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He chuckled, the sound deep and liquid in the dark. “Okay, Luna. If that’s the way you want it.”

“It is.”

His gaze skimmed her silhouette, his reply so soft she almost didn’t hear it. “Now who’s not telling the truth.”

Kat straightened the sheets, the blankets, arranging the fabric over her teddy bear barricade. Because it was important that they be in proper alignment, not because the light filtering through the window was kissing his shoulders, the ridges of his abs and corded muscles in his forearms. Not because that stupid rough voice of his was scraping along her insides, leaving behind the most pleasant raw, tingling feeling.

“You still haven’t told me what’s bothering you.”

“What makes you think something’s bothering me?”

She smoothed her thumb over the crease between his eyebrows, the pad of her finger skating over his skin before she could think better of touching him. His heavy exhale blew hot against her wrist and his eyes fell closed. Was he remembering all the times they’d done this before, the nights they lay beside each other, whispering in the dark?

Kat pulled her hand back. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “No touching.”

“I don’t mind.”

She was tempted to touch him again, to rest her head on his chest and feel his heart beating beneath her cheek, to know when his pulse sped up, to feel when it slowed as he drifted off to sleep. But that wasn’t what they did anymore. The Kat and Beckett who touched each other freely, who knew each other so well they noticed the change of each other’s heartbeats, they didn’t exist anymore. In the end, maybe they’d never really existed at all. For everything she thought she knew about him, there were a hundred things he never shared, secrets buried so deep inside him she wasn’t sure he’d even know how to excavate them if he wanted to... and she wasn’t convinced he’d ever want to.

And with their new arrangement she couldn’t help but feel like she was the only one who had anything to lose. If this thing went sideways, he’d still be the reclusive millionaire pop star, adored by fans around the world, and she’d have nothing—no job, no bonus to fund her writing career, no fiancé.

She slid her thumb over the diamond on her finger, the cool metal and gemstone that didn’t belong there, a promise they wouldn’t be keeping.

“Jo called today,” she said. “There’s a bookstore in Colorado that wants me—well, us—to make an appearance. Sign some books. It could be really good for my career. For after.”

She felt him mapping her face, searching for hidden meaning, something she wasn’t saying. “Then I’ll be there.”

“Are you sure?”

His nod was stiff, and she hated the spark of doubt in the back of her mind, the part of her heart that remembered the last time she’d asked him to join her at a book event, the last time he’d promised to be there and had never shown up. As though he could sense the direction of her thoughts, his eyes softened, a ripple of pain moving through the gray-blue waters of his irises. Beneath the covers, the pile of teddy bears shifted as Beckett’s foot crossed the dividing line, the edge of his foot dragging along hers, as if to say, ‘I’m here now.’

Her eyes stung. “Your feet are freezing,” she said, even as she shifted her leg closer to him, dislodging the stuffed animals in her path.

“They are not.”

“Human ice cube.”

Another slow slide of skin on skin, his calf pressed to hers. “You’re destroying your teddy bear force field.”

“We can rebuild it.”

His exhale was shaky, slow. If she put her head on his chest and listened, she knew his heart would be racing. His voice was gravel and grit, a rumble she felt in her bones. “We will.”

And suddenly she didn’t think they were talking about teddy bears anymore.

Chapter Fourteen

“This is silly. We should go back to the hotel.” Kat kept her focus out the car window as Ray navigated the black town car through the streets of Denver towards The Steam Factory.

“We’re not going back to the hotel,” Beckett said beside her.

“What if no one buys my books?” she asked, twisting her fingers in her lap.

He reached over and closed her hand in his, stilling her movements. “Then they’re fucking idiots.”

She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Beckett, I’m serious. If the bookstore doesn’t make any money, they won’t invite me back. Oh, God, what if they tell other bookstores and then no one wants me to come to their store again?”

“In the extremely unlikely event that no one buys your books, I’ll personally buy out all the stock in the store.” She shot him a look. “What?”