“With sarcasm. If he wants advice, tell him to talk to Zeph. Or Leonie. Hell, even Conleth would be a better choice. At least the kid would get to expand his vocabulary.”
“It has to be you, Buck.” Her eyes searched for his, blindly human in the darkness, unlike his own unnatural vision. “Talk to him about being a shifter. Please?”
If she’d asked him to hand her the moon at that moment, he would have wrenched it from the sky. He couldn’t deny her anything, not with her hand on his arm and her face upturned in entreaty.
And it was more than just those damn beautiful eyes. He still couldn’t follow her logic, but every instinct told him to trust her judgment.Yeshovered on the tip of his tongue.
But if he did… he would be taking the first step down a very slippery slope. And at the bottom lay the beast, jaws open to swallow him whole.
“I’m not a shifter.” He reached behind him for the door, letting light flood in. “That’s long enough now. Mess up your hair. We want to be convincing.”
She shot him a look, but shook out her short brown locks. “There. Am I disheveled enough to satisfy your masculine pride?”
The honest answer to that was a very definiteno. His hands ached to push into her hair; wind it round his fingers, pulling her head back to expose her throat.
He shoved his hands into his pockets instead. “It’ll have to do. Come on. By the way, Leonie thinks we have a date tonight.”
“Oh.” Honey’s cheeks went pink again, which was at least a small step toward convincing dishevelment. “And… do we have a date tonight?”
Yes, he wanted to say.
“Just… go for a walk or something.” His nails bit into his palms. “Somewhere away from the cabins. I’ll do the same. Nobody will realize we aren’t actually together.”
“They will if you keep walking around with a face like that,” she muttered.
“This is the only face I have, woman.”
“Well, if you aren’t going to insultmypride, you need another one.” She stopped, thrusting out her left hand. “Here.”
He eyed her palm warily. “And what am I supposed to do with that?”
“You take it, Buck.” Seizing his wrist, she tugged his right hand out of his pocket. “You’re the one who insisted we had to pretend to be madly in love. People who are in love hold hands.”
“Can’t we have the sort of love where I glower constantly and murder anyone who looks at you funny?”
“Murder is not romantic, Buck.” She forcibly threaded her fingers through his. “There. Now smile.”
“I am smiling. This is my smiling face.”
“Buck, you are scowling.”
“That’s how I smile.”
“Oh, I give up.” She tugged on his hand, pulling him along like a guard dog on a lead. “It’s just as well we aren’t really dating, because you are terrible at this.”
“If we were really dating, you’d know that I make up for it in other ways.” He frowned. “Damn it, youshouldknow that. Or are you telling me that kiss was terrible?”
A blush crept up Honey’s neck. “That was… not terrible.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“And also not something we can do in front of the kids.”
“Not if we’re doing it properly,” he said, and was secretly delighted to see her ears go pink too. Now she looked halfway toward decent dishevelment.
“Will you take this seriously?” she said. “If we were actually dating, we’d be discreet in front of the campers. We need to agree a limit on public displays of affection.”
“How about zero?”
