.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Wow, yeah. That’s a bit douchey. But are you sure it was definitely him who stole the money? I mean, how dumb would someone have to be to use their own credentials to get into the office like that, if they intended on stealing stuff from you?”

“I used to think the same. But then I figured he was playing a sort of reverse psychology scheme. No one would suspect a smart guy like him of doing something so stupid, so they lay the blame elsewhere. It’s worked, hasn’t it?”

I nodded slowly. “Hm. I guess that makes sense in a weird way.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know what to think. The story was so convoluted that it was hard to know what to believe. Could Nate’s brother really be that diabolical? Had he ever showed signs of it in the past? I didn’t dare ask, lest I cross another line into ‘none of your business’ territory.

Nate glanced at me while we waited at a stop sign. “Ever heard of Occam’s razor?”

“Yes. Where the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

“Yup, that’s it. It applies perfectly here. None of the complicated theories that the cops looked into panned out. So the simplest theory—that his credentials were used, and therefore he did it—makes sense to me. I just wish I could prove it.”

“But you can’t, can you?”

He shook his head. “Nope. The case is dead. The money has vanished. A friend of mine gave me the number of a private investigator who specializes in this sort of shit, so I spoke to him about it yesterday, but who knows if he’ll find anything.”

His voice trailed off into a defeated sigh. I reached over and hesitantly patted his arm. “I’m really sorry. It sucks so much that this happened, but I hope the PI can help. Whoever did it, they deserve to be caught.”

“It was my brother,” he said in a hard voice. “Trust me.”

We lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive as the rain continued. It was getting heavier by the minute.

“Any idea when this storm will pass?” I asked as we finally pulled into his wide driveway. My car was still sitting there, exposed to the elements. Thunder echoed in the distance, and the rain came down in slick sheets, hitting the ground so hard it bounced off in every which way.

Nate shrugged. “The weather app said it wasn’t going to last longer than a day. But who knows?”

“A whole day?” My eyebrows shot up. “How am I going to drive home in this? It got five times worse just on the drive back here. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like in half an hour.”

Nate gave me a hard look. “You’re staying with me for the night. I’m not letting you drive home in this weather.”

I cocked my head to the side. “You’re not letting me?”

He shook his head. “Nope.” His tone lightened. “As your fake boyfriend, I demand you stay here. Or else I’ll dump you.”

I knew he was kidding from the sudden twinkle in his eye, but I couldn’t bring myself to laugh. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for me to spend the night with him.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a generous offer, but I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. After spending the last nine or so hours with him, I’d come to realize my attraction toward him wasn’t showing any signs of letting up, and I didn’t want to put myself in a situation where I might do something I’d later come to regret.

Basically, I was this close to trying to jump his bones, but I knew what a bad idea that would be. For one, a guy like Nate would most likely reject me. He could get anyone he wanted (and regularly did, if the gossip columns were to be believed) and he hadn’t shown any obvious signs of attraction to me today. Not like the heated look he shot me the other day in the studio hallway. Maybe I imagined that.

I even clumsily asked him earlier why he said yes to playing along with my plan, and he joked about it and ruffled my hair like I was a kid. That was not the response of a man who wanted to sleep with a woman, was it?

Secondly, we were heading off on this vacation together in a week and a half. We needed to keep our heads in the game, and if one of us tried to hook up with the other only to be rejected, it would create a truly awkward dynamic that my mom and sister would almost certainly pick up on. Then my faux boyfriend plan could get blown right out of the water.

I looked down at my lap and picked at a fingernail. “I…um….” I faltered, trying to find the right words to say no.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” Nate said firmly. “The roads could get pretty dangerous. I’ll give you one of the spare rooms, okay? No funny business.”

I took a deep breath and raised my head, flashing him a smile. I was being an idiot. It was just a friendly gesture and a spare room. I could handle that. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

“We can use this to our advantage as well,” Nate said. “You can borrow a shirt of mine to wear as pajamas, and I can take a photo of you lying there wearing it in bed. A bed that clearly isn’t your own....”

I snickered. “That’ll be a good one to show to my mom. It might be enough to get her off my back for the whole trip.”

He winked and leaned in. “Exactly.”

He was close enough for me to notice that his hair smelled like oranges and sweet spice. I tried to tear my eyes away, but I couldn’t help looking at his lips while I waited for him to draw back. He didn’t. Instead, he leaned even closer, and it felt like the breath was being ripped right out of my lungs.

“Here,” he said, leaning even farther over. He unclicked my seatbelt. “It can get a bit fiddly sometimes, especially in the dark.”

My lungs refilled but my mood deflated. Was I really so desperate that any small, innocent move was automatically misinterpreted as something more than it was? Nate had even warned me earlier about the annoying seatbelt clip, but I was so attracted to him that my first thought just then was: Oh my god, he’s going to kiss me!

I tried to remind myself that Nate was nothing more than a pretend boyfriend. A paid wedding escort. But no matter what I did, his face, his voice, and his scent were on my mind like white on rice in an Arctic snowstorm.

It was my own fault. I put myself in this situation, and I was really starting to wish I never came up with this stupid pretend boyfriend scheme in the first place.

Worse, I was starting to wish it wasn’t all pretend…