“Personally, I don’t think it should matter what they think, but I can also understand why it would to you. As much as I appreciate this weekend in the mountains, Derrick should be here with you. Why spend your weekend making excuses for why he isn’t?” Caleb shrugged. “If given the choice between lying to strangers for three days or spending those same three days fending off stares of pity, I’d choose the former. But that’s just me.”
Leah couldn’t deny that he had a point. She’d rather deal with her conscience giving her flack over a not-so-little white lie than have to explain over and over why she was here with her neighbor instead of her fiancé.
She stared at Caleb across the table for several long moments. She should probably take some time to weigh the pros and cons of going along with this.
But they were only here for three days. She didn’t have time to weigh anything. She also didn’t have the stomach to withstand the other couples feeling sorry for her, not when she was still so raw from her broken engagement.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Leah said.
Caleb’s brow rose. “You want to clarify that for me?”
“Let’sdothis,” she said again. “You’re right. I don’t want to spend my weekend explaining Derrick’s absence.” She drained the last of her lemonade. “But if we’re going to do this, we need to get our story straight.” She pushed up from the table, grabbed Caleb’s hand, and tugged. “Follow me,dear.We need to concoct a past.”
* * *
Caleb could hardly rememberthe short walk from Birch House to the gazebo. His mind was too preoccupied with trying to wrap itself around the fact that Leah had agreed to go along with his idea.
He’d fully expected the earful she’d given him after Marcy and Mark left the table. He deserved that and more. It was completely out of line for him to suggest that he and Leah were engaged without discussing it with her first. He’d pretty much forced her hand into going along with it.
But that didn’t mean she had to continue going along with it. Caleb had been fully prepared to explain to Marcy and Mark that he’d only been joking. Or to just avoid them altogether this weekend. He never thought Leah would agree to keep up the charade.
“Okay, where do we begin?” she asked as she took a seat on the bench that ran along the inner interior walls of the gazebo.
“Um, I guess with how we met?” Caleb offered, straddling the bench.
“Actually, I think it’s okay to stick with the truth when it comes to how we met. You have to admit it’s pretty cute. Me in my bathrobe, stealing herbs from your garden? Sounds like something you’d see in a rom com.”
He grinned. “I thought you said it wasn’t stealing?”
“It was stealing,” she conceded with a grin of her own. “I don’t know what I would have done back then if I’d known you were a cop. I guess I’m lucky you didn’t whip out your badge on me.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Caleb said. He’d been too busy trying to figure out a way to ask her out. Too bad he took too long to follow through. A mistake he’d regretted every day for an entire year.
Now he had to settle for shamelessly capitalizing on the fight she’d had with her fiancé. But capitalize on it he would.
“So, we’ll stick with the truth when it comes to how we met,” Caleb continued. “What about the rest?”
“I think the safest bet is to keep our story as simple as possible. Nothing too convoluted. That’s a surefire way to get tripped up in a lie.” She crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. “The first thing we need to do is try to anticipate which questions people will ask. What is it that people usually want to know about new couples?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been a part of a couple,” Caleb said.
“Your friends are all in relationships. What do you ask them?”
“I’d rather repeatedly stab myself in the eye with a dull pencil than ask my friends about their relationships.”
Leah’s loud burst of laughter echoed around the gazebo. “Why do men find it so difficult to talk about relationships?”
“I don’t find it difficult. I’m just not interested. Besides,” he said, leaning toward her. “It’s nosy to snoop into other people’s lives.”
She hit him with that smile he’d started to crave like freshly popped popcorn with extra butter. Bright and joyful and full of pure giddiness.
“Well you can just call me nosy, because I love peeking into other people’s lives,” she said. “I’m a self-proclaimed reality TV junkie.”
“You can’t be all that nosy.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because in the year you’ve lived next door to me you never bothered to get to know me at all.”
