Why was he worried this wouldn’t end well for him? “What if we reframed it? Not so much fraud, just…
pretend. Like a dress-up relationship. You said your mom is all about your dating habits,” Molly continued. “So, this would let you off the hook and buy you more time. Until you actually want to date.”
He said nothing because he wasn’t quite sure what to say. The only thing Molly could’ve done to surprise him more was to show him she’d added him to Let’s Hookup just like his mom.
“It’s not like it’s real between us,” she assured him. “It’s just a mutually beneficial arrangement of…convenience. Let’s just ignore the whole F word.”
He didn’t think they were pondering the same F word…
“Fraud,” she confirmed, like she were reading his thoughts. “It’s not fraud,” she said this way too loudly for his comfort. “A convenient set-up. Nothing more.” Nothing more. Except an enormous relief for him. He grinned.
Call him selfish, but he appreciated how this could work out for him.
Suddenly, the fates were smiling. The heavens opening up. The hallelujah chorus playing.
He stared at her for a beat. This gorgeous, wonderful woman with an answer to his most pressing problem of the moment.
“I’m in,” he said, holding his hand out to shake.
She frowned. She shouldn’t be frowning. Not when she was getting her way.
She didn’t take his hand. “You’re in?”
“Yeah.” He stood, ready to go back to work without the threat of more hookup apps. “Anything else?”
“Uh.” She did not stand. She remained sitting and looked up at him with more innocence than he’d ever seen from her before.
Crap. Were they going to make this weird? He really hoped it didn’t have to be weird.
“You can’t just be in,” she said, like she was ready for an argument.
Which made little sense because… “Why not?”
“Because we haven’t laid any ground rules.”
“My only ground rule is you stop using the word fraud around me. I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Right. No more fraud.”
“Molly.”
“You said it first, I was only confirming.” She bit at her lip. “It can’t be this easy.” She stood then so they were face-to-face. Meaning, she was right up in his space. “What will we tell people?”
“That we’re together.”
“But I can’t lie, not to my friends. Not to Rachel.” The pulse at her neck beat thicker.
He toyed with the pen in his hand. “This was literally your idea. F-word and all.”
“That’s not the point.” She lifted her hands, not making one ounce of sense.
“So we don’t lie to Rachel,” he said, cautiously. “Don’t lie to your friends. We only lie to my mother and the rest of the world.”
“But if Rachel knows, then Travis will know. He’ll tell your mom.” Her face was getting red and blotchy. She needed to take a breath.
“Travis won’t say a word,” he assured. “Trust me on that.”
“How do you know?” She was back in his personal space. Unfortunately, he didn’t hate it.
