Chapter Six
Taylor adjusted the backpack on his shoulder and gave Caitlin’s tense fingers a squeeze as they climbed the steps to the main cabin where his family waited. He was surprised she was this nervous, considering how feisty she’d been at his apartment. Maybe she was irritated he’d crashed out on the train ride. He didn’t blame her, really. It was kind of a dick move. He’d gotten into the habit of sleeping whenever he could, and his body did it automatically now. Moving vehicle. Boom. Out like a light. It was a useful habit considering he had to be fresh and ready for his next flight. There were rules about the number of consecutive hours he could fly and the amount of time between them, but it was still taxing to not have a regular schedule. It had been a bitch of a week, too. He was really looking forward to his move to Boston where he would only have to be at the beck and call of one of the Anderson brothers, rather than three.
Mom and Dad were all grins as they got closer. This was the first time he’d introduced a date to his family since returning from duty. Damn. His shoulders tensed. He hadn’t really thought of that before. No wonder everyone was freaking out over his single status. It’s not that he didn’t date anymore. He just didn’t have time for relationships, and introducing a woman to the family sent the wrong message to both his family and the woman.
Well, that thought kind of made him feel like an asshole. Then his grandmother came out of the cabin, and the radiant look on her face reaffirmed his initial instinct; this was a good plan. She’d had so much grief in the last years that joy, even if brought about by a brief fake engagement, was worth the ruse.
Caitlin’s fingers tightened again.
At least, he hoped it was worth it. “Hey, everyone. This is Caitlin Ramos. I’m sure Grams spilled the beans about our surprise.” His grandmother’s eyes opened wide in mock offense. “So, I’ll skip right over it and simply say…” He scanned their expectant faces. “We’ll tell you all about it as soon as we get settled in. Which cabin is ours, Grams?”
“Awww’s” and “Booo’s” and even a snowball were fired his way—he was sure the snowball was courtesy of Uncle Rock, his grandmother’s brother.
“Follow me!” Grams said, striking out toward the cabin farthest from the main house. When the rest of the family started to tag along, she spun and held up her hand like a traffic cop. “The lovebirds might be stealing my show, but it’s still my show. All of you go back inside, heat up the pie, and finish that round of Cards Against Humanity. Bethy, you take over my hand, but don’t play the two naughty cards. Leave those for when I get back.”
Beau lumbered off the porch and bounded through the snow to meet up with Grams on the cleared path.
“Okay, Beauregard, you can come along because you’re not nosey like the rest of these people.” She shot a “get lost” look at his family, and they reluctantly trudged back into the house.
Caitlin’s fingers finally relaxed as they followed Grams along the path. Even wearing thick gloves, her hand felt tiny in his. He hated that she seemed so uptight. At least he’d bought them some time to work out the kinks before she faced his family… Well, that thought hadn’t helped at all. There were lots of things he’d like to work out, including kinks, but Caitlin didn’t seem like a one-date kind of woman—not even a three-day-date-in-a-cozy-cabin kind of woman. He glanced over at her determined face that was even prettier in the moonlight, hoping to hell he was wrong and her approach to dating was like his: no strings, no promises, no regrets…
She pulled her hand from his as they neared the cabin and rubbed it on her thigh. Nope. She wasn’t like him at all. No way in Hell.
…
There was zero possibility Caitlin could stay in this tiny cabin with Hot Guy. She couldn’t even hold his freaking hand without becoming a human firework ready to launch and light up the place.
Thank goodness he’d brokered some time for them to talk strategy, because this was not going to work unless they set some strict limits. She rubbed the warm, tingly hand he’d been holding on her thigh, which only made the firework effect worse. Terrible, terrible, terrible plan, she chanted in her head as she climbed the four steps to the tiny porch of the proportionately tiny cabin—the romantic, post-card perfect cabin, draped in a blanket of snow like a freaking Hallmark movie set. Yes. Limits. Lots of them.
“My husband, Emery, and I used to rent here every year, Caitlin, honey,” Grams explained as she opened the door. “We stayed in this very cabin on our honeymoon.”
Perfect. Maybe if she pictured Taylor’s grandparents in this cabin, it would snuff out her lit fuse.
She stepped inside after Beau, and Taylor followed, closing the door behind them. The inside of the cabin was as charming and romantic as the outside. A fire blazed in the stone hearth. The warm wood paneling glowed in the flickering light from the fireplace and thick, braided rugs decorated the floor. There was a patchwork quilt on the bed—a bed that seemed too small for two people, especially if one of them was the size of of a football player. Surely there was a way to stay in separate cabins. They weren’t pretending to be married, after all.
Taylor set Caitlin’s suitcase and his backpack on the bed as his grandmother did a three-sixty.
“Every single year, Emery and I came here on our anniversary—to this exact cabin. This would have been sixty-two years together.” Gram’s eyes glistened. “It’s a magic space, you know. I’ve hated that it sat empty the years since…” She took a deep breath. “I just couldn’t bring myself to be in here alone, so I switched to the big cabin. I’m so happy you two are staying in this one. Maybe you’ll come back here for sixty-two years, too.”
Oh boy. So much for asking for a separate room.
Grams straightened her shoulders and smiled, then glanced at her watch. “It’s quarter past ten. Come back up to the main cabin no later than quarter ’til.” She winked. “That should give you plenty of time for fun and games before the fun and games.” She scanned the entire room and took a deep breath. “Magic.”
Holy crap. She’d just encouraged them to… Her eyes shot to Taylor after Grams shut the door. Might as well get this straight right now. “We need to set some ground rules.”
The corner of his mouth hitched up in amusement and he scratched behind Beau’s ear. “What kind of rules?”
She was certain he knew exactly what she meant, but she’d say it just to make it crystal clear. “No fun and games.”
His eyes widened with innocence. “Well, Grams really likes games of all kinds. Board games, Twister—”
“You know what I mean. No fooling around.” His eyebrow quirked up, so she added, “No physical fooling around. No…” She gestured in a wild, awkward movement indicating the interior of the cottage. “No magic.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
She nodded.
Tilting his head, he studied her. “May I ask why?”
The question didn’t come across like he was gunning to refute her reasons, it was as if he were genuinely interested in what made her tick.
“You can ask, but I’m not going to answer.” Primarily because she didn’t have an answer. She wasn’t ready to begin dating again. And casual sex wasn’t her style—though this guy made her body beg for a total style makeover. No. No way. He was a player and she didn’t need that grief. Not that she was looking to settle down. Been there. Done that. Badly. She refused to be one of a harem, though.
“Are you dating someone?” he asked.
“Are you?” Of course, she already knew the answer to that. She knew of at least three women texting him about love, dinner, and panties.
He looked surprised by her sharp tone as he held his hands up in surrender. “Okay. No fooling around. We’ll have to have some physical contact in front of my family, though, or it won’t be believable. We can just pretend to be actors in a play or something. Does that work?”
“Yes.” Okay. So, he’d agreed, and she’d gotten exactly what she’d asked for. She was happy. Right? Totally… Maybe.
She slipped her purse off her shoulder and set it on a chair near the door. “Your grandmother’s pretty special. I can see why you didn’t want to disappoint her.” She could also tell that the fallout when this charade ended would be terrible. “How do you plan to go forward with this after this weekend?”
He shrugged. “Not sure. I’ll come up with something.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a couple of shirts and other folded items and pitched them in a drawer of a chest against the wall.
“What’s our story going to be?”
“The truth—or as close to it as possible. We met when you came by to walk Beau. We’ve only been dating a short while, which will make it more reasonable that we don’t know everything about each other.”
She was pleased he’d put some thought into this. Though, even if they’d gotten engaged after dating a short while, there were things they’d definitely know. “Do you only have the one sister?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Only child. My parents divorced when I was little.”
He waited, as if hoping she’d go on, as if he were truly interested. When she didn’t say any more, he responded was a curt nod. He slipped out of his coat, which caused her pulse to pound again as she took in how broad his shoulders were.
“Maybe we should go join the others.” Not that she wanted to deal with his family, but she didn’t want to deal with the way his faded jeans made her heat all over, either. How was she going to do this for three days?
He hung his coat on the rack by the door, then leaned against the jamb, studying her like he was trying to read her mind. “Staying here for a while leaves room for everyone to jump to an obvious conclusion, which strengthens our story.”
Oh, great. His whole family would meet her for the first time thinking they’d just been…doing that. Another pointer for the manual on crappy first impressions coming right up.
She perched on the edge of an overstuffed rocking chair near the foot of the bed and pulled off her gloves. Beau tried to climb in her lap like he was a reasonably sized dog not a one-hundred and fifty plus pound mass of fur and muscle. “Sorry, Beau-Beau. Not enough room for you.” The dog sighed and put his head in her lap, no doubt drooling on her coat. “How long have you had him?”
Taylor’s face relaxed, making him even more handsome, which she didn’t think possible. “He was a gift from Grams two years ago. He was part of her three-step master plan to end my bachelorhood. Step one: Convince me to move out of the apartment I shared with my buddy, Charlie, by offering me her rent-controlled apartment at a rate I’d be out of my mind not to accept. Step Two: Install Beauregard the Babe Magnet.”
She laughed. “Babe magnet?” Beau flopped down by the side of her chair and yawned.
“Gram’s words, not mine, and that plan backfired. He’s more a babe repellant than a magnet. Most women don’t like oversized, slobbery lap dogs.”
“I do,” she blurted out without thinking.
One of his dark eyebrows arched. “Yeah, and I like that about you.”
The intense heated look he gave her made her want to fan herself. “What was step three?”
“The ring. She told me it had brought her luck and would do the same for me.”
She looked down at her finger and her chest pinched inside. “It’s really beautiful.”
“So was their marriage.”
Her panic from when they first arrived bubbled up, constricting her throat, making it hard to breathe. He’d said the stakes were low, but breaking his grandmother’s heart seemed like pretty high stakes to Caitlin. “I’m not sure I can pull this off, Taylor.”
He pushed from the door frame and crouched down in front of her, placing his hands on the arms of the rocking chair. “Sure you can. Where’s the woman who basically told me to screw off this morning at my apartment?”
That woman was reorganizing her steamer trunk full of issues that she lugged around at all times. The trunk that reminded her she was in way over her head. “You were being bossy.”
“I apologize for that. It’s in my nature.”
“I don’t like being told what I can or cannot do.”
His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to read her thoughts, like earlier. “Good to know.” He stood. “So, I won’t tell you that you have to go through with this. Instead I’ll ask you to. Ask you to please do this for me and for my grandmother on her sixty-second anniversary.”
Well, crap. How could she say no when he worded it that way. When she slid on a glove, he grinned and grabbed his coat.
“Come on, Beau. It’s time to go show off my amazing fiancée.”