And Davis?—
The man smirks.
“Also,” I tell my pretend fiancé, “I told my grandmother that you’d video call with her soon. I forgot to mention that this morning.”
His expression goes flat again. “This for that? You take me to see Annika’s mother and then I talk to your grandmother?”
I could come up with a story about how Davis got busy seeing if he preferred fucking goats to fucking sheep and is so sorry to miss her, but what’s the fun in that?
I’m never getting married.
And this back-and-forth, I’ll-do-this-for-you-if-you-do-this-for-me thing is almost fun in a weird way. “It’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? And she won’t talk to you solo. She’s heard things about you and also made up a whole lot worse in her mind.”
He holds eye contact for an uncomfortably long while, like he’s calling me on the lie, but I don’t blink, and I don’t look away either.
Finally, he gives the barest of nods. “It’s what we’re doing.”
10
Davis
To no one’s surprise,Sloane gives me theI’m not getting on that thinglook when she walks out the back door of the local doctor’s office shortly after five.
She’s in light-blue scrubs with little bears all over them, butI’m not dressed for thisisn’t her first argument.
Her first argument shouldn’t be a surprise, given what she asked about our getaway from our wedding, yet it still makes me want to twitch.
And it involves the look she’s giving my motorcycle as I hold out the spare helmet for her.
“I’m not getting on a death trap at dusk, and especially not to go thirty minutes away. A block and out of sight after our wedding, fine. Here, now? No.”
“Rawk! Death traps blow glitter! Rawk!”
I cut a look at the parrot, whom I haven’t seen since the wedding, then back at Sloane. “You’re very suspicious of everything.”
“I worked in an emergency room when I lived in Copper Valley.”
Fine.
She wins.
This round.
And it’s more disappointing than I want to acknowledge.
Was I looking forward to a thirty-minute ride, each way, with her arms wrapped around me?
Unfortunately.
There’s something about an overly suspicious woman who doesn’t fall to the ground in appreciation of my mere existence that appeals to me.
Don’t like being worshipped.
Not my thing.
Been there, done that, with letting people down before. Not too keen to do it again.
Especially not the way I did it fifteen years ago.
