Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

And my stomach is in knots. For starters, I’m wearing a dress and I think I regret it. Daniel keeps giving me weird looks, and I think maybe I’m overplaying this whole ‘engagement’ thing. I should have stuck to shorts and not made a big deal of it, but I let Betsy talk me into dressing up for our first date, and now I’m pretty sure that everyone is town is staring at me behind my back.

Surreptitiously, I smooth the back of one hand over my butt, just double-checking that my skirt’s covering it. The dress is a little longer than knee-length, but I’m still paranoid that somehow, I’m showing someone the goods by accident.

I’m not.

I’m also nervous because everyone I’ve ever met in my life is probably here, and I have to convince all of them that Daniel and I are so in love that we’re going to get married. No matter how many times Betsy told me to chill, and that engaged people pretty much just act like regular people, I’m anxious.

As if on cue, a shrill whistle cuts through the noise of the crowd. Daniel and I both stiffen and turn our heads at the exact same time, and even though it’s a small town I’m ready to flip someone off when I see Silas waving his arms in the air at us.

“Oh,” I say, and Daniel laughs.

“That was rude,” Rusty points out, but we make our way through the crowd and toward Silas.

Along the way, Daniel takes my hand in his, and instantly I step on the back of my own shoe, stumbling for half a second. He just holds my hand a little tighter and looks over.

“You okay?”

“Fine, just clumsy,” I tell him, fighting the redness I can feel creeping into my cheeks.

Bang up job so far, I think.

“I’m not eating all the powdered sugar parts,” Silas is saying when we make our way over to him. “It’s funnel cake. It’s all powdered sugar parts.”

“Yes, you are, and stop it,” the woman next to him says, taking a forkful of fried dough and tugging it off the plate they’re sharing. “I swear I’ll tell Mom and Dad.”

“What, that I offered to share my funnel cake with you, and you complained? Hi,” Silas says, that last part to us. “You know June, right?”

June waves her fork in greeting, her mouth full of funnel cake.

“You visiting for Riverfest?” I ask.

Silas is Levi’s best friend, three years older than Daniel and me, but his younger sister June was in our class. We were friendly in high school, though she went to college and then moved to Raleigh, so we haven’t talked much since then.

She shakes her head, still chewing.

“June moved back to town,” Silas says. “She’s exploring some promising opportunities in Sprucevale, considering a few other options, and taking some downtime to weigh her next career move.”

June raises both her eyebrows at Silas and swallows.

“Can you write my resumé for me?” she asks. “That sounds way better than ‘I got fired so I moved back home.’”

“You got laid off,” Silas protests, tugging more funnel cake off the plate. “It’s completely different.”

“Still unemployed,” she says, then turns her attention to us. “Hey, guys. How are you? Engaged, right? Congrats!”

“Thank you,” Daniel says, and squeezes my hand. “We’re excited.”

“Who won the betting pool?” she asks.

“Betting pool?” I ask.

Silas shoots her a look, and she ignores it.

“I think it was at like five hundred bucks or something,” June says. “There was maybe a five-dollar buy-in, and you had to name the month and year that you two would finally go public — what?”

Silas is giving his little sister a look.

“You’re not supposed to tell them,” he says.

“Why?”

“You’re just not. It’s manners.”

“Is it also manners to have a betting pool in the first place?” June asks. “Or is it perfectly all right to wager money on people as long as you never tell them what you’re doing?”

“It’s complicated,” Silas mutters, and June rolls her eyes.

“Besides,” she goes on. “I knew about it and I was in another state, how did you two not know?”

“No one told us,” I say, trying not to laugh at them.

Even in high school, June was straightforward, fearless, and unafraid to speak her mind to whoever was listening. It got her in trouble more than once, but I always liked that about her.

“You can’t tell them, because then they could win the pool by rigging it,” Silas points out.

“So don’t let them enter.”

“They could easily use a proxy,” he says, and then nods at something over my shoulder. “For example, they get Levi to enter them, tell him the day that they’re going to go public with their relationship, and then split the winnings with him.”

“What did I win?” says Levi’s voice. “I hope it’s not another lifetime supply of Capri Sun, that was a complete — hello.”