AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I rolled my eyes and shoved my phone back into my purse. The last thing I needed was to dwell on Reggie’s reaction to my dress when I was alone with him in the back of a car.
It had been a long time since I’d been in the backseat of a Prius. It wasdefinitelysmaller than I’d remembered. Old Fuzzy was bulky, and when Reggie set it beside him, the three of us took up just about all the available space.
Reggie moved incrementally closer to me, and I reflexively curled in on myself, trying to become as small as possible. It didn’t work well, though. The outside of our legs still briefly pressed together as he shifted in his seat to make himself more comfortable.
Hiding his body beneath that hideous coat should have been a felony. He wore the kind of generically dressed-up blue button-down that guys our age tended to wear as a default when the situation called for nice attire, but stretched across his broad chest that shirt was somehow anything but generic. To make matters worse, he started rolling his shirtsleeves up to just above his elbows, which in my book was one of the sexiest things a man could do. His hands looked capable and strong, and dexterous in a way that made my mind veer helplessly into dangerous territory, just as it had in the coffee shop.
I dug my fingernails into my palm. This was neither the time nor the place for my mind to wander. We were about to fake date our pants off in front of my family, for crying out loud.
But the way his blue eyes flicked down the neckline of my dress again and rested on my cleavage for just a beat too long made me think our proximity was affecting him, too.
We had to snap out of this.
“Let’s go over some last-minute details,” I chirped, hoping my voice sounded businesslike and not as wobbly as I felt.
He sat up straighter. “Okay,” he said, so eagerly I wondered if he was as desperate for distraction as I was. “Like what?”
“Well,” I began. And then stopped. The earnest way he was looking at me, like I was a schoolteacher and he an eager student, made it hard to focus on what I’d been about to say. “There’s…um. My aunt’s house. For starters.” I cringed inwardly. As if Aunt Sue’s house mattered in the slightest.
“Oooh. What kind of house does she have?” He leaned closer, eager to hear more. His leg pressed against mine again. His thigh was firm and muscular, and…no. We werenotdoing this. “Is it one of those great big houses that look identical to all the other houses around them and cost a zillion dollars?”
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at his enthusiasm. From the twinkle in his eye, I guessed he was trying to be funny. “Yeah,” I confirmed. “And it’s completely devoid of character.”
“Gross,” he said, though he sounded both delighted and fascinated. “I’ve never been in one of those houses before.”
I grinned. “If you’ve never been in one before, I’m jealous.”
“How fancy will the party be?” he asked. “Will there be assigned seating? Ice sculptures? A string quartet playing something by Vivaldi?”
I laughed. I could feel the knot of anxiety that had taken up nearly permanent residence in the pit of my stomach these past few days loosening. I wondered if he was doing it on purpose. Whether he was determined to put me at as much ease as possible before an event I’d been dreading.
“There will probably be, like, nice tablecloths and napkins,” I said. “Floral table arrangements. But probably no ice sculptures, no.”
Reggie was quiet a moment, processing what I had said. The Sunday evening traffic out of the city was light and we weremaking good time. The skyscrapers that had flanked our car when we set out were slowly being replaced with townhomes and smaller brick buildings as we got farther from the city’s center.
“What should I know about your parents?” he asked.
“My parents?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Beyond what I already know, of course. Which is that they’re overbearing and insufferably concerned with their adult daughter’s love life.”
I bristled at that. It was somehow different when the same critiques I made of my parents came from a stranger. “I wouldn’t say they’re insufferable. But they are a bit overbearing, yeah.”
“Overbearing enough that you are going through this farce to get them off your back.”
It wasn’t a question. “Yes,” I admitted.
Reggie nodded thoughtfully. “What would someone who’s been dating you for six weeks know about them?”
I thought about that. “Dad’s a retired history professor.”
Reggie looked like his birthday had come early. “Noway,” he breathed. “An actualhistory professor?”
I’d have thought he was being sarcastic if his every feature didn’t exude earnestness. I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s really not that exciting.”
“Oh, but it is,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to meet anactualhistory professor? What does he study? No, no—don’t tell me.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight and pursed his lips as though trying very hard to guess correctly. “The bubonic plague and how rats have been unfairly blamed for it since the Middle Ages?”
I laughed. “No.”
