But I get lonely, same as anyone. This deal is perfect for me because we can hang out with no pressure. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”
Good. Deflect. Give him just enough truth to make it plausible.
His face relaxed into an easy grin. “Only a little. I owe you so much. Not sure my scintillating personality makes up for being stuck sharing a bedroom with me.”
“Yeah, that part sucks, all right,” she murmured, and let her gaze trail down his body. What better way to “practice” being less clingy than to get good and needy and then force herself to walk away? “We should use this opportunity to get a little more comfortable with each other.”
The atmosphere got intense as his expression darkened, and she could tell the idea intrigued him.
“What? Why? We’ve already sold the coupledom story to my family. It’s a done deal and went way better than I was expecting. We don’t have to do the thing where we touch each other anymore.”
Well, that stung. She’d had the distinct impression he liked touching her.
“Oh, I wish that was true.” She stuck an extra tinge of dismay into her tone, just to be sure it was really clear that she wasn’t panting after him. Even though she was lying through her teeth. “But we still have all of tomorrow with your family. And you’re planning to meet mine, right? We have to sell that we’re hopelessly in love all over again. I’m really concerned about tongues wagging. After all, Joy’s husband knows everyone who’s anyone. The business world is small.”
Jonas’s eyes went a little wide. “We just have to sell being married. No one said anything about love.”
“But that’s why people get married, Jonas.” Something flickered through his expression that looked a lot like panic. And it set a bunch of gears in motion in her head. Maybe they should be using this time to get matters straight instead of doing a lot of touching. Because all at once, she was really curious about an important aspect of this deal that she’d thus far failed to question. “Don’t you think so?”
“That people should only get married if they’re in love? I don’t know.” But he shifted his gaze away so quickly that it was obvious he had something going on inside. “I’ve never been married before.”
That was a careful way to answer the question. Did that mean he had been in love but not enough to marry the girl? Or he’d never been in love? Maybe he was nursing a serious broken heart and it was too painful to discuss. “Your parents are married. Aren’t they in love?”
“Sure. It’s just not something I’ve given a lot of thought to.”
“So think about it.” She was pushing him, plain and simple, but this was important compatibility stuff that she’d never questioned. Everyone believed in love. Right? “I’m just wondering now why you needed a fake wife. Maybe you should have been looking for someone to fall in love with this whole time instead of taking me to lunch for a year.”
He hadn’t been dating anyone, this she knew for a fact because she’d asked. Multiple times. Her curiosity on the matter might even be described as morbid.
“Viv.” His voice had gone quiet and she liked the way he said her name with so much texture. “If I’d wanted to spend time with someone other than you over the last year, I would have. I like you. Is that so hard to believe?”
Her mouth curved up before she could catch it. But why should she? Jonas made her smile, even when he was deflecting her question. Probably because he didn’t think about her “that way” no matter how hot the kiss outside her bedroom had been. One-sided then. They were friends. Period. And she should definitely not be sad about that. He was a wonderful, kind man who made not thinking wicked thoughts impossible the longer they sat on a bed together behind closed doors.
Yeah, she could pretend she was practicing for a relationship with some other man all she wanted. Didn’t change the fact that deep in her heart Viv wished she could be the person Jonas would fall madly in love with.
But she knew she couldn’t keep Jonas. At least she was in the right place to fix her relationship pitfalls.
Now, how did one go about seducing a man while giving him the distinct impression she could take him or leave him?
The bed in Jonas’s mother’s guest room must have razor blades sewn into the comforter. It was the only explanation for why his skin felt like it was on fire as he forced himself to lie there chatting with Viv as if they really were a real married couple having a debrief after his family’s third degree.
They were a real married couple having a chat.
If only she hadn’t brought up the L word. The one concept he had zero desire to talk about when it came to marriage. Surely Viv knew real married couples who didn’t love each other. It couldn’t be that huge of a departure, otherwise the divorce rate would be a lot lower.
But they were a married couple, albeit not a traditional one behind closed doors. If they were a traditional married couple, Jonas would be sliding his fingers across the mattress and taking hold of Viv’s thigh so he could brace her for the exploration to come. His lips would fit so well in the hollow near her throat. So far, she hadn’t seemed to clue in that every muscle beneath his skin strained toward her, and he had no idea how she wasn’t as affected by the sizzling awareness as he was.
They were on a bed. They were married. The door was closed. What did that equal? Easy math—and it was killing him that they were getting it so wrong. Why wasn’t he rolling his wife beneath him and getting frisky with breathless anticipation as they shushed each other before someone heard them through the walls?
“Since we like each other so much, maybe we should talk about the actual sleeping arrangements,” she suggested. “There’s not really a good way to avoid sharing the bed and we’re keeping things platonic when no one’s around.”
Oh, right, because this was an exercise in insanity, just like dinner. He really shouldn’t be picturing Viv sliding between cool sheets, naked of course, and peeking up at him from under her lashes as she clutched the pale blue fabric to her breasts.
“I can sleep on the floor,” he croaked. She cocked a brow, eyeing him as if she could see right through his zipper to the hard-on he wasn’t hiding very well. “I insist. You’re doing me a favor. It’s the least I can do.”
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to sleep on the floor. We’re friends. We can sleep in the same bed and keep our hands off each other. Right?” Then she blinked and something happened to her eyes. Her gaze deepened, elongating the moment, and heat teased along the edges of his nerve endings. “Unless you think it would be too much of a temptation.”
He swallowed. Was she a mind reader now? How had she figured out that he had less than pure thoughts about sharing a bed with his wife? How easy it would be to reach out in the middle of the night, half-asleep, and pull her closer for a midnight kiss that wouldn’t have any daylight consequences because nothing counted in the dark.
Except everything with Viv counted. That was the problem. They had a friendship he didn’t want to lose and he had taken a vow with Warren and Hendrix that he couldn’t violate.
“No,
