Chapter 3

“Maybe a month,” Burke heard himself say. He felt like he was floating outside of his body, and Ash didn’t seem to be breathing or blinking at all.

She tipped her face toward the sky and started laughing.

Burke frowned, his hands dropping to his sides. This was no time to laugh. They needed a plan, immediately. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed himself to run a mile before telling her.

“Breathe,” he said, wondering what was so horrific about being his girlfriend for a few weeks.

Ash took in a deep breath and reached out her hand like she needed something to hold onto. He grabbed her and steadied her. “Breathe, Ash.”

She did, and he noticed as her freckles popped out on her skin until she got more color in her face. “I was not expecting that.”

Burke wanted to ask what she was expecting, but he figured it was along the lines of attending a scuba diving lesson with him. Or, in his case, holding his phone while she recorded him trying to catch a big wave during one of his surfing sessions.

“My dad is serious about this.” Burke let go of her hand and paced away for a few steps. He turned back and returned. “He wants the flower farm to stay in the family for six more generations. I want that too. I do.” He exhaled, glanced at Ash, who still hadn’t moved, and paced away again.

I just don’t want to date, he thought.

But that wasn’t it. The real cause of the unsettled feeling in his gut—which had been there for six long years—was the fact that he didn’t want to risk his heart again. Didn’t want to get hurt again. Didn’t want to fall in love with a pretty woman only to have her tell him she wasn’t that serious about him.

An experimentation that didn’t work out.

Pain lanced through his chest all over again, and he flinched. When he faced Ash again, she’d squared her slight shoulders. “All right,” she said. “I said I’d do it, and I’ll do it.”

“Really?”

“On one condition.”

Burke’s hopes stalled in the way they rose. “A condition?”

“I need to know your plan for finding a real girlfriend.”

Of course, Ash would ask for the hardest thing of all. Burke had always been able to tell her the truth. Well, about most things. Not Bridgette. And not how her older brother had warned him not to fall in love with Ash.

Burke had laughed at that, as he’d never looked at Ash with any idea of kissing her. But as he studied her now, he saw her beauty and imagined himself sweeping his hand along the side of her face and into her hair just before he kissed her.

After all, a boyfriend had to kiss his girlfriend, right?

There were so many details to work out, and Burke couldn’t order them all, especially not with the fantasy of kissing Ash in his mind now.

“Burke? Tell me you have a plan for finding a real girlfriend.”

“I don’t have a plan for that,” he said, pulling himself back to the present. Any kissing that happened would be an act. “See how badly I need your help?”

Ash rolled her eyes, the zombie-like state she’d fallen into gone now. “You realize this is two favors, right?”

“What can I say?” Burke said. “Our friendship has always been easy. This is just a slight complication.” He grinned at her, and she narrowed her eyes.

“Are you seriously giving me your flirty smile right now?” She slapped his chest, causing him to fall back a step in the sand. “You realize that only works on women who think you’re cute.”

He put his hand over the spot she’d hit. “I prefer handsome.”

She shook her head, her ponytail swinging from side to side, but she wore a smile that said she’d still go along with this.

“This is never going to work,” she said.

“Oh, come on.” He slid his arm around her shoulders and started back down the beach toward their meeting spot. She lived in a cottage near there, and he whistled for Dolly to come along.

“Remember that play you were in in tenth grade? You slayed that.”

She scoffed out half a laugh. “I was terrible in that role, and I never got cast in a play again.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And no one says slayed anymore.” She elbowed him slightly in the ribs, and he recoiled like she’d really hurt him.

“So I’ll come by tonight, and we’ll make a plan?” he asked.

To Ash’s great credit, she said, “Yeah, all right,” before continuing down the beach and disappearing between a couple of trees on her way to her almost-beachside cottage.

Burke stayed on the beach for a few more minutes, mostly to calm his still accelerated pulse.

Ash really was his best friend.

They could do this.

And so what if he’d enjoyed holding her hand? That didn’t mean anything.

Did it?

Burke had no idea, and he had so many other problems to solve, he couldn’t add another thing for his mind to riddle through.

His phone snapped, crackled, and popped as he entered his office that evening. He’d spent the morning in the fields and then the afternoon in the accounting department, as they were gearing up for an annual conference and would be out of the office for a week just after the company barbecue.

He didn’t have to look at his phone to know it was Ash. He’d set that notification specifically for her, because of her love for the crispy rice cereal that made the same noise. In fact, Ash could eat cereal for every meal—and she claimed to sometimes do just that.

Burke didn’t really believe her. Number one, he knew she was a diva for a hot lunch. She got cranky if she couldn’t have one, and said a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a salad simply wasn’t good enough.

He also knew she cooked every night for her mother, who was slowly getting worse and worse as her cancer progressed. After her father had died about five years ago, Ash had taken on the evening routine of checking on her mother. Her older brother, Leo, went sometimes, but he had a demanding job and two young kids.

Burke couldn’t believe he and Leo were the same age. They’d been best friends all growing up, and still were despite apparent differences in their lives. Of the two Fox’s, Burke preferred Ash these days, as Leo had never approved of Burke’s friendship with his little sister.

And once he found out about this relationship?

Burke sighed as he removed his phone from his back pocket to check Ash’s message. Leo would probably come knock Burke’s door right off its hinges and demand to know what he was thinking.

I have a ton of leftover lobster fritters, Ash had texted. Just bring the sodas.

Burke smiled at the message. If there was a better food on the planet than Ash’s lobster fritters, he didn’t want to know. She served them with two sauces: a lemon mayonnaise or a sweet honey glaze. Burke sometimes dipped his in both sauces, which made Ash wrinkle that cute little nose of hers.

He dropped his phone when his fingers spasmed. The resulting clunk! echoed through the empty office. “Cute?”

Burke’s face heated though he was alone. When had he started thinking Ash was cute? “Maybe about the time you started holding her hand,” he muttered to himself as he bent to pick up his phone.

Luckily, the screen hadn’t cracked, and he hurried to thumb off a response about the fritters. He didn’t need to ask what kind of soda she wanted. She only got one thing—the pretty in pink—from Maui’s. He wasn’t sure why she liked pink grapefruit, raspberry, and cherry in her Diet Coke, but he didn’t have to drink the stuff.

He left the office, swung by the soda shop, and arrived at Ash’s cottage in time to see her walk through the front door and close it behind her. For some reason, he stayed behind the wheel of his sports car and watched that blue rectangle for a moment.

They’d painted it together, about a year ago. She’d told him about her first date with Milo, and Burke had made fun of the man’s name. “Sounds like a cat,” he’d said, and Ash had swept blue paint up his arm and laughed.

Milo had turned out to be just as nasty and standoffish as most felines, and he certainly didn’t like Ash’s friendship with Burke. She still ran with him every morning though, and they just didn’t talk about Milo—until he broke up with her.

His phone snapped and crackled, and Ash had sent, I’m thirsty. Come inside already.

Burke smiled at his phone, collected the sodas, and walked across her grass. Most people in Hawaii who lived a few feet from the beach didn’t worry too much about grass. But not Ash. She mowed it and watered it and put fertilizer down in the spring. Her grass was one of her most prized possessions, and Burke gave it a grin too.

He went in without knocking and said, “Your pretty in pink,” before brandishing the tall soda cup toward her.

“Why were you just sitting out there?”

“Thinking,” he said.

She sucked on her straw for several long seconds. “Mm, this is so good.” She smacked her lips as Burke noticed the black skirt she wore. It fell to her knees and hugged her curves. She’d paired it with a yellow blouse with white stripes, and she was classy and chic and cute all rolled into one package.

“How’s Deb?” he asked, his tone only slightly strangled. He wasn’t sure why his thoughts had chosen today to betray him, but he was determined to stay until he and Ash had a reasonable plan for their fake relationship.

“She’s actually doing okay,” she said. “Claims to not like lobster anymore but okay.” Ash shrugged and turned back to the kitchen. “That’s why I have so many leftover fritters.”

“I’m always up for a lobster fritter.” Burke wondered when the conversation would turn toward his insane request from that morning, and he decided as he watched Ash start to unwrap the lobster fritters and set out the sauces that he’d just let her dictate the pace of the conversation. He usually did, and they’d always gotten along so well because of it.

“Just one?” she asked, a teasing glint in her eye.

“All of them.” He grinned as he sat at her bar and let her get them on a tray and into the oven to crisp up again.

She turned toward him and exhaled. “So. What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Burke echoed. “That’s why I’m here tonight. We’re going to make the plan.”

Displeasure sat in her dark eyes. “Tell me you have some idea of how and when we started dating.”

Burke brightened. “Sure, yeah. I told my dad we’d been friends for a while and decided to try, I don’t know, something more a few months ago.”

“A few months.” She folded her arms.

“Yeah.” Burke watched her, realizing he’d already messed up. Of course you did—the moment you opened your mouth and told Dad you had a girlfriend. “Bad?”

“I think it should be a few weeks. You’re not that great at time stuff, so it’ll be fine.”

“Why a few weeks instead of months?” Burke asked.

Every shutter Ash possessed flew into place, and she turned away from him. In the past, Best Friend Burke would’ve let her shut herself off and they would’ve moved on. Eaten. Talked about nothing. And he’d have gone home without worrying about why she’d shut down.

But now…something itched, clawed, craved to know what was going on inside her head. Why it should be weeks instead of months. Why Ash had that adorable blush in her cheeks.

“Ash?” he pressed, something he hadn’t done much.

She turned back to him, her eyes storming, and said, “Because, Burke, I’ve only been broken up with Milo for a few months,” in a tone that indicated he should’ve known that.