“We’re going to pretend to be a couple for just as long as it takes for us to do this, but to my family, you’re the accountant.”
His eyes stayed on her face. “Agreed.”
“Don’t bring me flowers.”
He put the tulips in the vase. “I’m in your home. I was being polite. I suppose you don’t want the chocolates, either.”
Chocolates. She peered into the bag. She definitely didn’t want the chocolates. “They’ll last longer than our relationship.”
“Preservatives,” he said. “Also, changing your accountant frequently is a bad idea.”
She laughed. She didn’t mean to, but he’d done a better job with the groceries than Mom, and when she fished the chocolates out of the bag, it was to find they were her favorite brand.
She had to find a way of working with Halsey and keeping her head on straight and her hands to herself for the next six weeks. He’d said the sting would come down to four or five key social events she’d need to attend. She should be able to be sensible about him that long.
The chocolates wouldn’t last the night.
Chapter Thirteen
While Lenny fussed with a cheese plate, Halsey sat at the dining room table and used his laptop to set up a calendar they could share. He’d fill it with the details she needed about events they’d go to. A boring diplomatic dinner, a dance performance, a cultural exchange event, and an emerald auction so far.
He was about to explain all that when Mallory came back. He’d upset Lenny somehow. Maybe he shouldn’t have changed, would’ve looked more official in his suit. He hadn’t factored for Mal, and he’d screwed up with the flowers and chocolates. Not an auspicious start.
Mal took the seat beside him and looked him over. Her eyes were muddy with hurt and rebellion. “Are you fucking my sister?”
Lenny snapped, “Mallory, apologize at once.”
He returned Mallory’s stare. “I’m the middle kid of five. I’ve got two older brothers and two younger sisters. Everyone needed someone to pick on. You have to work a lot harder than that to get at me. I’m your sister’s accountant, but even if I weren’t, it’s none of your business.” Mallory kept eyeballing him. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Have you always been a smart-ass?” she said.
“Mallory,” said Lenny, using the least-effective parenting technique in the book. Zeke’s name would be worn out if that censorious name-uttering practice had any impact.
“I had an ugly period of being unfairly picked on, shoved around, scapegoated, and pranked. I wised up fast. You?” he said.
“Same,” Mal said, still with the mutinous expression.
He smiled, because underneath the brittle exterior, Mal wanted him to like her. They both knew her experience was nothing like his, and they both ignored Lenny’s, “Mallory.”
“My parents worked a lot. Left my oldest brother Cal in charge. He did the best he could. We were an unruly bunch. Now you, I’m guessing, had the opposite experience. Much older siblings, no one to pick on you, had to toughen up all by yourself.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Sure, I do.” He got clues to who Mallory was from her tone, word choice, eye contact, and body language. The rest was demographics and family history. “You wish you were done with school. Want to blow the nest and do your own thing. You’re tired of the whole appearances thing. Everyone sucks.”
Mallory shook her head, unimpressed. Wait for it. He was still warming up. “You’ve got a collection of tattoo sketches. A Pinterest board, probably. Once you decide on the one that’s really meaningful, you’ll have it done, and I’m betting you already have a secret piercing.”
Her mouth opened, and her shoulders dropped. Bluff called. “You’re a clown,” she said, but without real heat, and she’d think twice about trying to rile him up again. She turned to Lenny. “Tattoos are gross.”
He was spot-on about the piercing. “Oh hell, Lenny,” he said, feigning disappointment. “I think your sister insulted my awesome tattoo of a mermaid riding a unicorn, holding a puppy, under a rainbow.”
Lenny laughed. She crossed behind him and brushed her hand over his shoulder as she put the cheese plate on the table. Hell, that touch, barely there, but enough to make him stiffen. He clamped his teeth together, so he didn’t make an inappropriate sound.
“You don’t really have that do you?” said Mal with barely restrained laughter.
He twisted his mouth into an expression of regret to indicate he was indeed a tattooed canvas of clichés beneath his clothing. He wanted Lenny’s hand back, the whisper of her fingers, a touch so fleeting it might not have happened, except for the fact it had made him hyperaware of her, worse than when she’d noticed what he was wearing and more intense than when she poked his arm in the kitchen.
Since his hyperawareness was already at count-her-eyelashes level, that said a lot about his divided attention. Right now, he needed to focus on getting Mallory to trust him to ensure there was less reason for Lenny to distrust him, and the best way to do that was to make them laugh at him. Self-deprecation, he had no trouble manufacturing; it was an attribute most tyrants didn’t understand.