Chapter 12

Lilith’s idea of a date differed wildly from Dane’s, but he didn’t mind so much when they ended up in the resident’s courtyard in the center of Vivo at a smallish gathering (her description, not his—three people was a party in his world). At least it wasn’t too public, and the people surrounding the crackling firepit were mostly ones he’d already met in passing.

Which made the whole scene in the condo after they’d finished filming so much more perplexing. It was almost like Lilith couldn’t make up her mind about what she wanted to do. He had no trouble figuring out what constituted a good time with Lilith. If the choices were having her all to himself or taking her to a noisy place where they’d be constantly interrupted, being alone won every time.

Obviously, she hadn’t appreciated the solitude of the gazebo date as much as he’d hoped. Fine. She was a social creature, and he owed her. Plus, he liked her enough to make concessions, not that he’d ever admit that. His current job was making sure Lilith got to have fun while protecting her from the things he’d set in motion and couldn’t undo. Period. Under no circumstances did he have the luxury of working out how to get what he wanted.

“Dane, you know Carolina Kline,” Lilith said and gestured to her friend who sat in one of the Adirondack chairs surrounding the firepit.

Carolina glanced up and gave him a two fingered salute that had a lot of attitude wrapped in it. Lilith had mentioned she’d come up with the idea of saving the spa by staging a fake wedding. Since Lilith’s attention had drifted elsewhere, he leaned a palm on Carolina’s chair and said, “You’re the one who’s at the top of my Christmas list.”

The sleek blonde’s expression didn’t change, as if she was used to people saying random things to her. “Do tell.”

“To thank you for throwing me and Lilith together,” he explained, lowering his voice in case anyone else was listening. “She’s amazing.”

“And then some. So keep that in mind as whatever you’ve got up your sleeve unrolls,” she advised him coolly. “I don’t put up with my friends getting hurt.”

“Ten-four.”

There was no way Carolina had clued in on his real motivation for doing the show. Likely her warning was more of the garden variety kind, issued to any unknown quantity with guy parts. He got it. Friends looked out for each other, and it was nice that Lilith had that. She’d need someone like Carolina in her corner when the truth came out. And it would. He had no illusions about that. His job was to keep the damage to a minimum, as least on Lilith’s side.

Meanwhile, he planned to pull out all the stops to ensure Lilith enjoyed this borrowed time as long as she could.

With the fire crackling merrily at his back, Lilith reintroduced him to her business partner, Eliza Moore, who was considerably warmer toward him than Carolina had been. And not for any reason he could fathom, which begged the question—had Lilith talked to her friends about Dane? What had she said?

More importantly, why did it matter? This wasn’t high school, where he had to constantly protect himself against mean-spirited comments. No one here knew he played Rift and could quote whole sections of Robert Heinlein’s books.

“I like you,” Eliza informed him, pointing her Diet Coke can toward his chest. “You’re at least ninety percent of the reason Lilith has perma-grin lately.”

“She does?”

Sneaking a glance toward his fake wife, he studied her for a beat. She stood on the opposite side of the firepit talking to two people he didn’t know, a man and a woman who had the same jawlines and dirty blond hair that marked them as siblings. Lilith’s smile didn’t look any different than it always did—friendly, welcoming and wide.

“That’s the other reason I like you,” Eliza said with a smile of her own. “You don’t have an overinflated sense of your own charm. You seem genuine. I have a pretty good filter when it comes to men and their B.S., and you haven’t tripped my radar yet. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Noted,” he told her, somewhat bewildered at the double warnings lobbed in his direction via Lilith’s friends, albeit via two very different delivery mechanisms. “And for the record, I try to stay under the radar.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” she snorted and winked. “You’ve already generated a lot of buzz just by appearing down here with your lovely wife. You guys make a striking couple anyway, but throw in the fact that you’re slightly famous, you’re hardly invisible.”

Dane glanced around at the people surrounding the firepit, and sure enough, several of them were eyeing him as they whispered to each other behind their hands. He swallowed. The center of attention was not his favorite place to be.

But this was not high school. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Apparently he’d been stuck back in the dark ages for too long. That’s what had caused him all this trouble in the first place—because he’d nursed a grudge against Lilith for so long, he’d lost sight of the fact that everything had changed. Including him.

And he didn’t have to hide behind a computer screen any longer.

Someone snagged Eliza’s attention, so he took the opportunity to join Lilith since odds were good she’d eventually figure out he’d been skirting the fringes of the crowd. Also known as not embracing her needs. She’d asked him to attend this social event. The least he could do was not be a big loser about it. Besides, he’d left the comfort zone a long time ago.

As he drew up next to her, he slipped an arm around her waist because he wanted to, and he could. Everyone thought they were a couple; why not play that up? She glanced over at him, her smile gaining warmth as their eyes met. That, or he’d fallen prey to the power of Eliza’s suggestion from a moment ago that he had some kind of special effect on Lilith. Right now, he preferred to believe it was true.

“Dane, have you met Ivan and Shiloh yet?” Lilith nodded to the couple he’d pegged as the brother-sister combo a moment ago.

He held out a hand to Ivan first just in case he was wrong and then Shiloh. “Dane McClarren. Lilith’s husband.”

That marked the first time he’d said that out loud, and it didn’t feel as weird as it should. He’d never even practiced it in his head, nor had he intended to say it, but husband had kind of rolled out on its own. Maybe because Lilith had skated her own arm around his waist, snugging them together tight like they were a real couple. He liked it. More than he should.

“We watch the show,” Shiloh gushed enthusiastically with a head-jerk at Ivan. “Ivan’s girlfriend turned us both into converts. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of reality TV, but that wedding episode was so romantic and I just, you know, couldn’t stop watching. I’m a little jealous everything fell into place for you so easily.”

“Um, thanks.” He left it at that because what was he supposed to say? Good on us for pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes?

Ivan scowled at Shiloh. “If you want a relationship to work out, stop picking losers.”

Shiloh punched him in the arm. Hard. “Why don’t you stay out of my business? I’m an adult and I don’t need you glowering at every guy who gets within a ten-foot radius.”

Rubbing his arm, Ivan actually grinned indulgently. “That really hurt. You keep up that training, so you can deck the next guy who treats you like dirt. Then I don’t have to perfect my glower.”

Definitely siblings. But underneath the sniping, Dane could easily see that they cared for each other, no matter what. A sharp pang of jealousy knifed through his gut. Where had that come from? He’d always been a loner by choice, but all at once, the thought of having someone who loved him, who would be there always, sounded really nice.

Lilith’s thumb stroked at his waist, almost as if she’d picked up on his inner angst. Had she? And sought to comfort him? Not possible. He was imagining things. They were sort of dating, and definitely having fun, but that hadn’t afforded his fake wife any special ability to read him. She probably hadn’t even realized her thumb had moved. A lot of people fidgeted, and Lilith worked with her hands as a massage therapist. It had been a subconscious twitch, that’s all.

But then she smiled at him, and he got a little caught up in the mesmerizing way the flames from the firepit danced in her eyes. The panging inside sharpened, cutting a lot deeper.

Shiloh’s gaze darted back and forth between Dane and Lilith, and she sighed. “I’d rather find someone who looks at me like that. Then no one would have to glower or deck anyone.”

“Sorry, this one’s taken,” Lilith said cheerfully. “And I would deck you if you tried to get between us. Dane is perfect for me. I knew we were compatible from the first. During the audition. I couldn’t get over how easily we meshed, you know? Some things are just right from the beginning.”

She said it so convincingly even Dane bought it. So much so that he had to force himself not to do a double take and demand she explain further. Because it sounded like the truth.

And his stupid brain picked it up, running it through his processors so fast that a fully formed scenario popped out immediately—this relationship wasn’t as fake as they were both pretending. How was that for convoluted?

Worse, the scenario kept unspooling, playing out scenes in a crystal-clear future where he told her who he was and she didn’t care. She just smiled and said she understood why he’d felt the need to hide behind a new look. That she forgave him. That she still wanted to be with him.

And best of all, they stayed married.

They lived together in their own little world, baking cookies and eating meals together. He’d buy her flowers because it was the anniversary of their first kiss, and he’d surprise her with dinner after a long day at the spa. Everything worked out, and he finally knew what it meant to be happy in a relationship with another person.

That line of thinking had trouble written all over it. Besides, really? In what world would anything of that sort happen? Not his. It was a nice fantasy that ended in a ridiculous happily ever after that he didn’t deserve. Neither did Lilith. She deserved exactly what she’d described—someone who meshed with her right from the start, who hadn’t begun their relationship with a lie.

In other words, not Dane.

Besides, they weren’t compatible in real life. They’d just outlined how hard it would be to navigate things day in and day out when their personalities were so different. Sure, he’d attended this shindig with her, but this was an extenuating circumstance. If he had to do this social scene gig on a daily basis, he’d go insane.

Since none of this was real and he needed a distraction from how sad that made him, he drew on his coaching, turning to Ivan and asking, “What do you do?”

“I’m an app designer,” he said easily and tipped his head at Lilith. “I’m about to launch a salon-finder app your wife was kind enough to beta test for me.”

“Oh, nice. Objective-C or Java?” The technical question left his mouth before he’d thought better of it, but surely if a clean-cut guy like Ivan wrote phone application software, this was a tech-friendly group.

Plus Dane was desperate to do something that didn’t make him uncomfortable. Code he understood. Ones and zeros always did what you told them to and never made fun of you.

Ivan just shrugged. “Both. Not very well though. My background is in HTML, and of course, that doesn’t translate as well as I’d hoped. I’m an old school web designer so…”

“No, I could see that,” Dane agreed readily.

Just because you knew one language didn’t mean the others came easily. It would be like assuming because you knew Italian, your Spanish would be flawless. Sure, it could be, but you still had to study both, and syntax errors could and likely would be very difficult to spot.

Lilith and Shiloh had drifted into their own conversation, so Dane didn’t feel bad about getting into the nitty gritty with Ivan. Their conversation got pretty deep into his logic, which was impressive. As soon as Ivan found out Dane did cybersecurity, he launched into a rapid-fire round of questions that showed he had more than a passing familiarity with the subject.

“I can’t believe you’re the guy who figured out how to kill Ladybug,” Ivan said after he’d exhausted the list of vulnerabilities he’d been concerned his app might have. “That was a particularly nasty virus. You don’t talk about your job on the show. I had no idea you were a white hat hacker.”

Dane shrugged at the admiration in Ivan’s tone. “It’s not particularly glamorous I guess.”

It had been his choice to stay mum about it. Lilith talked about Relâcher all the time, which he played up after learning her sister had been badmouthing the place. But he’d gotten enough grief in his life over his nerdiness to veer away from it whenever possible.

For the first time, he’d come to a party with a date, talked about stuff that interested him with another human being who had similar interests, and no one had died. Lilith had kissed him on the cheek and fluttered off to join a small knot of women once she’d clued in his conversation with Ivan wasn’t for the faint of heart. As if it was perfectly fine for Dane to make his own friends and have fun in his own way.

As Lilith caught his gaze from across the way, she shot him a secret smile that lodged somewhere behind his ribcage, planted itself and bloomed. He couldn’t pretend that Eliza was wrong any longer. Something was happening between him and his fake wife, something he couldn’t have fathomed. Something he couldn’t have predicted.

Good thing none of this was real. What did he know about how to prolong or explore anything of the sort? He’d spent the bulk of his adult life avoiding anything that might possibly result in rejection. Someone with a better grasp on psychology might even argue he’d set this revenge scheme in motion strictly because it had no chance of ending his relationship with Lilith on a positive note.

How ironic was it he’d found something worth holding on to by creating a situation that guaranteed he’d lose it?