Page 27 of Love on Deck
“Why aren’t you out there anymore?”
“Oh, I...” Lucas looked from me to our friends. He flashed me a guilty look.
Hold up. My stomach tingled uncomfortably. “Did you come over here because you felt sorry for me?”
“No,” Lucas promised, in what was most certainly a lie. The poor guy looked between me and my sister, panic edging in.
I stood up. “I’m sitting here by choice.”
“I know.” He did not sound confident.
I stared at him until he stood from his stool, all six-foot-five of him towering over me. His efforts to make me feel less like a grandma were sweet, really, in a totally mortifying way. It wasn’t an aversion to dancing or 90s music that kept my butt on that barstool—it was my inability to dance in front of other people and look good doing it. Amelia had gotten all those genes. I was stuck with a lack of rhythm.
Lucas slinked back to the group, which was growing more difficult to see as the crowd expanded with each passing song. How long did I need to sit and watch the throng of people yelling out the lyrics to Bye Bye Bye from NSYNC before I could fake a couple yawns and make my exit? It had been a long day. Pretending I enjoyed being around my archnemesis was fatiguing work.
The music changed to a Nelly song, and the lights overhead got my attention when they shifted to blue. It reminded me of the mature wedding we hosted a few weeks ago. Conferences weren’t the only events that brought money into the hotel. Receptions that looked much like what I was forced to watch right now contributed a huge portion of our revenue. Maybe by hyperfocusing on the largest conferences, I was missing an opportunity to prove my competence.
My mind buzzed with the wispy edges of an idea, but I couldn’t focus enough to identify it. That was fine. There was a process to brainstorming that was sure to yield results with the proper steps. It began with my favorite thing of all time: list-making.
I pulled out my phone and started a list of events that used our hotel on a smaller scale. Weddings, anniversary parties, bat mitzvahs, retirement celebrations, work parties. It was endless. If I could find a way to capitalize on those events and bring Jack’s MediCorp conference to our venue, I had to be a shoe-in for the promoti—
“Work?” Jack’s voice in my ear was closer and silkier than it had any right to be. He tsked, plopping down on the empty seat beside me. “That’s breaking the rules, Sunshine.”
I turned my phone off and put it in my pocket. “I wasn’t working. I was thinking.”
“About work? Still breaking the rules.”
“We never said anything about work-related thoughts. Now that you’ve brought it up, I think we do need to go over a few things.”
He leaned his elbows back on the bar, relaxed. “Like?”
I still felt the goosebumps from his lips near my ear. “No unnecessary touching.”
Jack surveyed me with sizzling blue eyes and the ghost of a smirk. “What constitutes necessary?”
“Whatever we need to sell our story is fine, but when the others aren’t around or watching us, we don’t need to be touching. In any way.”
Could he tell how much he’d affected me at mini golf? Or holding my hand after? All those skinful moments seemed over the top, confusing me. I set my gaze on my sister to avoid his eye.
The last thing I could do was allow myself to soften around him. These moments made me feel things, and that was dangerous. Especially when none of it was real.
Jack pushed away from leaning on the bar and swiveled on his stool to face me. I felt the pressure of my seat change when he rested his foot against it, his knee brushing my leg. “What about this?”
“Unnecessary.” I swallowed. “No one is even looking.”
“But my body language is couple-y. Isn’t that what we want in case they do look this way?”
“It’s what you want, maybe. I just need to survive this week.” I wrinkled my nose. “And please don’t say couple-y about us.”
He pressed his knee harder into my thigh. “What other rules do you have?”
Deep breath, Lauren. My only job right now was to resist feeling anything for him. But his little touches and the way he looked into my eyes only reminded me why I liked being in a relationship. The attention. The touching. The whole not feeling alone part. It was tempting to lean into the situation a little, enjoy the perks of having someone devote his attention to me so fully. But that meant lowering my defenses, and Jack had done nothing to earn that, even on a fake-boyfriend level.
Really, all I could feel now was his knee pressing into my leg. What had he asked me? Right. Rules. “No random hookups. Fake relationships are one thing, but I won’t be fake cheated on too.”
“That’s fair and it goes both ways.” He nodded. “Anything else?”
“I get the first shower.”