Page 14 of The Wedding Fake

He shrugged. “I’m sticking with it. Do you want me to tag you?”

I shook my head, an instantaneous response. “No. I’m good. I only let my family and friends see my account.”

There was a long pause, long enough that I looked at him. He was smiling crookedly. “You should probably friend me,” he suggested.

Shit. I should’ve friended him days ago. “Can you do it?” I asked, offering my phone up between us as I maneuvered onto the road.

“Sure,” he replied, holding up my phone. “Look here.” I glanced over for the moment it took the lock screen to recognize me, and then there was another round of silence as he tapped between the two devices.

In the elevator, we’d fallen into peaceful silence more than once, but now the silence felt suffocating. “Should we talk about the ground rules?” I asked nervously.

From the corner of my eye I saw him glance in my direction, lips curling. “Nah. We’ve got a four-hour trip. Let’s relax for a little while first,” he suggested. Relax first? I was more likely to sprout wings and fly out of the sunroof. I looked over at him, brow raised, and he shrugged. “It’s a long ride. We’ll work everything out between now and then, but if you’d rather get started…”

“We could work on our backstory,” I suggested quickly.

He grinned. “You’re going to stress until we nail down every detail of this, aren’t you?”

“Probably also after that,” I confirmed, letting out a deep exhalation. Five minutes into this trip and Hudson probably thought I was miserably uptight. “Did you know romance scams are the costliest types of fraud?” I asked. It wasn’t exactly a subject change, but maybe it would take his attention off my neurosis for a minute.

He laughed. “Should I be worried you’re after my money? Because I can tell you, I don’t have much.”

I smiled, finding his laugh oddly soothing. “It’s more women getting conned than men, as you could probably guess. And it’s especially bad around Valentine’s Day, because people are lonely, you know?”

He shrugged one shoulder, then leaned his body on the console between us, lowering his voice as if he were sharing a secret. “Listen. I can ensure nothing like that happens to you. Just Zelle me three hundred dollars, and I’ll make sure you’re protected.”

I laughed, making a face, and he sat up, grinning. “Hit me up at Valentine’s. I’ll probably be an easy target,” I joked.

“I figure we met in the elevator,” he said, shifting easily back to the original topic as he sat back in his seat once more, but I was shaking my head before he could get the whole sentence out.

“I told them we were dating before the elevator,” I reminded him.

“Ah, yes,” he replied, and though I couldn’t look directly at him for very long, I could see the smile on his lips was self-satisfied. I couldn’t believe I’d admitted using his name as a fake boyfriend. Maybe Hudson had been wrong and the elevator was running low on oxygen at that point. I couldn’t think of any reason to share that tidbit other than lack of oxygen to the brain. “Before we got stuck,” he said. “We’ve shared the elevator plenty of times.”

“And?” I asked.

He chuckled. “And what? And one time I took a shot and asked a beautiful woman to go out for dinner.”

“In,” I corrected.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, clearly confused.

“You ordered take out and we had it at my place. My family knows I generally avoid eating at restaurants since…” I flicked the mask that hung from my windshield wiper switch.

“Fair enough,” he replied. “At your place, though, not mine?”

I shook my head. “Going to your place makes it sound like I slept with you right away.”

“Have we slept together?” he asked, his lips curling up into a sexy smile.

In my brain? So many times. One better than the next. My lips curled between my teeth—holding those thoughts in, since I obviously couldn’t be trusted not to share my private thoughts with Hudson—until they popped back out with a tiny kissing noise that made me blush. “Statistically speaking, the majority of people sleep together before meeting each other’s families.”

“Statistically speaking?” he asked, laughter in his voice.

I felt heat creep up my neck, remembering all the times Dan had rolled his eyes at my statistics. This was not the part of me men found attractive. It was the part they tolerated. The part they complained about during fights. The part they asked me to “be aware of” at parties. “I have a very good memory and I love statistics,” I answered slowly, cautiously. “My brain collects them like some people collect…I don’t know.” I shrugged. “What do people collect?”

“You collect them like boys collect baseball cards,” he offered.

I nodded my agreement. “That’s good. Can I steal that?”