“I know. I’m hungry,” Felicia said.
That made me grin. “Remind me not to get between you and a meal again.”
I ordered the duck and sipped my wine as the waitress retreated. The champagne was too sweet for me to have more than a few sips. “Clothes gone and you want to keep your apartment. Anything else?”
“You let me have the TV remote, generally speaking.”
“Now hold on a minute. What do you mean by generally speaking? Are you going to be blaring HGTV and the Food Network twenty-four/seven?”
“I don’t watch Food Network. Good God, who do you think I am? I am not a woman who cooks. I do watch a lot of HGTV but I also might be a bit obsessed with crime TV. You’d be amazed how many people disappear and no one ever finds their bodies. How do you hide a whole body? It’s astonishing.”
I stared at her, not exactly sure if she was serious or not. “You’re not watching that shit in the bedroom. You can watch it in the living room but not in bed. I’m not going to fall asleep with Deadly Women playing in the background.”
She laughed. “I can see how that might be off-putting. That’s fair. Keep murder out of the bedroom.”
“I want that made into a neon sign for over the bed. Very modern.”
“I’ll get you that as an engagement gift,” she said.
Felicia lifted her champagne glass and tilted it, eyeing me mischievously from under those dark lashes. It was a look that both turned me on and made me wonder what the hell I was getting myself into.
“A gift isn’t necessary. Though a party probably is. For legitimacy.”
Her eyebrows went up. “We can’t tell people the truth, can we?”
“No. If we do, then they’re culpable if they’re questioned and they lie. No, we have to tell our friends it’s a whirlwind engagement.”
“My friends are going to figure it out. They’re not stupid.”
“But you can’t confirm it.”
She sipped from her glass, then set it down. “A holiday engagement party?”
“That works. Are you done with your demands?” They seemed simple enough. I had zero objections to what she had requested.
“We have to agree to show each other our absolute worst,” she said. “If you want this to be a true litmus test. No putting on our best behavior. We have to be truthful and authentic.”
I frowned at her. “I’m not sure about absolute worst. I agree with you that we should be authentic, of course. But we don’t need to test each other’s limits.”
“I disagree. I’m going to show you all my annoying qualities so we don’t get swept along with the fantasy.”
I was about to grumble but agree when she raised her index finger.
“Oh, and one more thing. No sex.”
Seven
“What?” Michael sounded outraged. “Why? That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t want us to get confused by lust and attraction and think it’s something more than it really is. We have to know our feelings are real if we decide to stay together after the forty days.”
“We’ve already had sex. Great sex. You can’t exactly undo that.”
“Those are my rules.” Or guidelines. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do forty whole days without sex, giving that Michael was right. It had been great sex. “We can tonight, but once I move in, we need to show restraint.”
“That makes exactly zero sense. We’ll be living together. Sharing a bed. Showing our friends that we’re having a relationship. People doing all of those are having sex.”
“This isn’t a normal relationship.” The champagne was going to my head. I needed a meal or I was going to wind up believing this was a real engagement. But the bubbly tasted delicious and I couldn’t seem to stop drinking it.