Oh, fuck.
Is this going to get complicated and ugly?
Of fucking course it is, dumbass. You made up a fake boyfriend who was just snooping around in your museum while someone else was here apparently trying to rob the place.
I shiver again.
Then remember that Davis was also unauthorized to be in here and that we need the sheriff, andthis is too complicated.
Can I please have one emergency at a time?
“So you actually know each other,” Nigel says as Ray’s shoes slap over the wooden floor and back toward the door.
“They’ve been dating for at least a year, and saw each other around town more or less since Sloane moved here like five years ago, so why would they not know each other?” Tillie Jean gives Nigel a once-over. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sloane’s fiancé.”
“Oh my god, shutup,” I snap.
He rears back.
Davis makes a noise that might actually be a laugh.
And wouldn’t that be something?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.
Or even seen him smile.
Anytime he’s in a bar or restaurant in town with his friends, he’s just so straight-laced.
Like something terrible happened in his past and it made him forget how to smile.
I don’t even remember him smiling the night we played darts, and I was hella funny that night. I think.
See again, that night was a little hazy. I more have vibes than actual memories.
Focus, Sloane.
“Tillie Jean, this is Nigel Hipplewait. I grew up with him. Our grandparents thought we were adorable together, but we never dated, and we arenotengaged.”
Nigel pulls himself up to his full six-foot, four-inch height. “We did too, and it’s an arranged marriage.”
Tillie Jean looks him up and down again. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard about it if Sloane was arranged to be married to a guy who looks like you.”
I sigh.
It’s incredibly annoying that Nigel is, by all objective and subjective standards, completely gorgeous.
He was born with thick black hair that has always fallen in the most perfect way possible over his broad forehead. His eyebrows aren’t too bushy or too skinny. His blue eyes are set not too deep and not too shallow. His nose is the right kind of prominent without being too big. His jaw square, his lips scandalously thick. He even has handsome ears.
Handsome ears.
What are handsome ears?
They’re what Nigel has, along with the build of a quarterback—which, again, he was in high school—the hands of a sculptor, and even handsome fingernails.
And to top it all off, all of his features are perfectly symmetrical.
