Chapter 10

The kiss swallowed Dane whole. The intensity of it dissolved his bones until he was nothing more than sensation and heat and light, swirling in the ether as Lilith owned him completely.

He couldn’t have pulled away if his life depended on it. But he had to. Somehow.

Dredging up an enormous amount of will from who knew where, he lifted his lips, nearly weeping with the effort it took to separate his mouth from her sweetness.

“Lilith,” he croaked. “We can’t. We have to stop.”

Before he lost his mind.

“We don’t,” she murmured, her lips grazing his again as she ran her fingers through his hair with a gentle caress that threatened to drive him insane. “I already told you. I don’t care about the plastic surgery. I want to get to know the you beneath the skin.”

He groaned. Well, he wanted that too. But he didn’t get that choice because he’d already screwed up everything. “That’s not the reason why we can’t.”

“I know, I know.” She sighed and heaved back on the comforter, sprawling out to bury her head in her bent arms in a completely baffling response to his moratorium on the activity he was pretty sure they’d both rather be doing instead of talking. “It’s that dumb show.”

Her voice was muffled against the down-covered fabric but he’d heard her. “It’s not. I mean, the show is dumb, but that’s not what I was going to say. You need to listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

She didn’t roll over. Stymied all at once, he stared at the back of her head. She should sit up for this. Of course, he’d prefer that she not face him when he confessed the whole shebang but he deserved every bit of her ire, every ounce of anger she’d lambast in his direction. It was his penance for letting things get this far. For enjoying this pseudo relationship too much.

“You don’t have to say it,” she mumbled and then finally did roll enough to rest her cheek on her pillowed palms, peering up at him through her lashes. “The show is in the way. None of it is real, and the longer we perpetuate all of this pretend, the harder it will be to find even a speck of reality between us. I get it.”

Dane shook his head even as her point filtered through his beleaguered senses. “I…well, I mean, yeah. I definitely agree that the show drapes everything with this layer of complication. That’s a great segue actually. If you wanted to quit the show, I would be okay with that. We can just call it a day and be done.”

“What? No!” That got her moving. She sat bolt upright, her expression nothing short of terrified. “I do not want to quit the show. I can’t. Please don’t say that’s what you want.”

The conversation had veered so hard off course that he actually flinched. “Whoa. Let’s slow down here. I just mentioned quitting because you were talking about how the show is in the way. And it is.” Just as he opened his mouth to explain all the reasons quitting the show would be in her best interests, a single tear rolled down her cheek. Lilith was crying. Crying. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

That cracked open the floodgates. More tears joined the first in rivulets that streamed faster and faster to plop onto the comforter. His insides collapsed. Before he could fully own making the decision to move, he’d gathered her into his embrace, holding her tight against him as if that might staunch her misery.

“Lilith. Talk to me.”

“My spa is in trouble,” she wailed, turning her face into his neck to nestle there as if she had no intention of ever leaving, which worked for him. “I auditioned for the show in a half-baked attempt to save it. It’s starting to help. If I quit the show, everything will fall apart.”

“Okay,” he murmured into her hair, rocking a little because that seemed like something that might be soothing. “No one is quitting the show.”

Heaving out a pent-up breath, he filtered through that promise with growing dread. How was that going to work? If he didn’t tell her the truth, she’d be walking into a setup that would hurt her. And it would be his fault.

While she’d just said she didn’t care what he looked like under the new face, wait until he told her that the reason she felt so comfortable around him was because they’d been friends in high school. “Friends” maybe wasn’t the right word, but he’d tutored her in algebra for a whole year. She’d sat at his kitchen table dozens of times. Eaten spaghetti that his mom had cooked. The second he confessed that his name used to be Eugene, she wouldn’t be melting into his arms any longer, that was for sure.

Which didn’t help the current situation since she’d pretty much turned into a big puddle, her head buried in his shoulder. His arms fit around her perfectly, as if they’d been two stray puzzle pieces that needed each other to click.

Except they weren’t supposed to be clicking. They were supposed to be having The Talk, the one where she learned the truth so she could make some decisions about her next step. Which apparently wasn’t going to be quitting the show.

There needed to be a lot more conversation about that ASAP. “Tell me what’s happening with the spa. What kind of trouble?”

“Bad press.” She sniffed delicately. “Courtesy of my sister. Who hates me. She’s got it in for me and she chose to take her vengeance out on my business. I can’t let her win.”

Sister? What sister? Lilith had been an only child the whole time he’d known her in school, and she definitely didn’t have any siblings attending Carrol Senior High. But he couldn’t exactly ask when she’d acquired a sister without dumping a full explanation on her. And he might not know a lot about women, but he was reasonably certain that when one was crying, his job was to listen, not interrupt with his own set of problems.

“That’s crappy,” he said instead. “So she badmouthed the spa, and then what?”

“Carolina suggested that I needed to generate good publicity to counteract the bad. With a wedding.”

As she talked, her lips feathered against his neck, distracting him something fierce. She was half in his lap, her palms warm on the small of his back, and he was only human. She needed him right now and honestly, he couldn’t imagine a more pleasurable spot on the planet.

“It made sense at the time,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. “I do offer wedding packages and services. Somehow that morphed into Bride at First Sight. They’d been bugging me to audition. Why not get Relâcher’s logo front and center on a TV show? It was practically fate.”

“Yeah, fate,” he echoed faintly as he internalized that he’d had an even bigger role in creating this impossible quagmire than he’d ever have guessed. Good work, Eugene.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “That I didn’t tell you why I auditioned sooner. I should have. You deserved to know that I wasn’t doing it in hopes of meeting someone. But I had no idea I was going to like you as much as I do. How much I was going to want…things.”

He nodded against her temple because yeah. Right there too. “It’s okay. I didn’t have any illusions about a woman like you going on the show because you expected to find the love of your life. It’s not why I went on the show either.”

That’s when she sat up and wiped her face with two fingers. “I figured that you wanted to stretch your wings in a safe environment. See how your TV wife liked your new face. I think it’s admirable that you were so concerned about my reaction to your surgery that you backed off from what’s happening between us. That’s one of the many reasons that I knocked on your door this evening. Because I couldn’t stand not taking this chance.”

His imagination picked that up and galloped off with it. He didn’t have to ask what chance she meant, or where this was headed. “We shouldn’t even be discussing an off-camera relationship.”

“I know. I’m as shocked as you are. But that doesn’t magically make me stop thinking about what that might be like. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you think we should explore something that makes us happy? Because I’m not exaggerating when I say that meeting you is the best thing that’s happened to me lately.”

Something broke open inside him as he searched her face for the slightest sign of deviousness. But she wasn’t lying or trying to pull one over on him. Nothing but sincerity radiated from her face. And he was just off-kilter enough to nod. “I dream about you.”

The exact opposite of the thing he should have said.

“Dane,” she breathed and lifted one of her palms to his cheek, electrifying the skin under her hand. “Don’t hold back because of the weirdness of the show, then. We can forget about that when it’s just us. Compartmentalize. Men are good at that.”

The brief lift of her lips coaxed a smile out of him despite the war going on deep in his gut. He couldn’t tell her the truth. If he did, she’d quit the show, and she’d just gone to great lengths to explain how much she needed to keep filming it.

On the flip side, he could not let it get to the point where the producer forced him into doing the reveal episode. Could he string it out long enough to let Lilith get her publicity, then cut it off? All of it hinged on him. If he kept his mouth shut and refused to participate in the Big Reveal, the episode would fall apart. The producer could sue Dane at that point all he wanted. That way he could get Lilith the publicity she needed without allowing her to stumble into the diabolical scheme he wished he’d never set in motion.

“The weirdness isn’t just because of the show,” he muttered and scrubbed at one temple with the flat of his hand as if that might dislodge something that made sense. “You’d seriously be okay with it if we pretended to be married on the show but actually dated, for real, off camera? That’s what you’re suggesting, right?”

Bizarre didn’t begin to cover it. He could scarcely believe those words had just come out of his mouth, but there they were. And she nodded as if it was the best idea she’d ever heard.

It was not. Under no circumstances could he let a real relationship develop between them.

“I need something good right now, Dane. You.” She punctuated that with a soft kiss that he’d give a million dollars to prolong.

But he didn’t. “I’m the last thing you should be labeling good.”

She laughed against his mouth like he’d been kidding. “But you are. For me anyway. After being cheated on, I don’t do relationships. This is as close as I get. In a way, it’s like a free pass. Since none of this is real, we can just have fun and not worry about life outside of us for now. We’ll draw a big circle around us and nothing bad gets in. Doesn’t that sound great?”

It did. It sounded amazing, like exactly what he needed and could never have articulated. A free pass. Then he didn’t have to think about how he hadn’t corrected her version of the reason he’d auditioned for Bride at First Sight. Or anything else, like the truth that hadn’t come out yet.

“Compartmentalize,” he repeated, and she beamed so brightly that he nodded against his will. “I can do that.”

Eventually she’d find out the truth. He’d have to deal with that when it happened. For now, his wife needed him. The notion bloomed inside him, gaining strength and warmth.

If she wanted an off-camera relationship with her TV husband that equaled fun, he could give her that. She deserved it. Best of all, none of it was real. He could treat her like a queen, buy her outrageous presents, take her on the most over the top dates he could imagine—and he had vast untapped reaches of imagination at his disposal. All without fear of being rejected, laughed at, accused of moving too fast. For a guy who had very little idea how to navigate relationship games, it sounded like nirvana.

Maybe he could somehow treat her well enough to make up for having dragged her into this mess.

“Hypothetically speaking,” he said cautiously. “If I said okay, that sounds like a dream come true, would you let me take you on a date?”

“That’s practically a requirement,” she responded loftily with a floppy wave. “How much better publicity for the show could there be than the two stars being seen together in public?”

Oh, no. That was the last thing they needed to do. Sure, it might help the show, but if anyone got wind their relationship transcended the camera, it might reflect really badly on her once the truth came out. “Leave the locale to me. I have something special planned.”

She clapped her hands together with glee. “Don’t tease me like that. Tell me.”

Shooting her a look, he shook his head and mimed zipping his lips. “You’ll find out soon enough.” Like after he came up with something that didn’t require a public venue and would actually be worthy of Lilith. “You should go back to your room now and leave a man in peace.”

Arching a brow, she draped herself over a pillow with a saucy pout. “Oh, come on. You don’t like hanging out with me?”

“I love hanging out with you. But there’s only so much temptation I can take,” he advised her and rolled her off the bed to the floor, which she allowed with a laugh. “Let’s move this party to…somewhere else.”

Anywhere else. Though it was probably too late. It would be tough to erase the image of Lilith’s head resting on the pillow next to his. Probably he’d be seeing it in his sleep, assuming he could actually close his eyes when her scent permeated the entire bed.

“Oh, you’re not kicking me out?” Lilith paused in the doorway, hands braced on the frame as she leaned half into the room. “You’re coming with me?”

“Can’t have a date with me if I’m not there,” he said and took complete advantage of her position by wrapping his arms around her waist. The motion nested her against him, so he could walk her backward, out of the danger zone.

She squealed and hung onto his shoulders, giggling as she transformed herself into dead weight. Ha. Little did she realize he could bench press a Lilith and a half if he wanted to, which meant she impeded his progress not at all as he dragged her into the living room.

But then it turned out it didn’t matter where she was, he couldn’t stop wanting to hold her exactly like this. Kiss her exactly like this. She opened underneath his mouth, and that’s when his knees went weak.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She shouldn’t be so eager for him to touch her, but she not only wasn’t pushing him away, the little noises she made encouraged him to take it deeper, which happened involuntarily.

A lot of what happened with Lilith seemed beyond his control.

“Dane,” she murmured as she feathered her lips across his jaw. “Thank you for earlier.”

“Um, sure. Which part?”

“When I started crying. You did it exactly right.” Her happy sigh vibrated against his chest. “A lot of men don’t deal well with a woman’s tears. It’s a measure of your character that you didn’t flinch.”

His heart did a funny squiggly thing in his chest. “A lot of men are idiots,” he growled. Because really? Which part was the mystery, that she’d needed to be comforted? “Cry on my shoulder anytime.”

Lilith smiled, and it was no less bright than the sun coming up over the horizon. “It’s a good thing none of this is real. You really know how to pay attention to a woman. I could get very used to that.”

If she’d liked that, there was a lot more where that came from. And he had every reason in the world to get her used to being treated like the amazing woman she was.

Challenge accepted.