The Fine Art of Faking It

by Lucy Score

  She shook her head, letting the words wash over her. She’d set out to rewrite her past and had narrowly avoided reliving it instead. But nothing—not even her own stubbornness—would take this future away from her.

  “Twenty minutes?” Davis whispered, moving his lips over the throat she bared for him.

  “Closer to eighteen now,” she laughed huskily.

  “I can work with that,” he promised.

  When he kissed her, she sighed out his name. There would be no more denying what she felt for Davis Gates.

  With a swift move, he lifted her up locking her legs around his hips. Her skirt rode higher than what could be considered publicly decent. He held her there, one-handed, against the wall while he worked his fly down and then stalled.

  “You’re sure this is okay?” he asked. He was already panting with the need.

  Eden loved him like this. Disheveled, dangerous, delicious.

  With one thrust, he was filling her.

  “Oh God. Oh God,” she chanted.

  He laughed softly against her neck.

  She squeezed him with her legs until he forgot about laughing and started to move inside her. Pinned between his hard body and the wall, Eden could do nothing but take the pleasure Davis delivered.

  His thrusts were quick, frantic.

  The sound of flesh moving over flesh echoed in the silence of the room. Sweeter than words, the sound of their bodies and breath twining together was a kind of music.

  He slammed into her, sure and hard, again and again. His hips hammering her against the wall as she clung to his shoulders.

  “Eden,” he growled out her name.

  “I love you,” she sighed the words on one long breath as she felt the tightening, the quaking, of her muscles as her body prepared to let go. “I love you, Davis.”

  He groaned low. “I’ve waited so long for those words.”

  “I know the feeling,” she gasped on a particularly masterful thrust.

  “Hang on to me, gorgeous,” he ordered.

  She obliged as her body surrendered to the wave of pleasure he brought down on her. He captured the scream with his own mouth. Kissing her as he pounded into her, her orgasm instantly forcing his. Her world went technicolor, bright and bold and oh-so-beautiful. She felt him, loved him, craved him. They shuddered together, whimpering against open lips desperate for breath. For life.

  “You are incredibly efficient with your time,” Eden said, huffing out a breath. She reached up to shove her hair out of her face.

  “Wait ’til you see what I can do with only five minutes,” he teased, slowly lowering her back to the floor.

  “I’m not sure I could survive it. I think I’m going to like for real dating you.”

  With a cocky grin, Davis handed over her underwear. “I’m a catch. Everyone’s been telling you for years.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  The knock at the door had Eden losing her balance and falling back into the wall.

  “Miss Moody?”

  “Claudia?

  “Yeah. Listen, are you coming into the inclusivity room soon? I want to tell you about the prize packages on Guess Again. I brought pictures in case you’re not an auditory learner.”

  Eden looked at Davis and patted a hand over her heart.

  “That sounds great, Claudia. I’ll be there in three minutes,” she promised, scrambling to straighten her dress. “How’s my hair?” she whispered to Davis.

  “It’s a disaster. I love you, Eden.”

  The swift joy that those words brought was humbling and exhilarating.

  “Want to join me in the inclusivity room?” she asked. “Rubin’s there, too.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  They started down the hall. “Hey, I know this is moving fast. But what would you say to hosting both our families at the inn for Christmas?” Davis said.

  They stared at each other for ten seconds before they collapsed in laughter.

  Epilogue

  “We’re insane.”

  “We need to have our brains scanned,” Eden agreed.

  “Why did we think we could do this?” Davis asked peering through the small round window of the swinging kitchen door. “Did you take all the knives off the table?”

  “These people could kill each other with dinner rolls. What are they doing now?” Eden whispered.

  “They’re sitting there in total silence staring at their plates. Except for Atlantis’s kids. They just crawled under the table with the dogs. I think Bryson’s already under there with them.”

  Eden blew out a breath and swiped her damp palms over her ruby red sweater. “At least someone’s having fun.”

  It was Christmas Day.

  And while the rest of Blue Moon was bellied up to tables laughing with family and singing carols, the Moodys and the Gateses were suffering through their very first dual family function.

  The table was set with silver chargers and antique lace. Davis had personally selected the skinny Douglas fir that stood proudly in the corner of the Lunar Inn’s dining room. The food included something guaranteed to please every single family member. A fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth, and classic Christmas carols played on low in the background. The alcohol had been limited to an appropriate amount of wine.

  And their guests were behaving as if they were facing life in prison.

  It was going better than Eden had expected.

  She plucked the open bottle of wine out of Davis’s grip and drank.

  “We can get through this. The first time is the worst, right? They have to get used to not hating each other,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Agreed. We can’t let this fester until we have kids and they get arrested at a tee ball game for fighting.”

  Eden handed the bottle back to him and Davis drank deeply. She ran a soothing hand down his back, the charcoal gray cashmere soft to the touch. “We’ve got this,” she promised.

  “Listen, gorgeous. I know we talked about telling them. But I think we’re pressing our luck. It might push us over the edge into actual bloodshed.”

  Eden handed the bottle back and nodded. “Agreed. I think telling our parents that we’re building a house together on the property line and turning your house into an annex for the inn would be asking for trouble.”

  “It would be asking for nuclear war.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder. “Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t gone for each other’s throats yet.”

  “Whatever retraining the Beautification Committee put them through seems to be working,” Davis observed. “Did you see my mom when she started to call yours a buttface?”

  “Yeah, what was that rigid muscle spasm thing?”

  “You don’t think the B.C. used electroshock, do you?” Davis mused.

  “Whatever they used, it’s a Christmas miracle,” she said dryly.

  “Do you still love me even though our parents are assholes?” Davis asked, putting the wine down on the counter and pulling her into his arms.

  She dropped her head to his chest. “Davis, I’d love you even if our parents were serial killers. Are you sure it’s not too much?”

  “You’re everything that I want in this life. And nothing, not even a group of middle-aged adults acting like cranky-ass toddlers, is going to change that.”

  She sighed. “Okay. Just checking in.”

  He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “What you and I have is bigger than anything they can dish out,” Davis promised. “Besides, if I could convince my father to retire into consultancy, I think we can keep them from murdering each other during the holidays.”

  “I love the hell out of you, Davis Gates.”

  He hadn’t let her down. Not when she’d been too scared and blind to admit that she loved him. Not when his father had held his position at the winery hostage for a week. Not when his mother threatened to have an aneurysm when he’d invited them to Christmas at the inn.

&
nbsp; Davis was sticking.

  Meanwhile, Eden’s parents had vacillated between a grumpy acceptance and overdramatic despair. Both were manageable.

  “I love the hell out of you, Eden Moody,” Davis said, fondly brushing a curl off her forehead.

  Eden brightened. “You know, the worse time they have here, the earlier they’ll leave.”

  He caught her drift immediately. “And the sooner we can commence Naked Christmas Sex.” His hands slid down to cup her butt, pulling her flush against him.

  “How are you already hard with World War III brewing in there?” she teased.

  “We have a lot of time to make up for,” Davis insisted. “Fifteen long years. Wasted.”

  There was a high-pitched shriek from the dining room.

  Davis tensed. “Shit. Did someone just get stabbed?”

  Eden snuggled closer, cuddling his erection with her hips. “Nope. That’s Atlantis’s kids starting their screaming contest.”

  “You know, I sure could use a preview of coming attractions before we go back in there,” Davis suggested, backing her up against the kitchen island.

  She met his mouth hungrily, feasting on what he offered her. The newness was still there, but so was the abiding belief that this was what she’d been waiting for. This man, who saw her and loved her just the way she was. This commitment. This beautiful relationship.

  She didn’t know if it was the Beautification Committee’s manipulations or just some kind of timely magic. But she’d unlocked herself from the shackles of her past, from a half-century of bad blood. And the next fifty years were looking pretty damn great. Even if both their families were certifiably insane.

  Eden slid her hands under Davis’s sweater, letting her fingers play across his abs.

  “You are worth every second of every inconvenience, every fight, every fire—”

  She pinched him, and they both laughed.

  “God, I want you naked,” she murmured against his mouth, desire flaming into a four-alarm fire.

  The door swung open, and Bryson hurried into the kitchen. “You two might want to get out here with the dessert… and more booze,” he suggested.

  “On our way,” Eden promised.

  “You’re doing well. In another decade or two, they might start using each other’s first names,” Bryson said cheerily.

  Davis waited until Bryson disappeared through the door. “How hard do you think it would be to convince them all to move out of town?”

  “I think it’s worth a shot,” Eden said with a grin.

  She plated up the last slice of cheesecake. “Ready?”

  He squared his shoulders. “Ready. The sooner we get them out of here, the sooner we can have Naked Christmas Sex.”

  “I like those priorities.”

  Extra Epilogue

  Blue Moon 1966

  The fine spring day brought Blue Moon residents out of their stuffy homes and into the sunshine. Winter bones creaked, and vitamin D deficient bodies slowly awakened with the season. Storefronts threw open their doors to welcome foot traffic. Husbands brought their sedans to gleaming shines in driveways with the aid of garden hoses. Wives mixed up the year’s first batches of lemonade and iced tea.

  Neighbors gossiped over backyard fences while they hung out the laundry to dry.

  “Isn’t it a fine day, Cordelia?” Laura Beth asked.

  Cordelia brushed her bouffant back from her face and dropped the folded table cloth on the picnic table. “Never a finer day,” she agreed. “How’s little Tilly feeling today?” Laura Beth’s baby had been to the doctor twice that week.

  Laura Beth waved a hand dismissively. “It was just what we thought. We’ve got ourselves an ornery baby girl. Nothing wrong with her but her attitude, the doctor says.”

  Cordelia giggled. “Just remember, if you can’t take another minute of her crying, rubbing just a dab of paregoric or brandy on her gums will get you a few hours of peace.”

  “And what do I give myself?” Laura Beth laughed. She slipped a pack of cigarettes out of her apron pocket and handed one over the fence.

  They blew twin streams of smoke up toward the beautiful, blue sky.

  “How’s your little Ned doing? He was just the cutest little thing in his Easter outfit,” Laura Beth crooned.

  “He’s just the sweetest little blessing.” On cue, Cordelia’s backdoor banged open and a little boy in matching baby blue shorts and shirt with a crisp white peter pan collar emerged.

  “Mama! The lady with the makeup is here!” Little Ned piped up.

  “I forgot all about the Avon lady,” Cordelia said, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray on the picnic table.

  “Send her next door when you’re done,” Laura Beth insisted. “I’m almost out of my persimmon lipstick.”

  “I’ll do that. And you and Bert are still coming over for cocktails Saturday night, aren’t you?” Cordelia said, starting for her backdoor.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll bring my fondue pot!”

  “Perfect!”

  The women waved and returned to their respective springtime afternoons.

  One house down, a pick-up baseball game was brewing behind the white picket fence of Jenny Zhao’s big backyard. It was a rag tag group of children who had been cooped up for too long. The bases were Jenny’s mother’s underwear, yanked from the clothes line. The bat was a stick plundered from the unruly garden of Bruce Oakleigh’s mother. The ball, a monogrammed golf ball discovered in the alley behind the Nuswing home.

  Johnny Pierce, who was already quite tall for his age, took a practice swing with the stick while Jenny warmed up her throwing arm.

  “Bend your knees more,” Bruce called helpfully to Johnny.

  Johnny pulled his ballcap lower on his brow. Jenny took the mound—two pairs of her father’s coveralls folded neatly on top of a patio cushion.

  “Now, I’ll go second. You go third. And Jillian, you’re up after that,” Bruce announced to the rest of his team. Organizing was his specialty as his mother had repeatedly told him. He kept his room spotless, always took out the garbage, and had spent a week making nametags for his classmates before the first day of school.

  There was a satisfying crack as the golf ball and stick connected, and the kids watched as the ball sailed up, up, up.

  “Home run!”

  “Foul ball!”

  A good-natured argument broke out as the ball continued its flight over the Nuswings’ manicured backyard before finally dropping behind the Moodys’ fence.

  “Awh, man!”

  “Game over!”

  Bruce waved his hands. “Wait! I’ll get it,” he insisted. This was the first game he’d been invited to, and he wasn’t letting it end on the first pitch.

  He jogged out the back gate of Jenny’s yard down the alley past the Nuswings’ garage to the Moodys’ fence. He tried the gate and found it locked. With a running leap—he had an audience after all—Bruce scaled the fence, his shoes slipping on the wood, his fingers gripping the pickets like he was one-hundred feet off the ground, not two. With a graceless heave, he rolled over the top of the fence and landed face down on Mrs. Moody’s garden.

  Hauling himself up, Bruce scoured the backyard for the missing golf ball.

  “Hurry up, Bruce!” Jenny called from two yards away.

  “Didja find it yet?” Jillian yelled.

  “Be a hero, Bruce,” he murmured to himself. “You can do it.”

  He tiptoed closer to the house, not keen on Mr. Moody bursting forth and starting an awkward conversation about “when I was a boy…”

  Finally, he spotted it under the picnic table. The white ball with red initials. BN. Burt Nuswing. He crawled under the bench and grabbed it triumphantly.

  “I got it!” he announced, holding it aloft so his friends could see.

  “Throw it back,” Johnny called, waving the stick in the air.

  Bruce wasn’t exactly the best thrower, and Jenny Zhao’s backyard looked like it was a mi
llion miles away.

  “C’mon, Bruce!” someone else yelled.

  Bruce glanced around the yard. Maybe if he got up on the picnic table, he could throw the ball farther? With a shrug of his seven-year-old shoulders, he climbed up on top of the Moodys’ spotless white picnic table and took a deep breath.

  “Hurry up! We wanna play!”

  He took a deep breath and got a running start. Things didn’t go quite according to plan.

  His wind-up was great. But he released the ball just a smidge too early. Early enough that the golf ball hit the brick of the Nuswings’ house and ricocheted right through the Moodys’ window.

  And Bruce didn’t exactly come to a stop at the end of the picnic table. He had too much momentum. And that momentum carried him right off the end of the table and into the low fence that divided Nuswing yard from Moody. The fence crumpled against his flying body like that folding chair under his Great-Uncle Artie last Thanksgiving.

  “Uh-oh!” the resounding cry rose up from Jenny’s backyard. Bruce was tangled in some kind of flowery vine, but other than having the wind knocked out of him, all his pieces and parts seemed to be working.

  “Run, Bruce!” Jillian howled.

  Bruce brushed himself off, ripping the vines off his legs as he ran after his friends down the alley.

  “Well, that was quite the hub-bub over on Martha Washington Avenue today,” Bruce’s father announced when he unfurled the newspaper at the dinner table.

  “Mabel told me she heard Elton Moody accuse Bert Nuswing of breaking his kitchen window with a golf ball,” Bruce’s mother said. Gossip was Gladys Oakleigh’s drug of choice.

  “And what was it someone was saying about a clitoris?” Bruce’s father asked reaching for the peas.

  “Clematis, dear,” Gladys corrected, shooting a pointed look in Bruce’s direction.

  Bruce was too busy trying to look innocent of window breaking.

  “Bert Nuswing jumped right in and accused the Moodys of being jealous of his Laura Beth’s prize clematis. I heard it was ripped out of the ground and shredded into a hundred pieces.”