“Don’t let Oliver rattle you. He’s aware of our agreement.”
Oh, so I didn’t need to lie to at least one person in town for the next six months. “Anyone else in town you told?” I should have an idea of what we were going up against. Pierce had me at a disadvantage, and I wanted to even the playing field.
“No,” Pierce responded, waiting for his cousin to catch us. “But I’m sure I’ll eventually tell my parents. I don’t want them getting too excited.”
“Right. Good thinking,” I said, shaking my head. If I’d talked to my parents in the last two years, I would call them and give them a warning as well, but it seemed pointless considering they hadn’t cared what happened to me once I left San Francisco in shame.
“What rules did you come up with regarding this fake relationship?” Oliver asked as he fell in line with Pierce and me, putting me in the middle of the two men as we walked in the direction of the Kensington family home.
“Rules?” I didn’t remember agreeing to any rules other than pretending to be Pierce’s fiancée and then collecting two million dollars. If Pierce wanted to put more regulations on it now, we would need to renegotiate.
Oliver smiled, and I found myself matching his expression as I stared at his too-perfect face. He definitely would have turned old Mari on in a heartbeat. “You know, for the pretend engagement. What will you do or won’t you? What are the hard limits?”
“Um…” I hadn’t thought about rules and limits. It would’ve been smart to outline them before we started. What exactly did Pierce expect of me during our six-month fake engagement?
And why did I slowly lean to my right to get a better whiff of Oliver’s cologne? It was hard to decipher because in some ways it mixed in with the smell of the sea in the wind, but I definitely caught a hint of musk, which had to belong to him. I didn’t notice it on Pierce earlier.
“Well, you better set a few now before you get too far into this thing,” Oliver said with a quick laugh. “How do you feel about handholding?”
It didn’t take me long to agree. “Yes.” I’d hold Pierce’s hand to get my point across that he wasn’t such a bad guy. It wasn’t like he planned to bulldoze the bed-and-breakfast. He told me the renovations would be updates rather than anything drastic.
“Kissing?”
Kissing… That was different. Anyone would agree Pierce was a nice-looking guy. It wouldn’t be a horrible to kiss him, but I wanted to end our time together not feeling like a paid prostitute. We needed the money for the village, but I also needed to keep my morals at the end of this. I’d never kissed someone I didn’t want to before. Could I start now? For money?
Yes.
The decision took seconds. It would only be a kiss. Not like we were jumping in the sack together. Surely people had done worse for less.
“Um, sure.”
Pierce cleared his throat. “In public, only when required.”
Weird. It sounded as if the man who propositioned me to be a fake fiancée had more of an issue kissing me than I did him. Did I have bad breath?
“Agreed.” It felt like one of us should have whipped out a pen and written our agreements down, but so far the stipulations were easy enough to remember.
There was only a big one left. “Sex?” I asked when it sounded like nobody else would.
“No sex,” Oliver said the next second.
“Agreed,” Pierce and I both replied at the same time.
Oliver swooshed his hands together as if he was wiping them off after a dirty job well done. “That was easy. Now you two need to get your story straight.”
“Already done,” Pierce said, smiling with satisfaction. “We’re old family friends who reconnected.”
“And how, pray tell, did you reconnect?” Pierce’s cousin asked.
I laughed. There was only one way anyone reconnected with an old high school heartthrob. “Facebook.”
Pierce and Oliver both nodded in quick approval. That final agreement sealed my fate. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to be Pierce Kensington’s fake fiancée to secure safe drinking water, but I’d do it. I’d always been determined in life, and when I wanted something, I went for it. This wouldn’t be any different. I only needed to keep my wits about me and it would be fine.
Besides, how hard would it be not to fall in love while in Pelican Bay?
2
Oliver
