My stomach drops. Locke’s told me his grandmother is tough on him, and she’s the main one I wanted to impress. Did I really do battle with this cranberry sauce for nothing? “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t worry about a thing, Greer. This is perfect. And I probably have a can of the jellied kind around here somewhere too. We’ll set out both.”
Locke makes a pained face. “Mom, enough.”
“Bu it’s fine.”
A kitchen timer goes off, saving all of us.
Dorothy darts a glance in the direction of what must be the kitchen and says, “I’ve got to grab that. Why don’t you throw your coats in the closet and then say hi to everyone in the living room?”
“Great plan,” Locke says. He looks like he’d be happy to have the floor open up beneath his feet. When Dorothy hurries away, cranberry sauce in hand, Locke leans closer to my ear and whispers, “I’m so sorry, Greer.”
“It’s fine.” My throat feels thick and my jaw is tight, but I’m not here for me. I’m here for Locke. Somehow that reminder makes it easier to joke about everything. “I’ll just have to woo Grandma with my charm.”
“Buckets of charm,” he agrees. “Pools of charm. Olympic sized.” His voice is a little lighter, and it makes me feel lighter, too.
Locke opens the coat closet by the front door and shrugs out of his coat, revealing a hunter green button-down shirt that clings to arms and sets off his eyes. He’s built like a runner—long, smooth muscles that hint at his strength—and for a second I gape at him like every other woman in the office, rendered stupid over his good looks. After all, a hot dude is hot, but a hot dude who has his shit together is downright sexy.
Locke catches me staring and drops his eyes to his chest. “What? Do I have something on me?” He brings his eyes back to me, and my face goes scarlet.
“No,” I mumble. “I just—I like your shirt.”
He flashes me a grin. “Thanks.”
I’m still pink-cheeked as we wind through the house and locate the living room, but his smile is infectious, and it makes me smile too. Locke’s mom’s house is warm and cozy, which helps soothe my nerves, and when Locke stops us in the living room, I recognize all the faces from the family photos that line the walls.
“Everyone, this is Greer. Greer, this is my aunt Cindy and her husband, Patrick.” Cindy looks like Dorothy, down to their high cheekbones and twin haircuts. Locke points at a younger version of his mom. “My sister Maggie and her husband, Nate. Maggie runs an art and pottery studio over in Shoreline. The rugrats are Stinkbutt and Unicorn Poop.”
The little kids, who must be four and six, squeal a protest.
“Uncle Locke,” groans the boy from his spot on the carpet.
“Alright, alright.” Locke grins at me. “Logan and Charlotte.” He cups a hand around his mouth and stage whispers to me, “They answer better to the first names I told you.”
He bends down and presses a kiss to the soft, pale cheek of the white-haired family matriarch. “And of course, lady of the hour, Grandma Betty.”
I give hugs to all of them—I’m pretending to be Locke’s…something…after all—and then Cindy makes space on the couch for me and Locke to plop down next to Grandma Betty. I make sure to leave room between me and Locke when we sit, but I still drag in the scent of him—the smell I don’t let myself indulge in too often because I don’t usually let myself sit close enough to smell him.
Maggie hands me a glass of wine with a wink, and I accept it gratefully. I take small, careful sips of the red, and loose, liquid heat blooms in my chest. Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s Locke’s family, who’s comfortable and welcoming and who lets me slip into the conversation like we’ve known each other for years. We make small talk for a bit—mostly Locke’s family asking about work—and then Grandma Betty clears her throat.
Every eye in the room swings to her as she raises her small glass of sherry in consideration. “We don’t get to put Locke through the wringer nearly enough. What do you say we break out the family photo album to show our guest?”
Locke shakes his head. “I don’t think Greer needs to see that.”
A chance to see Locke as a little kid?
“Heck yes, I do.” I flash Betty my biggest pretty-please smile. “How could I say no?”
Betty cackles with glee, and Cindy produces an album from the built-in bookshelves that line the wall near the fireplace. Cindy sets it on the coffee table before us, to the collective groans of Locke and Maggie.
By now Dorothy’s wandered back into the room, and she looks over my shoulder at the first photo in the album—a picture of a man in his late twenties standing at the edge of a cliff with a snow-capped mountain range unfurled behind him like majestic stone wings. The man flashes the camera a gregarious smile and holds up two fingers in the peace sign.
“That was before your dad shipped out to war,” Dorothy says. She doesn’t say which war, and I don’t ask. I figure if Locke wants me to know about it, he’ll tell me.
Dorothy casts a wistful glance at the album. “We would have been together forty years if he were still alive.” Love and nostalgia tinge her voice. “Marry your best friend, kids. That’s all I have to say.”
If only it were that easy.
My breath catches in my chest, and beside me, Locke freezes, studying the photograph so intently that he seems almost lost. I’m too far away to see details, but from here, Locke’s dad doesn’t look like him. Or, I guess, Locke doesn’t look like his dad. His dad’s pale skin contrasts with Locke’s olive tone, and his eyes shine blue to Locke’s brown. I see his mom in Locke, sure—the shape of his smiling eyes, those cut-glass cheekbones—but there’s nothing of the man in the picture in the man sitting beside me. Guess his mom’s genes run strong.
I stay put in my seat even though I want to lean forward, and Betty gives me and Locke a sideways glance, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Scoot closer so you can see better. You kids don’t have to be shy around us.”
Her words break the spell, and Locke and I look at each other for a second before he slowly turns back to Grandma Betty. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t touched Greer the entire time we’ve been eating snacks and grilling you,” Locke’s grandmother says. “You don’t have to hold back with your girlfriend for our sake, Lachlan.”
He doesn’t correct her to say I’m just his friend.
He doesn’t correct her to say I’m just his friend.
Instead, he shoots the room a shit-eating grin and drops a hand to my knee—casual, like he does this every day—and sets off a thousand fireworks inside my chest. His hand is warm on my knee, and his thumb brushes the inside of my leg like it’s been here before and plans to be back again. My heart has a fucking conniption, and, for the love of god, my body blooms with involuntary arousal so I’m sitting in Locke’s mom’s house in front of his entire extended family more turned on than any date’s gotten me in the last six months just from a fucking touch.
And then. And theeeeennn.
Locke leans forward and winks at me. “Getting close isn’t an issue. Right, babe?”
Babe.
Is he—?
Damn.
Locke said it himself—babe goes in the flirty bucket. He knows exactly what he’s doing here, but I don’t know what the hell it’s supposed to mean.
Babe is something new.
Babe is a question mark.
Babe feels like it could change everything.
Because babe might be one little word, but the smile on Locke’s face is one hundred percent genuine.
If we hadn’t made this agreement as friends, I’d be pretty sure Lachlan Mills is flirting with me. For real.
8
Locke
“Hey, asshole. Quit staring into the distance.” Maggie kicks my feet under the wooden top of my mom’s kitchen table, and the impact sloshes beer up the neck of the bottle I’m holding to my lips.
The hoppy liquid—and the kick—sta
rtle me out of my thoughts.
I lower my bottle to the table and wipe beer off my mouth as I glare at my sister. “Jesus, Maggie.”
She grins at me in that loving-but-also-annoying older sister way. “Don’t waste precious undivided sister time stuck in your head. God knows you live there enough as it is.”
It’s the last Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and we’ve commandeered my mom’s kitchen to share a final beer before Maggie packs up the kids and heads twenty-five minutes to her house in Shoreline.
My mom and aunt promised the rugrats a movie, meaning they’ll be spoiled with popcorn and candy and slurpees by the time they get home from the theater in an hour. Right now, though, the house is quiet and still, with my brother-in-law sprawled out in the living room, asleep in my dad’s old recliner in front of a football game. Patriots vs. Broncos. The muted sounds of the announcer’s commentary filter into the kitchen in a dampened background noise.
Maggie takes another draw of her beer, grimaces, and sets the bottle on the table. “Mooning over your girlfriend?” she asks.
“She’s not—” I start, but the thing is, to my family, Greer is my girlfriend, or at least I let them infer it. That omission gives me the freedom—the permission—to imagine her in that role. To talk about her like she’s already mine.
I squirm in my seat, caught. “Maybe a little,” I admit.
Only every single moment since Greer walked out of her bedroom four days ago and blew apart every expectation I had of what Thanksgiving might be.
I think of her eyes, no longer hidden behind her glasses—wide and blue and hopeful. I think of her curves, highlighted by that unassumingly sexy sweater dress. Of the bow of her lips and how soft they must be to kiss. And, most important, I think of the way her skin felt under mine as I dropped my hand to her knee, the unexpected flush of pleasure on her cheeks, and the way her eyes held mine as I tried out the word babe and found that it fit.
My sister draws a finger through the condensation on her beer bottle. “I like her.”
My throat feels thick with longing. “Me too.”
“I mean, if anyone can put up with Mom’s over-momming and win over Grandma’s picky palate, they also win in my book.”
I groan and sink my face into my hands. “For the love of god, please don’t mention the cranberry sauce.”
Maggie chuckles. “It will forthwith be known as the Great Cranberry Sauce Debacle of the Mills Family.” She points a finger at me, her skin still damp from writing her name on her bottle. “You know, I hope she’s a keeper for you. That sauce was already requested for next year’s feast.”
My heart lunges in the tight cage of my chest. It feels so wrong to talk about Greer this way—to want her this way—when it’s not real. But god, it also feels good and hopeful.
The thing is, I can see it. I can see Greer in my life, in that way, and I don’t think I was entirely misreading her excitement. But I could be. This could all be for fucking show. I mean, that’s what I asked for, right?
I set my forehead on the edge of the table and take a deep breath. I can feel the grain of the wood imprint its shape on my skin.
“Hey.” Maggie kicks me again, and I grunt in protest. “Why the frowny face?”
I lift my head an inch. Do I tell her?
“Lachlan,” she warns.
When we were little, Maggie used to squish the crap out of me to get me to confess all my secrets. Where did I hide my allowance? Which one of my friends put the frog in her boots? She’d tickle me until I was defenseless and then sit directly on my chest and breathe into my face with Dorito breath until I begged for mercy and inevitably spilled.
I’m six inches taller than her, now, and I outweigh her by a good thirty pounds, but somehow I have a feeling she’ll still grill me until I break.
I sigh and lean back in my chair. “WanderWell is considering me for a promotion.”
Maggie’s eyes widen. “Oh.” She leans forward and squeezes my forearm. “Oh, Locke, that’s good.”
I grimace. “On the surface, it could be a great opportunity.”
“What would they have you doing?”
“Managing a team of twelve people. Some writers, some designers.”
“That sounds amazing. You deserve to finally get recognized for everything you do.” She waggles her eyebrows. “I assume the pay will be good?”
I nod. “I’m sure it will. They’re talking a partner-level path for me.”
“Holy crap, Locke.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what’s the catch?” I glance up at her sharply, and she shrugs. “You wouldn’t be so grouchy if there wasn’t a catch.”
Sometimes when it’s me and Maggie alone together, I forget that she’s a mom. That she has kids and a life and a husband. But there’s no better reminder than when she cuts to the chase with a single, quick assessment like I’m a kid too. Motherhood has carved her into an efficient negotiator with a staggeringly accurate bullshit meter and a nose for finding out the truth.
“The job’s in San Francisco.”
I watch my sister’s face change—the fine lines around her eyes becoming less pronounced as her smile drops and her eyes widen.
“Oh.” It comes out in a puff.
I run a hand through my hair. “Yeah.”
Maggie recovers quickly and places a hand on mine. Her skin is cold and damp, and I try not to pull away—to accept her gesture of comfort. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s still a good opportunity.”
“I’d have to move, Mags.”
“You’d have to move,” she agrees.
“And you guys would still be here.” I leave it unsaid who the you guys are, but she seems to understand that means Greer too.
“Would Greer move with you? If you asked her?”
It’s such a startling possibility that I’d choke on my beer if I had any in my mouth right now.
“No, Maggie.” I can’t keep the bitter twist out of my words. “Her job is here. I couldn’t ask her to do that.”
Not to mention, she’s not actually my girlfriend.
My sister’s face pinches, and she straightens in her chair in a way that signals she’s about to drop a wisdom bomb. “You have a big heart, Locke. So big that most girls don’t deserve you. But so big that most companies don’t either.” She sighs and continues. “Ever since Dad died, you’ve done more than your fair share for the family.”
“To varying degrees of success.”
She ignores me. “We’ll be okay no matter what you choose.” She cracks a grin. “I mean, that’s why they invented FaceTime, right? But this is about you, Locke. What does your heart want?”
Everything.
But sometimes that’s asking too much.
I grip the edge of the table, but even as I sit here, I realize there’s another layer to it, too. What my heart wants is chances. I’ve always loved possibilities, the start of new adventures. It’s why I love travel so much. And right now I’ve been handed two opportunities, both with the spectacular potential to change my life. Everything’s an exploration right now, and nothing’s for sure. But one opportunity could bring me the job, and one chance could bring me the girl.
Even for the wanting, I can’t have both.
“I don’t know,” I finally say.
“Why don’t you just take a step back and look at the big picture?”
I narrow my eyes at my sister. A headache swirls at my temples. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but you and Greer seem to have a good thing going. So just, like, think about what you want long term. What’s going to be more important to you in ten years?”
She launches into a longer spiel about how my parents took their whole till death do you part vows seriously, and about seizing the day and being the master of your own destiny, but my mind latches onto her earlier suggestion.
Take a step back.
Maybe I need to put a buffer between me and
Greer. Try to separate out everything I feel about her from everything I feel about the job. After all, she’s ninety percent of my hesitation right now, and I don’t even know if she likes me back.
Laying low isn’t going to be easy, maybe it’s safer that way. I know just how much it can hurt when you want things you shouldn’t have.
9
Greer
At lunchtime on Tuesday, most of my coworkers filter out of the WanderWell offices to grab food, leaving Damien hunched over his desk at the back of the room while Locke and I square off across from each other in the dark.
I stare at Damien’s back for a minute, watching his strong shoulders bunch under his button-down shirt. He’s all alone, and for half a second I feel bad for him—no one to grab lunch with, a room full of coworkers who won’t let down their guard around him—but I have bigger problems to deal with. Case in point, the man in front of me who’s supposed to be my ally and my buffer against Damien, who’s not doing a damned thing to hold up his end of the bargain.
Computers hum and fill the huge office with heat, the buzz of all this glittering technology vibrating in my heart. When I first started at WanderWell, I brought backup sweaters and cardigans to work every day, sure that the admins would crank the air conditioning and freeze me out the way my old job had done. But maybe they’ve decided it’s not worth the cost of cooling the place down too much, or maybe the machines just offset the AC they do run.
Right now I’m sweating, though I’m not sure if I should blame my cable-knit sweater or my increasing frustration with the way my words won’t come out right today. Or maybe I’m sweating because Locke hasn’t said more than two words to me since Thanksgiving and I don’t know what the hell’s going on.
I pull my gaze from Damien to frown at the screen, where I study the last responses I wrote for a set of user queries.
User query: I hate you.
Wanda response: Can’t win ’em all.
The Fake Date Agreement (Awkward Arrangements Book 1) Page 5
