Page 69 of Fake it With Me

“I’ll die trying.”

I laughed softly, already feeling sleep pulling at me. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Good,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I want you to.”

I felt myself drifting. I had never felt so sated in my life. It was like I was floating on a cloud. Boneless. Without a care in the world. I had an amazing dinner. Zero financial worries.

And I had Darek holding me tightly.

24

DAREK

Iwoke up early as usual. But the warm, supple body pressed against me had me wanting to stay in bed for a week. Unfortunately, a very energetic young lady down the hall might have some questions about the naked woman in my bed. Questions I was not ready to answer.

Last night had proven something I suspected but hadn’t wanted to fully acknowledge. It terrified me to accept we could have a real connection that went beyond just physical attraction. Don’t get me wrong. The physical part was incredible. Mind-blowing, even. But it was more than that.

It was real. Undeniably, terrifyingly real.

And I didn’t know what to do with that.

Instead of being a grownup and waking her up, I slipped out of bed. I went into my bathroom and showered. If she was out of my bed when I got out of the shower, that might be for the best. Did I kiss her good morning? Would she want that? I couldn’t exactly avoid her, but I needed a minute to get my head around what was happening.

As expected, when I stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in my sweats, the bed was empty. I breathed a sigh of relief. It would give me at least another thirty minutes to think about what I would say. Coffee. Coffee would help me process all the feelings.

I started the coffeemaker and pulled out the breakfast stuff from the fridge. I cracked eggs into a bowl, whisking them harder than necessary, trying to organize my thoughts into something coherent.

The whole point of hiring someone through Faux was to make a clean break of things once I got past the custody stuff. Real feelings got real messy. Real relationships meant navigating emotions and expectations and the potential for things to fall apart in spectacular fashion. I had structured this arrangement specifically to avoid that. I had gone out of my way to create a contract with clear terms that provided protection for everyone involved.

Except I had gone and caught feelings anyway.

We both had.

But maybe things didn’t have to end between us. Why couldn’t this turn into something real? We were both adults. We clearly had chemistry. We got along well. Daisie adored her. On paper, it made perfect sense to try turning this fake relationship into a real one.

The problem was Daisie.

I had been thinking about the situation all night. My big concern wasn’t whether Liza and I could make it work. It was what would happen to Daisie if we tried and failed.

I wasn’t someone who believed in love at first sight. And I was a practical man. I knew relationships didn’t always work out. It was just part of life. It didn’t mean we would hate each other. Sometimes shit happened.

But Daisie was too young and innocent to have that kind of jaded outlook on life. I hated that one day she would.

Daisie was already attached to Liza. My daughter had already cast Liza in the role of mother figure, and if things fell apart between us, Daisie would be devastated.

Most relationships didn’t work out. That was just statistics. I didn’t trust my own judgment anymore when it came to women. I was the dumbass who had thought Sasha was a good person. I actually thought we were building a life together. It had taken me years to realize she’d been pretending.

She said all the right things to get my dumbass down that aisle. But as it turned out, motherhood and domesticity weren’t what she actually wanted. She only had Daisie because I “pressured” her. She said she had been slowly dying inside while I’d been obliviously happy.

What if I was wrong about Liza too? What if this intense connection I felt was just proximity and convenience and good sex? What if she left, not because she was a bad person like Sasha, but because real life didn’t live up to the fantasy of these few weeks?

She was chasing her dreams. I knew pretty much nothing about whale migrations. Would she have to travel? Would she chase whales around the world? She certainly didn’t sign up for a ready-made family. We had talked, but we hadn’t talked about our futures and her wishes. I knew I wanted more children. But I only wanted more children with a woman I knew would be committed to a family.

And that was my hangup.

Maybe I shouldn’t date at all until Daisie was older and more equipped to understand breakups and heartache. Like when she was thirty-five.

I flipped the eggs, adding cheese and some herbs. What if Liza was the one? What if I pushed her away out of fear and missed out on my soulmate because I was too damaged by Sasha’s betrayal to take a leap of faith ever again? What if, in trying to protect Daisie from potential heartbreak, I was actually depriving her of a mother figure who genuinely loved her?