Secret Kiss (20 page)

Rounding out the four friends was Lauren, who was about a head taller than everyone at five foot ten, and she looked like a living, breathing goddess. She was a real estate agent who’d met her hubby, the host of
Home Sweet Home
, when he’d done a celebrity edition with Karina. Lauren had been on hand as a real estate consultant. And from what Jane had heard, Ben and Lauren’s first meeting was reminiscent of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd on
Moonlighting
. They hadn’t gotten along. But then Lauren had been hired as Ben’s co-host on a spin-off show,
Home Sweet Vacation Home
, and the two quickly realized that the tension they’d felt was more of the sexual variety than dislike.

The other tall, blonde, and beautiful girl in attendance was the girl Jane knew the best for obvious reasons—Nikki. She had been a flight attendant before returning to school after an eight-year break and finishing her master’s degree in psychology. She’d met Mike at an airport bar when they had both been snowed in on a layover. He’d come over to her table pretending to be her boyfriend because she was being hit on by a sleaze-ball…and the rest was history.

Amy was the polar opposite of her sister. The petite brunette had met her husband, Matt, when he’d moved to Hope Falls and started teaching at the high school, where she was also a teacher. Their path to HEA had been bittersweet, romantic, and sexy. Matt had moved to Hope Falls to teach and start fresh after his wife and unborn child had been killed in a car accident five years prior. He’d given up on love, and at the time, Amy had had no interest in love. But she’d been on a mission to find what was missing in her life—passion. As it turned out, Matt and Amy had both gotten more than they’d bargained for in their “sex only” relationship.

And last was the newest member of their book club. Shelby, Matt’s little sister, had moved to town a couple of months ago and married Adam’s cousin, Levi. Jane had met her when Shelby was bartending at JT’s Roadhouse. She didn’t know the entire story behind her and Levi’s path to newlywed bliss, but she did know that the two had met at Matt and Amy’s wedding two years prior to Shelby’s move to Hope Falls—and they’d apparently made quite an impression on each other.

Jane smiled as she realized that, even though it was under false pretenses, these women were actually all cheering for her happiness. Literally. A warm feeling of acceptance overcame her because she’d never had a group of friends who were this supportive.

Shaking her head, she lifted her hands in mock surrender, waving them back and forth. “I hate to disappoint you, but Adam and I are not together.”

“Bullshit,” Nikki coughed into her hand.

“No. I’m serious.” Jane went on to explain the entire sordid tale to the group, and they were hanging on her every word.

She decided to leave out the part about her grandparents walking in on Adam
kissing her
. And the part where they had interrupted them going at it again when they’d texted from the restaurant, but other than that, she told them everything.

“Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to say something at Bingo?” Lauren, who was the most pragmatic—and not just of the group, but of all the women in Hope Falls—asked.

“No.” Jane shook her head. “I’ve seen my grandparents play Bingo. They’re all business. Competitive is an understatement. Plus, the whole town was already talking about the fact that Adam and I, thanks to you”—Jane pointedly tilted her head towards Nikki—“went to the fundraiser together.”

“Umm, you’re welcome,” Nikki joked. Then she asked, “So, it was his idea to pretend to be your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Jane nodded.

The girls nodded and shot knowing looks to each other.

“Oh yeah. That boy’s a smitten kitten fo’ sheezy breezy,” Karina stated in her perfect slang, as if this were fact. She was the only one of them who could pull that off.

“No, it’s not like that.” Jane didn’t want them getting the wrong idea. “He was just trying to help. He’s a really nice guy. I think even he didn’t want to disappoint my grandparents after they’d flown all the way here to meet him. That’s all it is.”

“I don’t know. Sue Ann said that Adam couldn’t keep his hands off you last night,” Karina said.

“He was just trying to make it believable. Honestly, that’s it. Nothing is going on between us.”

Other than the heart-stopping, tingle-inducing, panty-melting kissing,
Jane silently added. Yeah. Other than that.

“Well, that boy is either one hell of an actor or, as Karina so eloquently put it, ‘one smitten kitten,’ because when I stopped by to pick up my takeout, I almost passed out from the heat.” Sam fanned herself dramatically. “The looks he was giving you were so hot they could have set the place on fire.”

Jane’s cheeks were heating up. Not only because of the uncomfortable turn this conversation had taken, but also because of the memory of the scorching looks Sam was referring to. As much as she wanted to deny that they’d happened, if for no other reason than to put the pedal to the metal and speed along her road to Drop It Lane, she couldn’t. She could reiterate that the looks hadn’t meant anything, but she couldn’t argue their occurrence.

The problem was that Jane didn’t know what they’d meant or if they’d ever happen again, and as much as she wanted to talk to her friends and tell them everything, she couldn’t. Maybe she’d be able to open up to these women who’d been nothing but supportive and welcoming one day, but now, Jane was still adjusting to the fact that she had such a large group of friends. She simply wasn’t comfortable opening up like that yet.

Thankfully, in a surprising turn of events, Nikki came to her rescue. “Well, it looks like we’re going to have to agree to disagree. But mark my words: that man is not just pretending to be your boyfriend out of purely altruistic motivations. He has a serious thing for you. And this is definitely a to-be-continued conversation.”

The girls all agreed with Nikki’s summation, and the topic moved on when Karina announced that she and Ryan had finally set a date for their wedding. As the girls congratulated their friend and talked about wedding plans, Jane couldn’t help but picture herself walking down the aisle.

That in and of itself wasn’t a new fantasy for Jane. She was one of those stereotypical girls who’d played wedding with her Barbies, put lace on her own head, and pretended that it was a veil. The new twist on her fantasy came in the form of the groom—whose face now looked an awful lot like Adam Dorsey.

*

“So, what happened to nothing going on between you and Jane?” Levi asked before Adam’s ass had even hit the barstool.

His cousin had texted him earlier and asked him to come by the bar after work and have a drink. He’d agreed even though it was the last thing he’d wanted to do. Adam’s less-than-enthusiastic response to the request had had nothing to do with not wanting to see his cousin and everything to do with not wanting to answer the inevitable onslaught of questions that awaited him.

Levi’s opening remarks were Exhibit A.

“It’s not what you think.” Adam didn’t feel like he owed his cousin an explanation, but he was pretty sure Levi didn’t agree.

“Oh, it’s not, huh?” Levi nodded casually. “Okay, so, you
weren’t
at Sue Ann’s last night on a double date with Jane’s grandparents, groping her like a teenager in a movie theater trying to cop a feel on his date.”

“No,” Adam answered flatly.

Last night, he
had
taken full advantage of the fact that he and Jane were supposed to be a couple. From the moment they’d walked into the café, he’d been touching her in some way. His arm around her. His hand on her thigh. Even leaning over and kissing her forehead when she had done something exceptionally cute. But he hadn’t felt her up in front of her grandparents.

Not that he hadn’t wanted to.

Levi stared at him. But Adam knew what his cousin was doing. Since moving here, he’d seen Levi in action. He was more than a good bartender. He was a top-notch interrogator (mainly because the parties being interrogated had no clue it was going on) and a better-than-average therapist.

Adam had to give his cousin props; he was good. But it just so happened that Adam was better. He’d been trained to withstand any kind of interrogation, including those that involved torture. A little silence, which made a normal man break and start talking to fill a perceived awkward pause, didn’t even make Adam blink.

“Let me get this straight. You and Jane aren’t dating.” Levi raised an eyebrow as he dried a beer mug.

“No,” Adam answered.

“Okay.” Levi nodded as if he were accepting Adam’s answer, but Adam knew that his cousin wasn’t done trying to get to the bottom of his personal life. “So, do you make it a habit of taking women you’re not dating out twice in one week? First to a black-tie fundraiser and then to a casual ‘meet the grandparents’ dinner?”

“No,” Adam repeated.

Levi set the beer stein on the drying rack and tossed the towel he’d been using over his shoulder. Placing both hands on the bar top, Levi leaned forward and looked at Adam with a cut-the-shit look in his eyes. “What’s going on with you and Jane?”

As much as Adam might have liked to keep whatever arrangement he and Jane had private, he knew that it wasn’t going to be possible. Not in this town. Jane had been right when she’d said that, if they acted like they were together, everyone would take notice and want details. Jane’s plan had been to let anyone who asked in on their ruse, and she seemed sure of it.

It wasn’t the way Adam would’ve handled things, though. For years, he had lived his life working under the theory that everyone was on a need-to-know basis and most people didn’t
need
to know anything. But this wasn’t his show. It was hers, so he would follow the parameters she’d laid out.

It looked like it was his cousin’s lucky day, because if it had been up to Adam, he wouldn’t have said jack shit.

“Jane’s grandparents have been worried about her since she moved to Hope Falls. She told them she was seeing someone to ease some of their concerns. They surprised her yesterday and showed up to meet her boyfriend, and I stepped in.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Why what?” Adam thought he’d clearly explained the situation.

“Why did you step in?”

Good question. Adam knew the answer, but that didn’t mean he was going to tell Levi. At least, not the whole answer.

“I didn’t see any reason not to.” Which was true.

But the reason he hadn’t seen any reason not to was that the thought of spending any amount of time with Jane, and actually being able to touch her, had tempted him like nothing else ever had.

This situation was a perfect scenario for him. Not only was he helping out someone he’d grown to care about—despite his best efforts—there was the added bonus of scratching a very nasty itch that had been plaguing him since the moment he’d laid eyes on Jane.

It was inevitable that something would happen between them. Last night, the two kisses they’d shared had had nothing to do with the show they were putting on and everything to do with the insane chemistry between the two of them. The sexual tension between them was like an over-filled balloon about to burst.

“So let me get this straight. They came to meet Guy X and you just decided to step up and fill that role?” Levi arched one eyebrow.

“Pretty much.”

“And it was a surprise visit?” His tone was even, but Adam knew he was going somewhere with this. He felt like a defendant on the stand, and the prosecutor—a.k.a. Levi—was leading the witness.

“Yeah.”

“You and Jane didn’t know they were coming?” he asked, repeating a version of the question he’d just posed. He was going in for the kill.

“No, we didn’t.” Again, Adam answered honestly but with a fair amount of irritation bleeding through in his voice. His patience was wearing thin, and he was just about done humoring his cousin.

“So the kiss Walter and Dolores walked in on—that wasn’t for their benefit?” Levi asked—a little too smugly for Adam’s liking.

His cousin was just busting his balls, and it shouldn’t have affected Adam one way or the other. In fact, he didn’t understand why it was affecting him at all. But it was.

“What are you talking about?” Playing dumb and pleading the Fifth weren’t usually tactics he used when he was being interrogated, but he found himself doing both today.

Seeming all too eager to share exactly what he was talking about, Levi explained, “Sue Ann came in this afternoon and told me the funniest story that Dolores had shared with her when she and Walter were waiting for you two to
finish something up
at the office.

“She told Sue Ann that they had walked in on you, and I quote, ‘with Adam’s tongue halfway down Jane’s throat and Jane rubbing up against Adam like a cat in heat.’ Apparently, Jane’s grandparents thought it was adorable that you were mauling their granddaughter. So, if you didn’t know that they were coming, my question is: Why was your tongue halfway down her throat?”

“Remind me again. When did you turn into a gossiping schoolgirl?” Adam volleyed back.

“When I moved to Hope Falls,” Levi answered with zero shame. “Stop trying to avoid the question.”