“Coming, Miss Trudy,”he yelped, dashing off to the kitchen.
“Did you, uh, want to reschedule?” Erik asked, clearly sensing something was amiss.
Gael stopped in his tracks in the dining room and turned to Jenny, giving her averymeaningful look.
Jenny panicked as a bubbly sensation rose in her chest.
Don’t you dare laugh, Jennifer,she told herself sternly.That is absolutely the worst thing you could do right now. You’d only be encouraging him.
But there was something so ridiculous about having been completely and thoroughly hornswoggled by a nine-year-old that she wasn’t sure she could keep the laughter in.
She shook her head briskly and headed for the door, leaving Erik to hurry behind her out into the night.
“Jenny, I’m so sorry,” Erik began. “Is something wrong?”
But she just kept shaking her head, pressing a hand to her mouth as she dashed down the porch steps and out onto the snowy gravel drive.
“Jenny,” Erik said worriedly.
Then she saw Gael’s twinkling eyes again in her mind and asnortof laughter came out of her nose.
“Jenny?” Erik said again.
But the snort was so embarrassing and also so horribly funny that she forgot and took her hand off her mouth and the laughter bubbled right out.
“Are you okay—oh,” Erik said.
“I’m s-so s-sorry,” Jenny giggled. “He j-just r-really got me g-good. And I didn’t want him to s-s-see me laughing.”
“Who got you good?” Erik asked.
Pulling herself together, Jenny looked up at her fake fiancé.
“Did you get a text from me today?” she asked.
“Of course,” he told her. “You said you wanted to go to dinner tonight.”
“Mm-hm,” she said, nodding. “Well, I didn’t text you.”
“You didn’t?” he asked, starting to reach for his phone.
“Oh, you got a text, for sure,” she said. “But it was Gael. And he toldmethat he wanted to go out for a nice dinner tonight.”
“Wow,” Erik said, his eyebrows lifting.
“I should have known right then,” she said, shaking her head. “Because Gael’s a homebody and he loves a home-cooked meal.But I agreed.”
Something else occurred to her and she had to smile again.
“What now?” Erik asked.
“I put on jeans and a sweater, and he made me change,” she said.
“The kid’s a real romantic,” Erik said, looking kind of impressed.
“He’s convinced that every fake engagement ends with a real wedding,” she said, then pressed her lips together.
It was one thing for Erik to want to take her out on a real date. Implying that they might actually get married was too much.
