She’d told Nate once she never said never, but the less fanciful truth was she simply found it hard to say no. And with Nate leaning into her, all hot and male and husky with desire, she’d never wanted to say no less in her entire life.
But from nowhere some kind of latent self-protection mechanism rose out of the mist. “It’s not real.”
He blinked at her. “You sure as hell feel real to me,” he ground out.
“Would your friends agree?” she asked. He looked at her as if she was making no sense. While she felt more sensible in that moment than she had since she’d spied him slinking through the crowd. “I mean, do they know the truth about us?”
He might have flinched, but she couldn’t be sure.
“What does it matter?”
“Do they?”
He shook his head, as if clearing away cobwebs, before he looked at a point over her shoulder. “Gabe knows.”
“And what does he think?”
His eyes shot back to hers. Still hot, still rippling with desire. Only now there was a thread of desperation beneath. “He thinks I’m a fool. He’s love struck and out of his head. He’s not the man he used to be.” He pulled back. Ran a hand through his hair and swore, convincingly.
“So if he knows then Paige knows?” Saskia said, not backing down.
“Probably.”
“Mae and Clint too?”
“I don’t understand the big deal,” Nate said, exasperation tingeing his words. “I’m not going to gather them together and let them know we went home together, if that’s your concern.”
“It’s not.” In fact it was the opposite of her concern. His friends assuming he was sleeping with the woman in his life was normal. “It’s fine that your friends know. Better, actually. Lissy knows. And, like Gabe, she thinks we’re crazy. And this...” She touched his chest, felt it heave against her palm, pulled away. “This is probably why. If we take this any further we’ll be blurring the lines so much we’d be the only ones who no longer knew the truth.”
It was more than she’d meant to reveal about her nascent feelings for the guy, but she was scrambling.
Then Nate had to go and turn his intense blue eyes her way and hit her with, “What if we weren’t faking it?”
“Nate, don’t.”
“A date. For real. You and me. We’ve done dinner. You’ve met my family. I’m not seeing anyone else, just like we agreed. So what do most women consider a perfect second date? Paintball? Paris?”
“I’m not most women.”
“Tell me about it.”
He looked so solemn. Hot, a little angry, and a whole lot turned on. But it was the solemnity that made her like him—and want him—even more. With a ferocity that stole her breath clean away.
“We’d date. We’d end up in bed. But to what end?” Saskia asked, her voice gentling.
The heat in his gaze gave her imagination some idea of his answer. But it wasn’t the one she was looking for.
“This was all fine in theory, Nate. Getting to hang out with a hot guy for a few weeks and maybe even pretend to be like most women for a bit.”
He opened his mouth to say something about that, but she held up a hand in front of his face.
“But the truth is I’d like to meet a guy, date him, meet his family for real, swap keys, move in together, get married, have kids—”
Nate came over all pale and swallowed as if his mouth was filled with sand.
“And there we have it, folks.”
“What?”
“You look like you’re about to pass out!”
“Do you blame me?” he asked, pacing. “You’re three steps from walking me down the aisle—which is exactly the kind of hell I was hoping to avoid in finding a date online.”
“Thanks so very much.”
The look he shot her was dark. Her heart thumped against her ribs. She was liking the darkness. She needed professional help. “Nate. Honestly. Do you want that? A wife? Calm down!” she said when he started to pale all over again. “Not me, per se, but someone? Some day?”
“Are you really saying that if I said that I was all about the ‘Australian Dream’ you’d come home with me?”
Ignoring his attempt to sidetrack her, Saskia said, “Have you even ever come close?”
The darkness in his eyes deepened. Worse, it cooled. And right there she had her answer.
He might be hot to the touch, but at his core Nate was untouchable. And Saskia had already spent more than half her life desperately doing everything at her disposal to make someone love her, never to be quite sure if he did.