The Bookworm's Guide to Faking It (The Bookworm's Guide 2)

She’d scrubbed me out of her life.

It stung that it was all over a mistake, but that was why I’d let her go last night. If I was shaken by the revelation that she’d once had feelings for me, I couldn’t imagine how she felt.

Did she feel the same way I did? That it’d all been for, what was, essentially nothing? It’d been a huge misunderstanding, and if it’d happened now, maybe it would have ended differently.

I know it would have.

If it’d happened now, there was no way I’d ever have left without telling her the truth.

Back then, I hadn’t had the balls to make her listen.

If I regretted not making her listen, did she regret not letting me talk when I’d tried?

That was a stupid question. I knew her—she hadn’t changed, not like she pretended she had. That was why she’d needed to go last night. It was because she’d needed to reconcile what she knew now with what she thought she knew.

She wasn’t the only one.

I couldn’t believe she’d felt the same way I had.

If I’d known…

I blew out a long breath and leaned back against the headboard, turning to look out of the window. The early morning sun glinted off the snow, and the lingering glow of the sunrise as it fully crept up into the sky left the mountains bathed in an orange hue that made it feel like I was staring at a real-life postcard.

The bathroom door opened, and Holley stepped out, pausing in the doorway when she caught sight of me awake. She was wearing nothing but two towels—one wrapped around her body that she clutched at her breasts, and one twisted around her hair.

Water droplets ran down the sides of her faces and onto her chest where they traversed the curve of her collarbone, disappearing into the fluffy white towel that, if her white knuckles were any indication, she was gripping onto like her life depended on it.

“Morning,” I said gently.

Her tongue darted out and wet her lips. “Morning.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” she replied, somewhat more honestly than I thought she would.

Something told me she didn’t want to talk about it right now.

“I ordered breakfast,” I offered. “I didn’t know what you wanted so I got a bunch of stuff. And coffee. And fruit.”

Nodding, she shifted, still holding onto the towel. “Not that this conversation isn’t completely riveting, but would you mind if I put on some panties?”

Right.

She was naked under that towel.

Mother—

I shifted on the bed and moved the covers so she wouldn’t see the fact that my cock had apparently engaged its brain and realized that fact at the same time my actual brain had.

If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.

She grabbed some clothes from her suitcase and disappeared back into the bathroom. I breathed out a sigh of relief when the door clicked shut, then moved the covers aside and looked down at my traitorous penis.

“Get down,” I whispered to it. “This is not the time.”

Now don’t think I’d lost my mind.

It could hear me.

Whether it listened was another matter altogether.

I dropped the covers again, and just in time. Holley came back out, this time fully clothed, but still wearing the towel on her head. She’d obviously caught my movement because she frowned before quickly schooling her expression into one of nonchalance.

“You wanna talk?”

“No,” she answered. “Not really.” She bent over and flipped her head forward so the towel loosened, unwinding until her wet hair flicked down. She squeezed the towel around her dark hair, then rubbed her scalp before she straightened and flicked it back up again.

Her hair was a mess.

She pulled a brush from her case and tugged it through her hair, and I waited until she was done before I spoke.

“We have to talk.”

“No, we don’t.” She finally looked at me, meeting my eyes. “Not right now. All I want to do right now is get through this wedding, get through this afternoon, get through pretending to be your girlfriend, and go home where I can forget this ever happened.”

A loud knock at the door got me out of bed. “Wrong answer,” I said, heading out of the bedroom to the suite door.

It was our breakfast, and I directed the guy to bring it into the main room. I signed the receipt he gave me and handed it all back, then he left.

Holley’s head poked around the door. “Is that coffee?”

“I said I got it.”

“Thank God.”

I stepped in front of the cart. “You’re not having it until we’ve talked.”

She froze. “Are you being serious right now?”

“Do I sound like I’m joking?”

“You’re not gonna sound like anything if you try to have this conversation with me before coffee,” she warned, her eyes flashing in annoyance. “I don’t want to have this conversation at all.”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I walked toward her, and she backed up, right into the bedroom.