The deep rumble of bowling pins and the hollow clatter of pins tumbling down fills the crowded bowling alley. I sit at the counter, watching a disinterested Donna lob bowling shoes at families in between bits of conversation with me.

“You know,” says Donna. “If I knew my literature degree was going to end up getting me a job as the shoe bitch at a bowling alley, I would’ve really put in some more effort in college.”

“You’re living the dream,” I agree.

“Hey,” complains a college guy wearing a backwards visor. “I asked for a men’s size eight. These are women’s shoes.”

“Yeah?” asks Donna, rolling her eyes at me without looking at the guy. “Well, honey, they don’t make shoes for ‘men’ in a size eight.”

“You fucking--”

“It’s dark in here,” I say. “No one is going to notice those shoes have pink in them.”

“You could just leave,” suggests Donna.

“Where’s your manager?” asks the guy. “I want to talk to your fucking manager.”

“Frank! Some guy wants to talk to you,” shouts Donna over her shoulder.

A man with hair down to his shoulders and a confused expression on his face stumbles out of the back room. He squints at the guy with the visor. “What?” he asks.

“Your employee is being rude and disrespectful. I’m not going to be happy unless you fire her ass.”

“Well, man,” says Frank in a thick California accent. “Is anybody really ever happy? I mean, think about it. We just chase after--”

“Fire her!” interrupts the guy. His voice is getting higher pitched now.

“You think firing her will bring you happiness? It won’t, man. You need to find you. Keep focusing on what’s outside and you’ll never find what makes you happy. Hell, it took me years to discover weed. I haven’t ever been happier.”

“Let me get this straight,” says the college guy, who looks like he’s on the verge of losing it. “Your employee is a total bitch to me and you’re telling me to go get some weed? You’re not going to discipline her or anything?”

“Nah, man. I’m telling you I can sell you some weed. Want any?”

The guy throws his hands in the air and storms away, leaving the shoes on the counter. He grabs the girl he’s with and drags her outside, speaking angrily to her the whole time.

“Damn,” says Frank. “That guy really needs to get high.”

“Thanks, Frank,” says Donna.

Frank nods. His California accent dissolves completely. “Sure. No problem. He seemed like a dick. You good out here?”

“Yep,” says Donna.

Frank goes into the back room again, leaving me with Donna, who grins.

“Frank is awesome,” she says.

I laugh. “Seriously.”

“So are you going to make me beg for details or what? You told me you are fake marrying this guy and then you say you have to get off the phone. I mean come on, I’ve been dying since you called last night. Give me something!”

I chew my lip, looking down at the countertop for a second. “It’s weird,” I say. “I wasn’t even supposed to tell you, so please don’t say anything. But I agreed to this a week ago. It’s just business. I need to keep my job, and he needs to look like he’s going to have a wife to help take care of his daughter. It’s good for both of us, and it’s as simple as that.”

“So, how’s the fake sex?” asks Donna, waggling her eyebrows.

“It’s not like that,” I insist. “I mean, we might have kissed at one point, but that was a while ago now. It was a mistake and it’s not like that anymore.”

“A while ago?” asks Donna. “You mean in the long, ancient history between the two of you? It must have been so long ago you can barely remember now.”

I give her my best evil eye. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I really don’t. You agreed to play fiancée with this guy, you kissed him, you live in his house. How have you not gotten your hands on that billion dollar dick yet?”

“Donna!” I say, trying not to look at the family of four standing close enough to hear every word she said.

“We are both treating this professionally is how. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand.”

“Hmm,” says Donna, making a show of thinking hard as she strokes her chin. “Usually professionals don’t kiss each other. And I’d like to meet a woman with a pulse who wouldn’t be devoting every cell in her brain to finding a way to get that fine specimen of a man’s pants off.”

“Well, I guess you’re wrong, because I’m only thinking of that with half of my brain cells. Thank you very much.”

Donna blurts out a laugh. “At least you’re being half-honest, then.”

“I’m serious. I love his little girl and his mom. If I let this thing get too complicated and it gets rocky between us, I’d lose them. So maybe if you can think of a way for me to not feel like the scum of the Earth for wanting a relationship with him anyway, maybe then I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, here’s one idea for starters. If you like him and he likes you, maybe it doesn’t end in disaster. Maybe your fake marriage becomes a real marriage and you get to be Mrs. King and his mom becomes your mother-in-law and his daughter becomes your step-daughter. Oh, and you get to sleep in the same bed as Liam King.”

“Um,” says the father of the family that has been standing beside us, probably trying not to listen in on our weird conversation. “We just want some shoes.”

Donna gives me a suffering look before lethargically moving toward the family. “Sizes?”

I head to the bathroom while she handles them, cringing as I step inside the poorly maintained restroom at the bowling alley. I’m guessing keeping the place clean is one of Donna’s duties, because it looks like it hasn’t been done in months. Well, someone invented the hover-pee for restrooms like this. If I play my cards right, no part of my body will touch anything in here. I pull the stall open with the top of my shoe and slip in hands free, using a square of toilet paper to pull the lock shut. I don’t even make the mistake of looking at what’s in the toilet before I unbuckle my belt and--

I freeze. I hear heavy footsteps and ragged breaths. It could be anyone, but something about it makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I slowly fix my belt, waiting just inside the stall, trying not to breathe too loud, even though whoever is out there would be able to see my feet if they crouched.

“Aubrey?” asks a masculine voice. A voice I recognize. Jake’s voice.

Shit. My heart pounds out of my chest. I’m trapped. If I push my way out of the stall, he’ll be between me and the exit. The booming music outside and the reputation this bathroom has are probably good enough guarantees that no one will hear me or come in before Jake has a chance to do whatever he’s planning. I back up as much as I can without brushing against the disgusting toilet. The only tool at my disposal is an old, moldy plunger in the corner. I grab it, holding it like a sword in front of me.

“Come out, Aub. I just want to talk.”

“Get out of here!” I yell.

“Lower. Your. Fucking. Voice,” he says menacingly. I see his feet just outside the stall I’m in now. The door jerks, but the lock holds. He tries again with increasing violence. The door bangs and jolts on its hinges, but the lock still holds. “Open the fucking door,” he says.

“I have a knife!” I cry.

“Good. I’ll use it to cut off your fucking clothes when I get in there. Now let me in.” He shakes the door again, slamming his fist against it. “Let me in!” he shouts over the commotion.

“Go away!” I yell.

He lays down on his back and starts to pull himself under the wide gap beneath the door to my stall. His head and shoulders are instantly inside the small space and he reaches up for me.

In a moment of confused panic, I jam the plunger down on his face. To my surprise, it sticks. He reaches up to try to pull it free, but I plunge his face a few times, making a disgusting, muffled warbling noise. I reach over him as he scrambles to pull the plunger free and unlock the stall. I stomp on his chest in my hurry to escape, but his hand snatches out and grabs me by the ankle.

I lose my balance and come crashing down into the floor. My chin collides with the tile and explodes in pain and my teeth clamp down on my tongue. Blood instantly fills my mouth, but I manage to scramble from Jake’s grip and rush to the exit of the bathroom, feeling more glad than I’ve ever been to be surrounded by the fluorescent lights of the bowling alley.

I stumble to the front desk, already feeling a dull ache in my ankle and knee transitioning to a stabbing pain to accompany what feels like the sucker punch I took to the face.

Donna sees me and her eyes go wide. “Aub, I told you that hover pissing thing was going to make you bust your ass one of--”

“Help!” I yell, glancing over my shoulder toward the exit of the bathroom.

Jake is already rushing out, looking pissed as hell as he heads for the emergency exit at the back of the alley.

“Somebody stop him!” I shout, falling to my knees and wincing in pain from the impact.

Donna gets on the PA and yells into the mic, “Somebody stop the asshole in the black jacket headed for the emergency exit.”

A scrawny looking guy in flip flops and socks puts himself between Jake and the door, but gets decked for his trouble. And just like that, the emergency door opens and Jake is gone.

Something delicious reaches my nostrils. It smells like hot chocolate, and I breathe it in deeply, opening my sleepy eyes and squinting against the morning light. I’m in my bed at Liam’s house, and--

I sit up straight, shrieking when I realize I’m only wearing a t-shirt with no bra and panties. I slip back under the blankets and cover myself, frowning up at him. “What are you doing?” I ask, taking in the scene piece by piece. The grave look on his face. The steaming cup in his hand. How undeniably gorgeous he looks in the dark suit with his hair pushed away from his face.

“I was waiting for you to wake up so you could tell me who the fuck did this to you?”

I shake my head, grimacing when the movement makes my chin feel like it’s about to explode. I tenderly raise a hand to touch it, but Liam’s arm shoots out to stop me. “Don’t mess with it, sweetheart,” he says softly.

Sweetheart. He’s called me the pet name before, but something about the way he says it now makes me feel hot all over, like I could just melt into these sheets and dissolve into a puddle of happy thoughts. I also have to admit it’s really nice to have someone looking out for me. Donna has always looked out for me as much as she could, but there’s something about knowing that a man as capable and strong as Liam wants to protect me that makes it all the more comforting.

“It was Jake,” I say. “He snuck into the women’s restroom at the bowling alley. I’m not even sure what he wanted. I, um, plunged his face though,” I add, smirking.

“Plunged his face?”

“Yeah,” I say, mimicking the motion of jabbing the plunger over his face and pressing it up and down a few times. “All things considered, it was actually pretty funny.”

Liam doesn’t even crack the faintest of smiles. “I don’t think you should be going around by yourself anymore. I can’t risk anything happening to you.”

“Why? Because then our little pretend marriage would be ruined?”

He looks genuinely stung by my comment. “No,” he says deliberately. “Because I can’t be a father to Sophie if I’m in jail for murdering that fucker with my bare hands.”

I smile a little. “Careful there, Mr. King. You’re going to start making me think you have a crush on me if you keep talking like that.”

“I’m not playing around, Aubrey. I need to know that you’re being careful. I need to know you’re safe”

The intensity in his eyes wipes all thoughts of smiling and playfulness from my mind. There’s real emotion in his face, a real, unshakable desire to keep me safe. I want to let him take me under his protective wing so badly it hurts, but I also know there would be no escaping it. Once I surrender to his strength and power, I’m through. I won’t have the will to break away from him, and I’ll be caught in the tangle of lust that surrounds him as surely as a fly in a spider’s web. Well, except the spider is a sexy hunk and the fly is a virgin and the web is his bed.

When I put it that way, it really doesn’t sound that bad. I’ve been so caught up trying to protect what I have with Sophie and Roxanne that I’ve pushed him away, and I’m not sure what I would regret more now--losing them or losing him. But I’m starting to think my biggest regret would be not giving it a chance, not finding out if there was a way to have it all. Maybe that’s greedy of me, but I don’t think I can help it.

Liam reaches to dab at my chin with some white lotion.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Hell if I know. I just called my doctor and told him about your injuries. This is what he gave me to put on the cut.”

“Why didn’t the doctor put it on me himself?” I ask.

“Stop talking, you’re moving too much,” he says, glaring at me.

I clamp my mouth shut, forced to watch as Liam leans in, eyes focused on his work. It feels good to be touched by him, even if the injury is still so tender that every slight bit of pressure makes my skin tingle uncomfortably.

“I told the doctor I could handle it,” he says after a few moments.

“You wanted to be my doctor,” I tease.

He grins. “Yes. Speaking of that, you really should let me take a look at your ass. If you fell, there could be bruising.”

“Oh, is that so? And tell me, doctor. If there was a bruise on my ass, what good would knowing about it do you?”

He clears his throat. “Well, it would give me a clear view of my patient’s ass. That’s what it would do.”

I laugh. “At least you’re honest.”

The door bangs open and Roxanne rolls in, followed closely by Sophie. Roxanne frowns down at me and then glares at Liam. “You call yourself her fiancé? But you let this happen to her?”

Liam says nothing, but I see his fists clenching and his jaw flexing.

Sophie crosses her arms, standing at the back of the room. I catch a brief flicker of concern on her face but when she sees me looking, she presses her lips together and rolls her eyes. Still mad at me, apparently. I can’t really blame her. How could she have anything resembling a high opinion of me when I supposedly agreed to marry her father after only knowing him a little over a week? But Liam says we can’t let them know. According to him, Roxanne can’t be trusted with secrets, and Sophie would be even more upset if she knew we were just pretending.

“Listen sweetie,” says Roxanne. “You tell me who did this, and I’ll run the little shit down with my chair.”

I laugh. “It’s okay, Roxanne. Liam couldn’t have done anything. He wasn’t even there.”

“Well there’s the problem,” says Roxanne. “He needs to be at your side. You hear me son?” she asks Liam. You need to be at your woman’s side at all times. I noticed you two aren’t even sleeping in the same room. That needs to end. I don’t know what kind of whacky games you’re playing, but a man should sleep in the same bed as his bride-to-be. That’s final.”

“Well,” says Liam, making a poor attempt at looking defeated. “Can’t argue with that, can we?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes at him. “I guess we can’t.”