“I can’t believe she’s making me do this,” I muttered as I waited downstairs, pacing. Kelly was laughing at me, which made it even more annoying. Never in a million years would I have imagined being roped into going to an improv class. I was still trying to figure out how I’d let Robyn talk me into it. According to her, she didn’t want our date night to be the same, going to a fancy restaurant to eat food she couldn’t even pronounce. So, I’d given her the opportunity to come up with a better idea, and she’d decided on improv and booked the class without telling me. She knew me too well and that I would object. I had objected, but when she pouted and said, ‘Okay, if you don’t want to, I’ll cancel it,’ I’d given in. She had forced me to stick to this decision, too, by distracting me with that siren body of hers.

“Can it!” I growled at Kelly, who was bouncing with energy. While we were out, Josh was supposed to pick her up. She was taking her date to a cooking class. These Richards women sure knew how to make a guy nervous about a date.

“I’m trying to picture you in an improv class and I just can’t do it,” she cackled and wiped her eyes. “Oh well, you may get the part of playing the boss. You have that down pat.”

“Don’t you have a date to get ready for?” I grumbled, glaring at her. She had become too much like an annoying little sister.

“I have plenty of time before Josh gets here,” she quipped, grinning. “Why didn’t you just tell her you don’t want to go?”

“Because your sister knows how to manipulate the heck out of me,” I growled. “She caught me in a vulnerable moment.”

“Aha,” she stated flatly. “Next time, use your head. And I mean the one above and not below.”

I blushed at her frank statement. Sometimes her outspokenness was a little bit too candid and uncomfortable. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I muttered.

“At least you’ll work off the tensions of the week,” Kelly remarked. “I know she’s probably having a tough time at work with Greg breathing down her neck.”

I frowned at her. “Who? Did you say Greg?”

Her face paled and she stepped back. “Um, uh, I’m not sure if that’s the right name. I may have mixed it up or something.”

She beat a hasty retreat, which left me in confusion. She must have mixed up the names. She couldn’t be talking about my Greg. Robyn didn’t know Greg. At least she never let on that she knew him and he couldn’t be her boss. She would have said something. Besides, she worked in the building next door, not at Halliday Inc.

A feeling of unease claimed me. I instantly remembered sending her the bouquet of flowers and being told no one worked in the building by that name. Had I somehow confused where she said she worked and it was actually with Greg’s company? No, that couldn’t be. That was too much of a coincidence for me to be dating someone who works for my best friend.

Kelly must be mistaken, as she said, but I couldn’t get the doubt from my mind.

Robyn descended the stairs, and I was bowled over by just how stunning she looked. With her hair swept to the side over one shoulder, she was wearing a boatneck top with a long skirt that teased her legs and a pair of boots with stiletto heels. She wore a bright red lipstick and had created dramatic smoky eyes.

My heart squeezed as I watched her saunter down the stairs, and the old doubt resurfaced. How could she love someone like me when she was such perfection? She could have anyone she wanted. Why would she choose me? By the time she reached the landing, my confusion was worse rather than gone. My mind was still muddled by what Kelly had said. Was it an error or had she let something slip she shouldn’t have?

“You’re frowning,” Robyn announced as she approached me. “You don’t like what I’m wearing?”

“You look fine,” I answered distractedly. “Ready to go?”

“Yes. Are you sure something isn’t wrong?”

“Positive. Let’s get this night over with.”

“Well, you needn’t say it like it’s the worst thing ever,” she chastised me as she called out to Kelly that we were leaving.

“Okay, you guys have a great night,” Kelly responded, appearing from the living room. I tried to make eye contact with her to see what might be revealed in her eyes, but she looked everywhere but at me. Like she was guilty of something. Good God, what if what she had said was true? It could only mean that me meeting Robyn hadn’t been providence as I had thought. It had been orchestrated by her and Greg.

I turned on the music in the car as we drove to the hall where the improv session was being held to fill the void of the conversation I didn’t wish to have. I thought of the way Greg had insisted I join the dating website and that he had been the one to initiate the conversation with Robyn for me. If she really worked with Greg, none of this could be just a coincidence. I refused to believe that.

When we arrived at our destination, Robyn looked at me funny as though she was trying to figure out what was going through my mind. I tried not to look at her, and give away the confusion broiling in me. Two months in a relationship with her, getting to know her, and forming a bond with her, only to be thinking of the possibility that it was fake?

Greg was capable of such subterfuge. I knew it. He might have had good intentions because my spirits had been so discouraged and I had all but given up on love, but this was manipulation on both their parts. I’d fallen in love with her. Goddammit, I was thinking about marrying her and having a family.

Was she capable of doing something like this? I thought about Nicole and how I had believed she loved me. Her feelings had been quite the opposite. She had been disgusted by me. Then I remembered the way Robyn never batted an eye about my scars. She didn’t hesitate to kiss them, run her hands over them, like they were nothing but old wounds. That wasn’t fake. That couldn’t be fake. She had to love me the way I loved her. She just had to.

Any other feelings towards me would just be depressing. I wouldn’t be able to trust another woman ever again.

We both received stares when we joined the improv class. We should have been there thirty minutes early, but we arrived fifteen minutes prior. The class was being held in an actual bar, which hosted karaoke. On Friday nights, they offered improv classes. Seeing the looks different men who were a part of the group aimed at Robyn, with lust in their eyes, drove me straight to the bar for a drink.

They laughed and claimed they did the same thing for the courage to take this on, and I smiled weakly without comment. The misgivings about doing improv was nothing compared to the internal turmoil I was going through as I thought of this woman I had given my heart to betraying me and everything our love stood for.

Had Greg lured her into dating me because of my wealth? But she balked at anything expensive that I wanted to get her. This date night, for example, had cost her only a few bucks, and she had claimed she didn’t need an expensive dinner, because what mattered was spending the time with me.

Our instructor called the class together, so I drained my drink before leaving the bar. Robyn had been chatting with a few people while I had been at the bar after I assured her that I was okay being alone.

She was just as much a novice as I was, but she had been in the drama club in high school so didn’t seem as shy to interact with those around her. I was uncomfortable, though it had nothing to do with me being shy around people. I was uncomfortable being so out in the open, when my emotions were in a vulnerable state.

“Okay, everybody, take a deep breath,” announced the instructor, Peter, a tall, lanky, handsome man in his late twenties. “We know we all can’t be funny, and that’s great because the world can only take so many clowns. Can anyone tell me what the purpose of an improv class is?”

“To make fools out of ourselves,” someone shouted.

“That you certainly shall do,” Peter returned with a grin. “Anyone else? How about you right there, pretty lady? If da Vinci had known you, he would have used you as his Mona Lisa.”

I stiffened at his compliment to Robyn, but she chuckled and stood to answer like a prim school girl. “I don’t rightly know, per se,” she responded, “but I thought it’d be a fun way for my boyfriend and I to get out of our everyday personas and act silly for a change. You know, we work and people expect us to be serious all the time, and I just wanted a night to be a little goofy, if that’s the correct term.”

“Beautiful and smart,” Peter stated with a smile, then winked at me as though we were sharing a secret. “You, sir, are one lucky man.”

Except I wasn’t feeling lucky at the moment. I was feeling like Robyn had been deliberately placed in my life by subterfuge.

“Tonight there are a few things you should know before we get started,” Peter continued. “It’s okay to be dumb, it’s okay to be silly and stupid. We’re all going to contribute, so nobody’s here to judge.” He let that sink in for a few seconds before he continued. “We will play games, we will do exercises, and we will see who volunteers to do actual scenes. Once you’re here, you must participate. The bar is there if you need some courage.” He paused as someone snickered. “You will be asked to be the silliest you can be even though you don’t have to be funny. But don’t worry, I guarantee you you’ll have fun. Eight out of ten times you may get it wrong, and you will mess up so badly you might want to locate the nearest bathroom before we start, but again, you will have fun and that’s what counts tonight. So let’s go.”

We started off with some easy exercises, and I relaxed a little, pushing thoughts of Robyn from my mind so I could contribute since I was already here and didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. We played the finger game as an introduction, a little like ‘Have You Ever.’ With all our fingers in the air, we had to remove a finger each time someone said something we had done. I wasn’t sure I was pleased when the winning spot was between Robyn and me. Thank God, she won.

Several other games followed, and as Peter had said, we messed up so many times, but the mess up was fun and had us all laughing. I was glad I wasn’t the worst, although I wasn’t among the best. Robyn was, and I could see why she wanted to attend. She was a natural and put on such an act that I had a bad taste in my mouth. She was such a good actress that, as the night wore on, I questioned whether she was acting as though she was in love with me.

I snapped during the improv class. I didn’t mean to, but the opportunity was given to me when I was selected to improv with her as a group effort with another couple. Peter figured he couldn’t use all the better acts because then we wouldn’t mess up and we’d lose some of the fun that came from those mishaps.

We were given a scenario about mixing up girlfriends and finding out we had the wrong one. We weren’t expected to be perfect but to basically say the first thing that came to mind when we were fed a line from our partner.

In the act, Robyn or maybe I should say ‘Ella’ was trying to explain to me she hadn’t deliberately gone off with the wrong boyfriend. I tripped up my lines so badly that I had become the class clown, but given the opportunity, I blurted out the question I’d wanted to ask her all night.

“Would you lie to me?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, and I could tell she was thrown by the sudden seriousness of my tone.

“It’s a simple question, really,” I answered, not caring that the other couples and singles were watching us. “I just asked you if you’d ever lie to me.”

She shrugged, peering into my eyes as though wondering where this was coming from. “Well, sometimes a lie is not always black and white. Sometimes we lie because we must.”

“So you agree that you’d lie to me?” I pressed, wanting her to confirm or deny it.

“I… Seth, are you okay?” she whispered softly.

“Just answer the damn question,” I grounded out, hating that she was stalling.

“If I had no choice, yes,” she responded and couldn’t meet my eyes.

“Cut!” Peter announced, walking onto the stage. “That was some good acting, guys. Had me believing you for a minute, but it’s the other group’s turn.” He turned to the group where a few people were looking a bit droopy. “Don’t get bored! We’re almost at the point of wrapping things up.”

I walked off the stage, letting Robyn follow me. I was wondering if I was at the point of wrapping things up with her. The woman I loved had admitted she would lie to me. And I was beginning to think that she had indeed lied.