“Oh my God,” she scoffs, looking truly offended, and it’s actually pretty cute.
“See the difference there? I could give more examples if you need them.”
“I don’t, so please, restrain yourself.”
“Sure, but if you need another one, just let me know.” We pass beneath the tree where I pretended to be hurt. “Remember when you were about to save me from a fallen tree limb, but then left me to survive on my own?”
I can practically feel her eye roll. “You were not hurt.”
“Only my ego when you left me to fend for myself.”
“Oh please, you had Rupert with you, and you were faking it to try to trick me into some sick fantasy of yours.”
I laugh. “That’s not what we were doing at all.”
“Okay, then what were you doing?”
“You want the truth?”
“I better only get the truth from you. We signed an agreement.”
“We did, but there was no rule on there that said I had to speak the truth.”
Her head whips around to face me. “Do you plan on lying?”
“No, because I can see that would not be the approach to take when dealing with you,” I say quickly, slightly scared by the look in her eyes.
“That would be correct. I’ve had enough lying in my life to not want to deal with it again.”
Huh, I wonder what she means by that.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that with me. Hell, I told you the truth yesterday about my intentions. If I wanted to, I could have lied about that.”
“True. You better keep it that way.”
“Plan on it.”Mental note: don’t ever lie to her.
“So what were you trying to accomplish by pretending to be hurt?”
“The goal was to gain sympathy so I could propose and then you’d feel like you needed to say yes because you felt bad for me. A human can’t nearly lose a leg and get turned down when proposing all in the same day. That’s just cruel.”
She’s silent for a moment and then says, “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. First of all, you weren’t losing a leg. If I recall, it was a minor scratch on your forehead that you were trying to pass off as an injury. And second of all, I’m not going to alter the course of my life because someone got knocked in the head with a tree branch.”
“Not even a little?”
“Wouldn’t even think twice about turning down your proposal.”
“Goodness,” I say with a chuckle. “Ruthless.”
“Are you saying that if the roles had been reversed, you would have said yes to a guilt-ridden proposal?”
“No,” I answer. “I’d have said yes to the first proposal.”
I wiggle my eyebrows and she points at them, offended. “Flirting. That’s flirting.”
“Oops, sorry.” I smirk at her, knowing exactly what I just did.
“Do you need help stretching? I’m good at holding legs up in the air.”
