Pretend I'm Yours (Pretend 1)

“I should know something about you if I’m going to pretend I’m your boyfriend for the day. What if someone asks me what your favorite food is or if you prefer red or white wine and I don’t know the answer?”

She scrunches her face as she thinks a moment. “I rarely drink, but usually red wine, I guess, if I was going to choose. I don’t have a favorite food either, and trust me, no one will ask. The basics are I go to UC Santa Barbara, and I’m graduating in two weeks with a business degree with a minor in finance. My best friend is Serena. I’ve lived with her all four years of college. We moved into the apartment last year. I love running. That’s what I spend most of my time doing. And I teach yoga classes at the YMCA. And I don’t bring guys home ever. So be ready for everyone to be shocked as hell at the sight of you.”

She eyes me brightly with a goofy smile.

I blink rapidly, trying to take everything in. Except, all I can focus is on one thing. “How can you not have a favorite food? It’s not possible. My favorite things are sex and pizza. Preferably together, but I’ll take them separately.”

She bursts into laughter. Most of the women I’ve dated, I’ve hated their laughs. Not Larkyn’s, though. I love her laugh. It’s not too high-pitched. It’s not pretty either. She doesn’t laugh while trying to bat her eyelashes at me or hide some of it to keep it feminine. Her laugh is deep and glorious.

“Sorry, I’m just imagining Harlow with cheese and marinara all over her body. And her annoyed face when some of the sauce reached into her hair. It made my day to think of her like that.”

I narrow my eyes, amused at her. “How do you know Harlow?”

Her laughter stops, and her cheeks blush. “I may have looked you up. I thought the same thing; that I should know something about you if I was going to pretend you’re my boyfriend. Harlow was in a lot of the pictures I found. Unfortunately, I didn’t know much about you before that night, only Sebastian.”

My heart hurts, and my throat growls.

Her eyes widen and stare at my neck.

I don’t know why I growled, but I hate that she thought of my brother, and not me.

Her face changes. It lights up like the sun outside, whizzing by over the rolling hills. We haven’t passed any houses or towns in a while. Hopefully, she’s not taking me somewhere where she can push me off a cliff.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think you have to worry about me thinking about Sebastian like that ever again,” she winks.

I sigh and try to forget about my brother. “So you think you know everything you need to know about me?”

She grins. “You graduated from Stanford four years ago. You own several businesses. Real estate, wh

iskey line, but your love is the bars you own. You’ve dated, but don’t seem to have a steady girlfriend. You’re one of LA’s sexiest bachelors according to the article with an accompanying naked picture.” She wiggles her eyebrows.

I chuckle. “They didn’t ask my permission to use that photograph!”

She laughs. “Why did a photograph exist where you were completely naked on a bed except for the sheets draped over your crotch?”

“I guess you don’t know everything about me then.”

She blushes, and her eyes alight like it’s a challenge to figure out why I have the picture. If she figures it out, she won’t like the answer. A woman took it after I slept with her. She just happened to be a photographer and sold it to the magazine. I didn’t bother fighting it since it gave me and the business good press.

“What else do you know?”

“I know that the town loves you. You’re a King. Your father left you an empire, and your mother left you when you were a kid. I know you have at least six cars and three homes across California.”

“What about the important stuff? Like favorite food, drink, and sex position?”

That last part earns me a scowl, and she’s as beautiful scowling as she is smiling. “Pizza apparently, scotch or whiskey I’d guess, but you’ll be served neither at the party. My father’s too cheap to serve anything like that. And sex position is any, as long as the woman is covered in marinara sauce.”

I smirk and bring her hand to my lips again to kiss her.

This time she doesn’t hide her smile. She reaches with her other hand to turn on the radio, and it blares a country love song. She raises her eyebrows. “Really?”

I shrug. “I happen to like a good country ballad.”

She turns the volume down. “Even this cheesy romantic crap about doing anything to win a girl back and driving down a country road in your truck?” She pauses. “You don’t own a truck, do you?”

I chuckle. “I don’t own a truck. And yes, I happen to like the cheesy shit.”

I turn the volume back up and start belting along with Kenny Chesney.