Page 34 of Scoring Eden

The chuckle I hear from behind incenses me. I whirl on my heel and scowl up at him. “You’re laughing at me.”

“No.” He scratches the back of his head. “I would never.”

My eyes narrow. “And now you’re lying to me.”

Wordlessly, he spins me back around and slips the jacket from my shoulders then hangs it in a closet I hadn’t noticed when I barged my way inside.

“I could have done that myself, you know?”

“You’re welcome.”

Taking me by the elbow, he leads me farther down the hallway until it opens up into the main living space, which is where I learn an important fact about Alex Wolfe.

The man is allergic to color.

Which is bewildering, given the exuberance of his personality. With the overzealous way he conducts himself, I’d have thought he shit rainbows, to be honest. And I can’t, for the life of me, marry together the image I’ve built up of him in my mind with what I’m looking at.

Because everything is black and white.

The tiles are matte black, as is the cabinetry. The oversized sectional is an off-white to match the walls, and the only variance in the scheme is the enormous gray rug in the living area. I’m sure the monochrome minimalism was intended to create drama and an air of timeless sophistication, but to me…it’s as bleak as the heavy clouds rolling past the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I feel like I’m on a 1940s film set and am half expecting Cary Grant to step out from behind the corner.

“You hate it.” Alex steps into my eyeline, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“No, it’s nice.” I overcompensate for my untruth with a smile that looks more manic than it does genuine. “It’s very, er…striking.”

He responds with an amused chuff that is swallowed by a groan. “You know, if we’re going to make this work, you need to get better at lying.”

“I’m an impeccable liar, actually. I convinced Sebastian well enough, didn’t I?”

I’m not sure that’s true. His suspicion rolled off him in waves the day he came to see me at work, though I have a feeling that was less to do with my acting and more to do with how obviously out of my league Alex is.

If Alex had been the mailman, Sebastian wouldn’t have questioned it.

“That was a thirty-second interaction, and I did most of the legwork.” Alex crosses his arms and stares me down with accusation.

“You’d have ruined it in the first ten seconds with your apple of my eye spiel, if I hadn’t cut you off.”

He scoffs. “I was playing the part of a man hopelessly in love.”

“That’s not how men who are genuinely in love behave.”

For the first time since I met him, his confidence wavers. “It’s not? How do they behave, then?”

It’s an unfortunate realization that, while I know how men in love don’t behave toward their significant other, I don’t actually know how they do. I could give Alex an exhaustive list of things to avoid, like making disparaging comments toward me in public or paying more attention to the waitress with big breasts than me when we’re having dinner. But things that he should be doing to prove he’s head over heels in love with me? I’ve got nothing.

So, I ignore his question and ask one of my own. “Your sister is dating a guy on your team, right?”

He grins. “How do you know that? Have you been Googling me again?”

I bat him away with a flick of my hand. “Answer the question.”

“Leo. They got married during the off season.”

“Well, how can you tell they love each other? What kinds of things does he do?”

He thinks about it, grimacing. “He compliments her, listens, walks on the traffic side of the sidewalk, and he doesn’t get mad when she steals his ball caps or adopts another animal he doesn’t want, which happens more often than you’d think. Um… He’s always looking at her with this goopy-ass expression on his face that the guys make fun of him for. Oh, and he grabs her ass a lot.”