The sun was setting and it was dim inside the tree house, but his eyes had adjusted. She smoothed out her skirt and crossed her legs at the ankles, absently picking at her thumbnail. Her dark hair slid forward, a curtain hiding her features. He ached to slide his fingers through the strands and push them back.
To see her face. To touch her lips again.
He looked away. “Was that okay? What I did out there? It just seemed like the believable thing to do.”
“The kiss?”
“Yeah. If you could even call it that.” Maybe minimizing it would force his own feelings to take the hint.
“It wasn’t a kiss?”
His shoulders tensed, and he was thankful for the darkness. “Not really.”
“Felt like it. Your lips were right here.” She tilted her face and touched her bottom lip with her thumb.
It took a mountain of strength not to let his eyes linger there. “I may have put my mouth there,” he managed to get out. “But I didn’t kiss you.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the exact definition.”
He shifted his gaze to the wood planks at his feet, unable to look at her when he said, “If you and I ever kissed for real, you’d know the difference.”
She shivered, and he wished he had a jacket to offer her.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Now you’ve got me curious. What would a real kiss from Noah Agnew entail?”
The words came without thought, his number one fantasy one of the clearest scenes in his mind. He’d thought about it so often it was embarrassing. “You know that feeling in your stomach when you know something good’s about to happen? A lot of that. Anticipation, excitement, and maybe a little bit of nerves. When our lips touched, it would be one of two things. Soft and sweet, or deep and intense. Either way, there would definitely be tongue involved. My hands would be in your hair—” He suddenly stopped and coughed, noticing her wide eyes.Shit.“I mean, hypothetically.”
The song ended and silence surrounded them for a few beats before it started back up again.
“Well,” she finally said, and he couldn’t help but notice she seemed a little breathless. “Sounds like it would be quite an experience.”
He forced a quiet laugh, trying to lighten the tension. “I’d like to think so.” He pulled his knees up and extended his arms, resting his forearms there.
They didn’t speak for some time, and he wondered what memories this song conjured up for Mia. He was too chickenshit to ask that, so he asked a different question.
“Would you rather kiss me every once in a while to make sure our relationship seems believable, or find some other way to convince them?”
“Real kisses, or what you did in there?”
Real ones.“What I did in there.”
“That seems easier, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” He nudged her with his shoulder, hating how awkward he felt. “Is this too weird?”
She bumped him back and grinned. “It’s a little weird. But it’s you and me. We’ll figure it out.”
“When? It’s been more than a week.” He didn’t know which was worse—before this whole ruse, where he’d been pretending to only think of her as a friend or now, pretending to be her husband.
The only difference between the scenarios was who he was lying to.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think...”
She trailed off, and he looked over at her. “What?”
She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs, the blue fabric of her skirt rippling under the movement. “Um, do you think maybe we should kiss again? Maybe we just need to get used to it. Make it less of an ordeal.”
He almost choked on his tongue. “Here? Now?”