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“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I whispered.
He blinked at me in confusion.
“Your mom is Dr. J. Maddox? A world-renowned relationship expert? Are you serious, Jacob? You didn’t feel like this was something you should have mentioned?”
He looked positively baffled.
I shook my head at him. “It is literally her job to call bullshit on us.”
“I told her we were new—”
“Jacob, I don’t even know what your penis looks like.”
“Well, I’m not showing it to you—”
“I’m not asking! I’m making a point!”
I put a hand to my chest. “I thought I was gonna get here and your dad was going to call me Brenda or Bianca the whole time and they’d make small talk with me and then I’d go home and we’d have three more weeks before the engagement party to perfect our act. And instead we’re in a two-hour couples-counseling consultation with a bestselling sex expert. She’s going to take one look at me and know I’ve never seen you naked. She’s gonna see it all over my face!” I looked at him bleakly.
He seemed to mull this over. “Maybe we haven’t had sex yet. Maybe we’re taking it slow.”
I shook my head. “No. No way. We’ve definitely had sex. You supposedly moved to Royaume to be closer to me and we haven’t even slept together yet? How is that in any way believable? The whole point is to make them think we’re super into each other. How are you going to be over Amy if you’re not having hot, kinky sex with your new girlfriend?!”
He started smiling.
“This isn’t funny!”
“It’s a little funny.”
“No! And what is this room?!” I asked, throwing my arms out.
A thousand marble eyes stared out at me. It was full of taxidermy. FULL. And it was weird.
A squirrel in a cowboy hat and chaps riding a turtle. A white mouse dressed in a wizard robe and glasses reading a book, a rabbit with antlers, a ferret in a little bathtub scrubbing his back with a loofa. A dead coyote dressed like Flo from the Progressive commercials. She had the bouffant haircut and red lipstick and everything. It was pretty hilarious, but still.
“This is my old room. This is Dad’s stuff,” Jacob said. “It’s where he keeps his novelty pieces.”
I bounced back to the problem at hand. “This is a catastrophe, Jacob,” I whispered. “What if your mom sends me a friend request on Instagram? There’s not one picture of us together. It literally looks like I didn’t exist until today.” I shook my head. “We just walked in here like renegades. I don’t know enough about you to pull this off. I don’t even know how old you are. Do you sleep with the fan on? How do you take your coffee? Do you snore?”
“I’m thirty-five. I sleep with the fan,” he said calmly. “Decaf when my anxiety is high, cream and sugar, and not that I am aware.”
I shook my head at the gorgeous, oblivious man standing in front of me, who was totally not getting the gravity of this situation. “You said your mom knows Jessica?” I asked.
“Yes. And Zander and Gibson.”
“We’re going to have to be together in front of everyone. We’re going to have to maintain that we’re dating at work. I’ll have to tell Benny. We’ll need to disclose the relationship to HR.”
His face fell.
“It’s fine, I’m okay with it,” I said. “It’s just bigger than I thought.”
Hopefully Jessica didn’t talk to Joy too much and the jump from I Hate Him to I’m in Love with Him didn’t come up.
“We’re going to have to step up our game, Jacob. Big time. In your mom’s book she said intimacy is in the small things,” I whispered. “It’s putting a hand on my lower back when we walk into a room or facing in my direction when we’re together. You’re going to have to touch me. You have to do it on purpose, but it has to look like you’re not even thinking about it, like touching me is just natural for you because you like it. And I’m going to have to do the same thing.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “Okay…”
“We’re going to need to spend a lot more time together,” I whispered. “If your mom doesn’t call bullshit by the end of the night, Amy will in three weeks if we don’t get good at this. I’m going to need to see your house. You’re going to need to see…mine.” I gulped on the last word. “You have to have lunch with me every day.”
