“Not by yourself, you’re not.” Pete heard the words come out of his mouth, and just as he expected, Shay gave him her WTF face. “Sorry,” he added. “I meant, please let me come with you. Please.”
She smiled at that extrapleaseas he knew she would, but then she said, “Are you sure that’s necessary?”
“Very,” he said. “Also, if you’re all right with it, we can swing past Hiroko’s and pick her up, too.”
“Hiroko,” Shay said, with a laugh. “You really think you can convince her to just…pack a bag and come hang out with a bunch of strangers?”
“I dunno,” Pete said, “maybe not, but I don’t want her to get hurt, so I intend to try.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Shayla drove. Her car was small, but three passengers would fit in the little backseat, as opposed to Peter’s truck. Tevin’s long legs would be crunched and he’d probably make some noise about that, but they wouldn’t be in the car for long.
“So. This is a little awkward,” she began, glancing over at Peter.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Your friends think we’re dating,” Shay said. “But my boys haven’t even met you, and I really don’t want them to get the news that I’m yourgirlfriend—” she made air quotes over the top of the steering wheel “—from something someone says in passing.”
He took a deep breath. “Well, we could let everyone know that we’re keeping it on the down-low….No…?” He trailed off as she shot him a heavyOh, really?look.
“Two operators outside, at least one in,” she recited what she’d heard him tell Seagull, Timebomb, and Hans as she’d unlocked her house and gotten the AC running and Lindsey comfortably situated inside. “And since those three boys with the ridiculous nicknames have to report back onto the base atoh-four-hundred—” She heard her stress leaking out in her voice, and took a deep breath instead of asking why they couldn’t just sayfourA.M.like normal people, because really, that wasn’t even close to the real issue here.
Peter took her rebalancing pause as an opportunity to speak. “Those three boys are named John, Jon, and John.”
Shayla nodded. “I know.” She’d talked to them while Peter had been giving more last-minute instructions to Lindsey. She’d brought them into the kitchen, showed them where she kept the snacks and told them to help themselves. “But they told me you have a lot of friends who were SEALs, and no one would mind helping out by rotating in for awatch—I think that’s what they called it. Soletting everyone knowfeels like a recipe for disaster. I don’t want Tevin and Frank to be hurt, or confused, or…”
Peter nodded. “So, we tell the boys we’re dating.”
“And then what?” Shay said. She also didn’t want to lie to them. But what was she supposed to say?Hey, come meet this guy I’m sleeping with that I met two days ago. It’s just sex. But don’t you dare do what I do. Great talk. K, thanx, bye.“In a week or two from now, after Maddie’s safely home, and they start to wonder why we don’t actually go out on any dates—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. You know what? At that point, I’ll just tell them we went out a few times, and then decided to just be friends.” Which was the truth, if bywe went out a few times, she meant driving to the mall searching for Maddie, and that visit to the high school office.
Peter cleared his throat. “Or…we could go out to dinner every now and then,” he said. “In addition to our daily meetings in my garage.”
Shayla laughed to cover the twisting feeling in her stomach. Dinner would mean that they’d actually be dating. She focused on the least frightening part of what he’d just said. “Oh, so we’re meetingdailynow?”
“At least,” he said. “Except, I usually only go out to check the mail once a day. I suppose, in order to drop thathellocode word more frequently, we could both develop an intense interest in yardwork.”
“You, me, and Mrs. Quinn. We could start a neighborhood club.”
Peter laughed as she braked to a stop at a red light. “Notquitewhat I had in mind.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, but she could see his intense worry for Maddie in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry to be focusing on this right now,” she told him softly. “I’ve just always tried to be honest with my children.”
He reached over and took her hand. “Shayla Whitman, will you date me? Please?”
And now her heart joined her stomach in its twisty, jumping dance as she nodded her answer. She couldn’t risk speaking, because she knew her voice would break.
“Good,” he said, kissing her hand before he let her go. “See, easy fix.”
Easy?
Not even close. Shay smiled grimly as the light turned green and she hit the gas. She’d written this storyline before. It was the same trope that Izzy and Lindsey referenced when teasing Adam about going to the hospital to pretend to be poor, beaten Daryl’s significant other. It even had a name—marriage of convenience—despite the fact that, in these modern times, marriage usually wasn’t involved.
But two characters were forced to pretend they were in a romantic relationship, and in the course of doing so, they fell hopelessly in undying love, and happy endings of all kinds—literal and euphemistic—ensued.
Except, in real life, it was likely that onlyoneof them—in this case Shayla, because she was already more than halfway there—would fall hopelessly in love, andheartachewould ensue.
