“Ouch,” I said jokingly, although I wasn’t totally joking. Yes, I knew about my reputation as being a player, but it wasn’t earned. I wasn’t a Lothario, despite my vast dating experience, which I blamed on Trina. It was all her fault. If I could stop liking her, I could move on. But each time I tried seeing another woman, I couldn’t stop thinking of Trina. It wasn’t fair to the woman to see them while pining for Trina. I always felt like a douchbag when I imagined Trina naked and calling my name to make myself come while I was fucking one of them.
So after each failed attempt to move on, I’d have to end it. Last year, I gave up, and let me say, going without sex—real sex with a woman—wasn’t easy. If I couldn’t get Trina to change her mind about me, I was going to end up celibate and alone except for my hand and dirty thoughts about fucking her tits.
I shrugged like the comment didn’t bother me. “I just think Trina is right in this case. But if it was hard for you when you were in love with my sister, and she clearly had the hots for you, well then, who am I to say otherwise?”
Wyatt gave me a glare and then drank his beer.
Sinclair, never one to back off from an argument, a trait I was counting on to help me in my fake marriage quest, continued, “I bet you couldn’t do it.”
I could feel the wind changing in my favor. She was on the verge of suggesting I give it a try. If I played this right, she’d suggest that I have a fake marriage with Trina, which would give me the opportunity to spend time with her and hopefully find out what bee got up her bonnet to make her hate me, and entice her to see that I could be the man for her.
2
Trina
Sometimes I didn’t understand Sinclair. I mean, really! Why was she fussing about her fake marriage to Wyatt? He was handsome, totally, one-hundred percent infatuated and devoted to her and Alyssa, and what had started out as a fake marriage was now real. And not once did either of them thank me, since it was my idea that they get hitched to solidify his claim to his family’s farm and work to keep that billionaire bastard Simon Stark from taking farmland to build a prison. That was gratitude for you.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, what a hardship that must have been for you to live with the father of your child,” I said to Sinclair. Then to Wyatt, I said, “For you to live with the woman you loved. Yeah, real hard. You two have no reason to complain. You kept your land. Stark isn’t building a prison. You probably have sex everyday and twice on Sundays. Your marriage is real. Win-win. You should be thanking me that I’d come up with such a great plan.”
“She’s right,” Ryder said, as he reached for a bottle of whiskey and poured a shot for a man sitting two stools down for me.
I looked at him suspiciously. It never felt right when he and I were on the same page.
Sinclair shook her head and laughed. She patted my hand, making me feel like I was missing something. “You’ve been my best friend forever, but you’re remembering this wrong. Yes, it was your idea, and perhaps I do owe you a little gratitude—”
“A little?”
“We do have a lot of sex,” Wyatt admitted. “Even when it was a fake marriage. Remember under the tree and on the table—”
Sinclair’s cheeks reddened. “Wyatt!”
“Should I beat him up?” Ryder asked, but it wasn’t real. Ryder hadn’t been bothered that his best friend and sister were together. Ryder never seemed to get upset at anything, which was another thing that made me suspicious of him. Affable people had something wrong with them. It just wasn’t right to go through life without a care in a world.
“The point is, the idea was hairbrained. I’m still shocked it worked.” Sinclair shook her head. “Happy, but shocked.”
I pressed my hand to my chest, feigning offense. “The idea was ingenious. You’re jealous you didn’t think of it yourself.”
Wyatt laughed.
“You knew it would work,” I said pointing my finger at him.
He shook his head and held up his hands. “I went along to try and win the girl.”
Ryder reached over the bar and put his hand on my shoulder as he looked at his sister and best friend. “You all shouldn’t underestimate Trina.”
I shrugged his hand off, not liking the zap of awareness that zinged through my body at his touch. It never made sense to me how I could find him so fully annoying, and at the same time, sinfully sexy.
“I don’t need you to defend me,” I said. “The proof is in the pudding, right? Look at them. Saccharinely happy. By their own admission, they’re having lots of sex. I can’t buy that fake marriage was any hardship for you.”
“Okay, so why don’t you prove that me and Wyatt weren’t a fluke?” Sinclair said, arching a brow in challenge.
I could only stare at her, not sure where she was going with that.
“I bet you couldn’t be fake married to someone for even one month. In fact, I’d be surprised if you made it a week without running away screaming.” She smirked and held up her beer as if to put an exclamation point on her comment.
I scoffed. “It would be a cakewalk if I had a good reason, like you two did.”
“Even if your life depended on it, I don’t think you could do it.” Sinclair finished her beer.