Page 29 of See You Again

“I don’t read that trash.”

“Of course, you don’t,” Cami muttered under her breath. “Well, the rest of the world does, and you and I are front and center.”

James frowned. “Explain.”

“Someone got a picture of us kissing at your hotel, and somehow those two women we talked to in the bar found a reporter and told him we are a couple.”

“So?” An article on the internet didn’t seem worth the agitation on her face.

She gaped at him. “So… Everyone’s seen it!”

He stared at her blankly.

“Including Kip.”

“Wasn’t that the point of pretending the other night? So that he’ll leave you alone.”

“Yes, but now that it’s public, he wants to spend time with us… as a couple.”

“Tell him no.” James shrugged.

Cami let out an exaggerated sigh. “That’s not really an option. Not until he signs the new contract.”

An unpleasant emotion curled in James’s gut. “Ah yes. I forgot you had to lie in order to sell yourself to him.”

Cami’s eyes narrowed. “I know you didn’t just say that. If I was selling myself, I would have spent the night in his bed, not yours.”

The beast inside him roared. “Lovely.”

“Kip wants us to come to the opening of his restaurant… as a couple. For publicity.”

“We aren’t a couple.” James thought he could hear her teeth grind.

“We told him we were. And if he finds out now that I’m a liar, he will almost definitely pull his ad campaign.”

The misery in Cami’s voice was doing funny things to his chest. He pressed his teeth into his tongue to keep himself from asking how he could fix it for her. How he could put the smile back on her face.

“I know we said the other night was a onetime thing, but things have changed.”

“I don’t see how.”

“The world thinks we’re dating.”

“The world thinks a lot of things.”

Her nostrils flared, and her eyes sparked. “Are you going to make me beg?”

Her words sent a bolt of lust through him. Cami on her knees begging… James folded his hands over his lap, trying to hide the sudden painful pressure against his zipper.

“You haven’t actually asked for anything yet.” James concentrated on lining up the pens on his desk so they were even with the edge of the file folders and blotter, determined to get his body back under control. After a moment, James realized Cami was watching him silently. “Well?”

There was a slight tic in her jaw. “I need you to keep being my boyfriend.”

The words hit him like a blow. Words he’d have killed to hear twelve years ago. Now, she threw them out casually as if they meant nothing. Did she think, just because he’d made a fool of himself over her all those years ago, that he was still her puppet? That because his body came to life at the mere sight of her, she could manipulate him?

“No.”

“It would benefit you, too.” She spread her hands wide in front of her. “All those fundraisers, events… I could be a buffer.”