“You want to get going?” he asks, glancing down. “Your toes must be getting cold in those shoes, Miss Maggie.”
Hearing him say my name is enough to make me shiver, but it’s below freezing outside. He’ll assume I’m chilly, not that I’m falling straight into crush at first sight with my fake boyfriend.
But as we head under the clock and up the path on the other side, Coop’s cedar-and-citrus scent filling my head, I know I’m in trouble. If I’m not careful, I’m going to make a fool of myself with this handsome stranger, way more of a fool than I ever could have “flying solo.”
5
Coop
I’m screwed.
So screwed.
In four months of fake dating beautiful women, I haven’t once felt tempted to step over the line. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy good-looking ladies as much as the next guy, but it takes more than a pretty face or a hot body to get me going.
Even a pair of calves as stunning as Maggie’s isn’t enough to flip my switch—though they seriously couldn’t be any sexier.
Strong calves and slim ankles are my kryptonite.
But the only woman I’ve ever loved was a marine biologist who did stand-up comedy on the weekend. And yeah, Gretchen was beautiful, but it was her brain, her passion for her work, and her crazy belly laugh that did it for me. That made me fall for her, hard and fast, like love was a wave knocking me on my ass.
The moment I laid eyes on Gretchen, I knew I’d met someone special.
Sometimes things just click. Sometimes you look into a woman’s whip-smart eyes, see her sunshine smile, and know saying goodbye at the end of the night is going to be hell. Especially knowing that “goodbye” is forever.
But I can’t think about that now.
If I think about how much it’s going to suck to watch a woman like Maggie—the only woman who’s inspired real-life sparks since I moved to this cold and lonely city—walk away, I’m going to do a shit job of being her fake boyfriend.
“We should work out our backstory,” I say, guiding the umbrella lower as a gust of wind sends snowflakes wafting into the air. “Penny usually takes care of that with the intake paperwork, but since this is a last-minute thing, we’ll have to figure it out ourselves.”
“Okay,” Maggie says, smoothing a red curl away from her face. With her pale skin, pink cheeks, and lips painted deep red, she looks like a princess escaped from a fairy tale.
A princess in need of a kiss…
Stop thinking about kissing her, asshole. Focus, this is your job, I remind myself, willing my gaze away from Maggie’s lips. “You have any preference about the way we met?”
She draws her coat tighter around her neck. “No, not really, but it’s probably easiest to make it a work thing since that’s where I spend most of my time. Maybe you’re part of my real-estate-focused networking group?”
“Perfect. I still do handyman work on the side, so I have a few city Mr. Fix-It stories I can share if I need to.”
Her brows lift. “Oh, yeah? Penny said you taught guitar on the side.”
I smile. “I do. And I’m a handyman. And a fake date. And sometimes I deliver pizzas on Saturday nights if I don’t have a gig.” I glance toward the skyscrapers surrounding the park, where the most privileged people in this city stay safe and warm no matter what the weather’s like outside. “Life is a lot more expensive here than it was back home.”
Maggie makes a sympathetic noise. “It really is. My dad co-signed on my first loan ten years ago. If he hadn’t, I never could have gotten a toehold in the market, let alone started a flipping business.” She sighs. “Sometimes I feel guilty for having a leg up on the rest of the people struggling to get by. I mean, I work really hard, but my parents’ money made the difference between jumping right into the kind of work I wanted to do and struggling for a decade to save the capital to even get started.”
I touch a light hand to the small of her back, trying not to notice how good it feels to touch her. “You shouldn’t feel guilty. We all have our own path.”
“We do, but I’m not sure why I got a paved multipurpose trail and so many people get a rocky trek through the spider-infested jungle.” She shudders.
“Not a spider fan?”
“No. Remind me to tell you the story about the tarantula in my sleeping bag at summer camp later.” She turns to face me in the light of an antique streetlamp. “So we met at a flipper networking event in Highline Park.”
“I asked you for coffee,” I add, “and you said yes.”
“And the rest is history?” She cants her head to one side, her nose wrinkling. “Or is that lame?”