“Been an escort before?”
Alarm bells jangle through me. “An escort?” My voice is a little screechy, and he throws his head back with a burst of laughter that Ron definitely heard up at the front. Oh God.
He must see me starting to panic because he leans forward and rests an elbow on his knee. I get a glimpse of even more of his tattoo now, and it looks like it covers a chunk of his forearm.
“Bad choice of words,” he says. “Look, Faith said you need a guy to take home for Christmas to get your parents off your back, and I can be that guy. I can eat overcooked turkey and play nice with your tipsy aunt. But I'm not an escort.” He crosses his arms over his chest, his lips quirked in amusement. “That means I'm not going to sleep with you, no matter how much you beg.”
“I wasn't asking you to…” My voice drops to a whisper even though we’re still alone. “We won’t even be sharing a bedroom. This isn't about sex.”
“Good, because I’d have to report you to the authorities for propositioning me. Solicitation’s illegal, you know.”
He’s dead serious now, and I press my hands to my flaming cheeks as I shoot to my feet. “You should go. This was a —”
“Darbs, I'm kidding.” He’s laughing now and gesturing at my chair. “I’m sorry. Please sit.”
I drop like a puppet whose strings have been cut, trying to get a read on this guy who’s got me so off-balance so quickly. We’ve been talking for what, five minutes? And he’s already shortened my name and jokingly threatened to have me prosecuted. It’s way too much for me.
Maybe he senses that he’s pushed me too far because when he speaks again, it’s in a soothing,calm the startled deer who’s about to bolttone.
“I don't know how much Faith told you, but I don't have family in the area”—another quicksilver frown—“so it’s not like I have anywhere to go for Christmas. She thought I might be able to help you out. That’s it.”
“And you’ve never done the pretend boyfriend thing before?”
He slumps in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. “Do I look like a Hallmark movie dude?”
Actually, yes. He looks like the small-town boyfriend who owns a Christmas tree farm and is waiting to steal me away from the big-town lawyer fiancé who takes me for granted. Then again if I had a neglectful lawyer fiancé, we wouldn’t be here. My mom would swoon over a lawyer, even if he was a big-city asshole.
Gabe fidgets in his seat, his fingers tapping the arm of his chair.
“Okay, so let's talk about what you need from me.” His hands are big, like the rest of him, and I bet that Christmas tree farmer’s boots look a lot like his do. “I’m happy to—”
“New plan.”
I blurt it out, surprising both of us. He leans back and waits for me to speak, and I say the wild, stupid thing that just popped into my head.
“I don’t need you to be the world's best boyfriend. I need you to be the world’s worst one. Can you do that?”
CHAPTERTWO
Gabe
“Come again?”
The blushing brunette perched on the chair across from me just threw a wild curveball. I agreed to meet her because I was curious about the kind of woman who’d want to bring a stranger with her to her family’s Christmas. But now that I’ve met her, I’m invested. Plus, I want to hold my fingers to her cheeks to see if that flushed skin is hot to the touch, but she’s so jumpy that it would probably send her catapulting through the nearest window. So I keep my hands to myself and wait for her to explain the latest wrinkle in this already unhinged meeting.
“I need you to be the worst boyfriend you can possibly be.”
“Why the hell would you want that?”
She bites her lip, sinking her teeth into the plump redness that already lured me into joking about being an escort, then tries to explain her leap in logic.
“I just can't take it anymore. ‘Oh Darby, still no boyfriend? Aren't you lonely?’ ‘Oh Darby, maybe if you read less, you’d find someone.’ ‘Oh Darby, I met the nicest man at the dentist’s office. I’d love to introduce you.’” She shifts in irritation, the wooden chair creaking under what I’ve already observed is a hot little ass. “That nice man was the actual dentist by the way.”
She looks at me in outrage, and I play my part. “No way.”
“I know! He’s fifty years old and he roots around in other people's mouths for a living, and my mom thinks he’s perfect for her daughter.” She huffs a little. “I just can't take another holiday of everybody in my family ganging up on me.”
I struggle to hold back my smile. Her plan, if I'm starting to understand what she's thinking, is diabolical. “So you want me to be the worst possible boyfriend for a week, so when you dump me, they beg you to never bring another person back with you for the holidays?”
