“And this is my problem, how?”
If he weren’t mistaken, he heard a small catch in her breath. He saw her eyes widen and her cheeks flush.
This was a now or never moment. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”
She leaned back against her couch cushions and crossed her arms. He tried not to notice the hardened nubs of her nipples pressed against the thin cotton material of her shirt and had to swallow a groan. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
That shouldn’t be shocking.
It was after eleven. She was alone in her home. Still, it drove him toward the cliff of insanity, and he knew that he needed to pump the brakes or he was going to go right over.
That was the perfect analogy of what Jess did to him, she drove him to the cliffs of insanity, and he was ready to jump off.
***
Jess couldn’t believewhat she’d just heard. Just this afternoon she’d finally decided that she wanted to find out if there was anything between them and he shows up at her door asking her to be his girlfriend?
She’d read The Secret back when she’d been waiting for a transplant and had desperately tried to speak into existence what it was she wanted. Getting a new heart had taken three years to manifest. She glanced at the clock. Getting Ethan to ask her out had taken less than six hours.
Since she wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t hallucinating from all the sun exposure today, she asked, “You want me to be your girlfriend?”
“Yes. At least, I want everyone to think you’re my girlfriend. It’s the only way to save my summer from being one setup after another.”
“Why me?” She heard the hitch in her voice as she asked the question, but hoped he hadn’t picked up on it. The last thing she wanted was for him to know what hearing him say that he wanted her to be his girlfriend had done to her.
“You don’t like me.”
Okay, well that was not what she’d expected to hear. She picked up Elvis from the floor and started to pet him as she responded, “That’s not exactly what most people look for in a girlfriend.”
“Who else am I going to ask? Kennedy? Laura?”
She considered this for a moment. No, please don’t, she thought.
“I don’t want to lead anyone on. I also don’t want to spend the entire summer not knowing who is going to randomly show up at my door with cookies, or whose car is going to be broken down on the side of the road, and I don’t want to be tagged in hundreds of Facebook photos so that young Patty Duke can see them.”
“Who?”
“Nana met a doctor on her cruise who she thinks is perfect for me,” Ethan explained.
“Dr. Susie.”
“She told you about her?”
“Yep. She thinks you and Dr. Susie would make beautiful babies.”
“See?” Ethan ran his hands through his hair, and Jess watched as the muscles of his forearms flexed. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Damn. Her mouth watered as if she’d just bitten into a sour treat.
“I don’t even want kids,” Ethan finished his thought.
“You don’t?” That news took Jess by surprise. She wasn’t sure why she’d always assumed that he would want kids. She guessed she just assumed everyone did. Everyone except her. Hearing him say that made Jess realize that could’ve been another reason she’d kept him at arm’s length. Self-preservation. What if she’d gotten close to him only for things not to work out because they wanted different things out of life?
“No.” Ethan shook his head, his voice deadly serious. “I don’t.”
She bit the inside of her lip. He was asking her to be his fake girlfriend. Could she handle that?
“Just a month I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”