And it was fake. The arrangement, the relationship, the reasons she'd agreed to any of it—all fake.
Except the attraction wasn't fake. She'd confirmed that herself, standing in my office with her fingersstill tangled in my hair. And the way she'd leaned into our practice kiss hadn't been fake either. The soft sound she'd made when I'd deepened it, the way her hands had fisted in my shirt?—
I needed to stop.
I pulled up the client presentation on my laptop and forced myself to review each slide with the attention it deserved. Richard would ask about the environmental impact assessment. He'd want specifics on the timeline. He'd probe for weaknesses in the proposal the way he probed for weaknesses in people.
I needed to be sharp. Focused. Ready.
I needed to stop thinking about a woman I'd agreed not to fall for.
The irony wasn't lost on me. Three months ago, if someone had suggested I'd be fake-dating Willow Monroe, I'd have laughed in their face. The coffee shop barista who criticized my orders and mocked my suits and pushed back against everything I said with a stubbornness that should have been infuriating?
It was infuriating. And exhilarating. And addictive in ways I hadn't anticipated.
A year of verbal sparring across a coffee counter. A year of pretending the highlight of my morning wasn't watching her create foam art I'd inevitably criticize. A year of telling myself the attraction was inconvenient, inappropriate, impossible to act on.
Now I had permission to act on it—within limits, within rules, within the confines of an arrangement that would end in three months regardless of what either of us felt.
Three months. That was the deal.
And then what? We'd stage a breakup, return to our respective corners, and I'd go back to ordering black coffee from a woman I'd kissed? Pretend the arrangement hadn't happened? Resume our bickering as if I didn't know how she tasted, how she felt pressed against me, how her breath had caught when I'd?—
Stop.
I closed my laptop harder than necessary. Stood. Walked to the window.
The city sprawled below, steel and glass and the ordered geometry of buildings I understood better than people. Architecture made sense. Materials had properties. Structures followed rules. You could calculate load and stress and failure points with mathematical certainty.
People were unpredictable. Relationships doubly so. And whatever was happening between me and Willow defied every attempt at rational analysis.
I wanted her. That was clear now, undeniable after two days of failing to think about anything else.
I wanted her, and she wanted me, and we hadthree months to explore that want within carefully negotiated boundaries.
I wanted her, and I was going to spend Friday night with my hand on her back and my mouth near her ear and every excuse in the world to touch her.
I wanted her, and I knew—with the certainty of a man who'd already failed at one marriage—that this would end badly. Arrangements built on pretense didn't become real through wishing. Connections forged in deception didn't survive exposure to truth. Whatever we built in the next three months would crumble when the structure supporting it vanished.
I knew all of this.
And I was doing it anyway.
The sun was setting over the city, painting the buildings in shades of gold and amber. Friday was two days away.
Two days until I saw her again.
Graham was right. Maybe this was a bad idea.
But for all my rigid attention to detail, the seemingly stiff adherence to rules and structure, there was a voice inside me that teased me with the allure of doing the opposite of what was good for me.
I should listen to the warnings…
But I knew I wouldn’t.
Because sometimes bad decisions tasted sweeter than candy.
five
