Taking a deep breath, I answered and put the phone to my ear. “Hi.”
“Phoebe, I have news.”
Holy shit, his voice had my entire body on edge.
“I’m listening.”
“As I told you, I invited Jude and his wife to dinner with both of us. And he accepted.”
“Wow. Okay.” I laughed nervously as I reached my house and sat down on the front steps.
“Did you change your mind? It’s no problem if you did.”
As if I’d leave him in the lurch like that. I wasn’t a fool; I knew backing out now would put him in an even worse position. “No, of course not. Tell me more.”
“The dinner is tomorrow evening.”
“What?” My voice was high-pitched.
“If you have plans, we can work around them.”
“I have no plans for the foreseeable year, Griffin. Really, I’m yours whenever you want.”
There was a pause before he said, “Good to know.” His voice was playful. Wait, no, it was more than that. It was… flirty?
I replayed my words in my mind and blushed.Why did I have to phrase it like that?
I cleared my throat. “So, where exactly are we going?”
“I don’t have the location yet, but I’ll tell you as soon as I book something. I’ll pick you up and then drop you off.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And we’ll keep things simple. We’ll say that we’ve been dating for the past six months, but you’re a very private person. That’s why there are no pictures of us together.”
I played with the pendant at my neck, biting the inside of my cheek.
“You disagree?”
“Ha, you can tell that from silence? You’ve got skills.”
“In my experience, when someone doesn’t reply, it’s because they think I’m wrong.”
“I’m just thinking. By the way, are there pictures of you and other women?”
“Yes…that’s what got me in this mess in the first place. But it’s all circumstantial. I can argue that they were business meetings.”
“Right. My past month has kind of been a shit show, so now I’m going to have to sort of invent a whole new persona.”
“No, that’s not what we’re going to do. No lying. We should keep everything vague,” he went on. “You say you worked at a doctor’s office, and then I’ll try to steer the conversation to business.”
I bit my lip this time. This was a business dinner. The other guy wasn’t going to pry and ask for details about my personal life, butIneeded more details about Griffin.
“If we’re going to pretend that we’ve been dating for six months, I need to know more about you.”
“Sure. Like what?”
“Ummm… not even sure where to begin, honestly.”
