Greta was beside herself with irritation. Bob had come back earlier that afternoon as promised, but the whole week of fun she’d offered his daughter had left her broke and exhausted. Jon was calling in his date night, and she had run out of excuses to put him off.
If she were being honest, she’d even say that the thought of making out with him was starting to seem like a reward for her rough few days. After all, she’d decided that benefits were okay. But he’d just seemed so eager to jump into bed with her, and she had a lot of reservations about that. What if he went back on his word after? What if he really was, as she feared, just like every other guy?
If her fake relationship fell apart the same way as her real ones always had, the depths of her humiliation would be unmeasurable.
But wallowing in worry wasn’t going to change the future.
The one bit of good news was that one of the childrens authors she had previously worked with had sent an email indicating he’d like to put together a proposal for another book. The standard on those was a storyboard with rough drawings indicating every page, and one or two finished illustrations.
The story itself looked just like something Greta would have loved to read as a child, about sisters whose house turned into a magical adventure land each night when their parents fell asleep. She had a hundred ideas about plants that would become people, shadows turning into cats, furniture becoming castles. A prince in disguise. Basically everything she’d lain awake at night imagining when she was small herself.
But paintings didn’t create themselves, and when she wasn’t working from life, it took even longer. Planning a composition wasn’t quick work for a single page, and creating all thirty-six meant she needed every spare second she had to work.
How would she ever get out of Bob’s house if she didn’t get her career started? And how would she get it started if she couldn’t devote herself to her art?
It was altogether frustrating. She could see that she’d brought all of this on herself, but she wasn’t totally sure how anything could have happened differently. No amount of piratey British charm was going to improve her mood, and she had determined that Jon shouldn’t have a good time either. So she’d purposely picked a date she could hardly participate in. It would hopefully be long and boring and thus deter him from calling in the second part of their doubleheader. If she got home before ten, she could work until one and still be up with Mina in the morning.
Now that school was out, she’d hoped the girl would take to sleeping in, just by an hour or so, but her previous experience with children had taught her that was usually a fruitless hope. She opened her closet and stared at the options.
Jon seemed to be very entranced by her vintage dresses, so she dressed very carefully tonight. In jeans.
He could hardly accuse her of doing it on purpose to dampen his ardor, because of the date she had arranged for them. It was hardly sexy. In fact, it could be called downright frumpy, she felt. She waited patiently outside the venue until he strolled up in his usual cloud of leather and lust.
“What’s on the menu this evening then?” He asked, leaning in for a kiss. She was having none of it. It was time to begin unraveling this thing. Before the sex. Stupid idea, that, to think they could extend this to a physical situation. It was just too risky. She turned her head so that his lips landed on her cheek. Rather unfair, then, that even that bit of contact made her breath catch. Of course, all her poor decisions had been made while she was in close proximity to him.
“Funny you should phrase it like that,” Greta said. “We’re attending a baking class.”
“I’ve always loved pie,” he immediately said. “Especially apple. It’s so … American.” The way he was eying her left no room for doubt that the jeans had failed to rebuff him. Well, they were kind of sexy. But she didn’t have any others. Even when she was painting, she tended to do it in sweats, or even just an old tee shirt.
“Not pie. Bread. Good old-fashioned San Francisco sourdough.” She smiled and held the door for him. He trailed a finger along her tattoo as he walked inside. She shivered, but kept going.
Enough was enough. The weak-kneed feeling she kept getting over him was just that—weakness. She could be strong, and stick to her original plan. As long as she focused on the task at hand and not on the pleased grin he was giving her. He didn’t know what he was in store for yet, but it wasn’t going to be pleasing. He didn’t yet seem to realize that a gluten-sensitive girl was going to make him do all the work but reap none of the rewards. In fact, calling it a date at all was a bit of a long shot. Greta planned to just watch him take the class and then take half the credit for the loaf she brought home to Mina.
“I can do sourdough. My lunch today was a toasted cheese on sourdough. Wouldn’t the lads at the studio be impressed with me if I strolled in tomorrow with home-baked bread for snacks?” His optimism was boundless, and contagious if she didn’t watch out.
She just wanted the evening to be over, her mind already conjuring up the images she wanted for each page of her proposal.
On the tucking-in scene, she’d have the magic world already popping up out of view of the parents, shadows of normal objects already distorted into their nighttime shapes, maybe some mushrooms beginning to grow out of the corner of the closet—he’d said something.
“Huh?”
“I said, would you like an apron?” He didn’t bother to wait for a response before settling the canvas cover-up over her and tying it behind her. He also didn’t bother trying to disguise how much pleasure he took in groping her ass a little while he was behind her. Greta reminded herself that it was not okay to back into him and give a little wiggle.
She did it anyway, but she definitely also reminded herself it wasn’t okay. This struggle between her mind and her ladybits was getting old real fast.
Seriously, she had walked into this bakery frustrated and anxious, muscles tight. A few tiny little moments of contact between them later, and her spirits were rising like yeasted dough. And it was all well and fine for him to be a pick-me-up, but if she needed Jon for that, there were a couple things wrong.
For one, she absolutely knew better than to rely on a man for her happiness. Even her own father had chosen not to make that a priority, so why would anyone else? After all, Amy and Summer made her happy too. Watching reruns of Sherlock with Mina made her happy. Being alone with her Kindle made her happy.
Why invite heartbreak in when she had so many other options?
For another, if he became the source of relaxation in her life, she’d truly never have time for painting, or reading, or a second (third) glass of wine because she’d always be chasing the next orgasm.
She sighed audibly, remembering the last one he’d given her, and the one she’d given herself thinking about him. The only way to move past that was to dust off her vibrator and spend some time with her Tumblr account of Tom Hiddleston and David Tennant pictures. Uh oh. Did she have a type? Oh goodness. She did. Tall skinny Brits were her type. She snuck another glance at the tall skinny Brit next to her.
Nothing wrong with that, she supposed, it was an extremely attractive type. Greta had always prided herself on her impeccable taste. She nodded to herself, and—he’d said another thing.
“Huh?”
“I said it’s entertaining to watch you have conversations with yourself, but it would be more entertaining if I was involved.” Like she was going to tell him about her Tumblr account. Or how she’d just realized he was totally her type.
“I’m thinking about an art thing.” Unfortunately, Greta had underestimated how interested he was in her art.
“Tell me about it. Since you never showed me your paintings like I asked, Amy showed me a few. You’re spectacular, of course, quite spectacular.” Et tu, Amy? Jon surveyed the workspace they had been ushered to, next door to a pleasant looking older couple. His arm settled around her waist as they waited for the instructor to finish talking to another woman.
“Since when do you talk to Amy without me?” Greta tried to maneuver out of his arm without being obvious. She failed, and he pulled her in closer. He was so warm, and she could feel the precise lines of his bicep against her back, and it was so sexy. This was exactly what she had been hoping to avoid, but pulling away now that she was enveloped in his soft, masculine scent and his hard, manly muscles was not happening.
The mental battle lasted mere seconds before she surrendered. For now.
She might want the evening to end early, but damned if she wasn’t going to enjoy herself while she was here.
Despite everything she’d promised herself.
Didn’t she say from day one that this hot DJ screamed trouble? He leaned in to take a selfie of the two of them in front of their dough.
“We’re Facebook friends, aren’t we?” He said comfortably. As if that didn’t cross a line. As if friending her friends didn’t make them like an actual couple. As if she should just be fine with this. Et tu, Amy?
But then, this was exactly what her friends would expect. And were probably surprised to see that Greta herself wasn’t friends with him online. Outmaneuvered, yet again. This was necessary, she told herself. If they weren’t leaving a footprint, then what was even the point of fake-dating? They had to do it out loud, in front of her friends, and with plenty of photographic evidence. Pictures or it didn’t happen, as Mina would say. Pulling her phone out of her front pocket, Greta accepted the request she’d been ignoring since their tattoo date. Before putting it back, she glanced up. The instructor was still occupied, so she used the opportunity to stalk a bit.
He didn’t have nearly as many friends as she’d imagined he would, but a couple cross-posted statuses showed her that this was a private account, and not the Force page he used to interact with fans.
But the real joy in any new online relationship was flipping through the other person’s pictures, so that’s what she did. Jon was looking down at them as well, of course, so the real judgments would happen later, alone. In the meantime, she just opened the album of profile pics and scrolled through.
There was Jon on stage, behind the decks. Jon taking a big-eyed selfie on the Golden Gate. Jon and CeAnna giving each other bunny ears—it was so easy to forget that he actually rubbed shoulders with people she’d only seen in tabloids. He was so down-to-earth that Greta usually forgot he was actually sort of famous. She supposed it probably helped that the DJ was never as recognizable as the singer, so most people who sang along on the radio had no idea the guy beside them in the checkout line of Trader Joe’s had created it.
A couple of the older photos showed Jon and a model. Greta wasn’t familiar with the girl’s work, but only a model had that height, that weight (or lack thereof), those cheekbones. Ice-blond hair was casually pulled back to show off huge blue eyes, spaced just a tiny bit too far apart. Her heart-shaped mouth was slicked with metallic gloss, the kind no one in real life wore.
In both photos, Greta noticed, Jon was leaning into her, smiling widely at the camera. The blonde, on the other hand, was looking off camera both times, never smiling.
“Old girlfriend?” she asked.
“Mm,” Jon affirmed, sort of. He clearly didn’t want to talk about her. Good. Neither did she.
Greta immediately had a mini-freakout, just as the instructor asked them to begin adding flour and water to the starter on their workstations.
She let him sprinkle flour over the surface of their marble counter, before she dumped the shaggy lump of starter dough on top for him to work. Gluten or not, she’d love to be the one putting her body weight into the kneading rather than watching him and just standing around feeling awkward.
Jon Hargrave. The guy she was dating. Well, using and abusing, really. He hung out with celebrities and dated women who were like eleventy times hotter than her. And here she was all, “I’ll only fake date you, cause I have trust issues.” Was she insane? Was she giving up an amazing opportunity to date a man as talented and successful as she often dreamed of being? Or was she dodging a bullet because real dating a celebrity was an even bigger invitation to disaster than dating a normal guy was?
And the biggest question of all—why her?
He’d called her a challenge. Was it the bet with Angie that it all came down to? But Angie was her sister, for heaven’s sake, and she wasn’t mean. It wasn’t some sort of She’s All That situation, where the popular guy had to turn the nerdy girl into a prom queen. Was it? Angie surely, understood how much nerdgirl Greta would never in a million years transform into some sort of shiny Hollywood Girlfriend type.
Right?
Or did Angie think this would be a good thing for Greta, like, transforming her into someone bigger and better than the Girl Who Spends Saturdays in the Tub? As children, they’d spend hours on end playing House, in which Greta was always the doll-baby. Each of her older sisters got to take turns playing mom and dressing her up, making her exactly what they wanted. Who they wanted.
And every one of them wanted her to be girlier, sweeter, more docile than she was. Most of the games would end when Greta fled, only to be discovered hours later hiding with a book in a spot the older girls couldn’t fit, like under the kitchen sink, or with a flashlight buried by clothes in a hamper.
So really, twenty years on, could Angie really be involved in a real-life game of House? And would she really believe Greta wouldn’t be hiding in the grown-up version of a hamper?
And was any of this real, or was she just losing her shit because this whole charade was too hard and it felt like a house of cards that she’d never been steady enough to balance? And when they all collapsed, what would suffocate at the bottom? It could only be the friendships she’d stacked on and under the lies she’d been telling.
The timer went off, and he covered their little breads-to-be in plastic wrap before taking a break. Besides the occasional worried side-eye, Jon hadn’t said a word about the fact that she’d spent the last thirty minutes staring at the dough with her arms crossed as he did all the work. So now they had time without the distraction of the class. An hour for the dough to rise meant an hour for the two of them to be blessedly, dreadfully alone.
Screw that. She needed to think. She needed to be alone. She needed to set fire to the cards once and for all. If everything ended now, her friends would forgive her. Jon would go away. And she could drink enough wine in the bathtub to figure out just exactly what she really wanted, without input from anyone else.
Greta looked at the shelves of baked bread, and made her decision.
* * *
Jon suggested a walk, and Greta agreed. There was something up with her tonight, more than usual, and he didn’t know what to do. Things had started weird—well, honestly, there hadn’t been a truly normal moment between them. The actual start had been weird, and only gotten weirder.
A chance meet at a wedding? A proposition and a pseudo contract? A sex tape? Fake dates and fooling around in alleys? A marriage bet—oh, but she didn’t know about that one. Right, then, he supposed all of it was inexplicable in general.
But tonight was particularly odd. He could have sworn Summer had mentioned a gluten issue in Greta, for one, but he supposed they wouldn’t be practically drowning in flour currently if that were the case. Her attitude was another thing he couldn’t quite wrap his mind round. She’d showed up in a snit, hardly meeting his eyes.
As he tried to be gentle and cute with her, she’d alternately ignored him and cuddled with him. Then after finding a couple pictures of him and Leah online, she’d just sort of stopped doing anything. He’d kneaded the dough all alone, wondering what to say and coming to no good answers. So … Jon really didn’t know what to do. If she’d talk to him, they could work it out, he knew that much.
The thing about getting out of a bad relationship was that you’ve got to work out exactly where you yourself had gone wrong, and Jon hadn’t learned how to communicate until afterwards. Now, though, now he prided himself on it. Rust Vee wouldn’t mock him so relentlessly about being ‘Therapist Force’ otherwise.
But Greta was moody, not the communicative type at all. It was going to be a difficult future between them, if he had to pry every time they had a problem to sort.
Luckily, Jon was nothing if not optimistic. If he could learn how, so could she.
They had an hour. An hour of free time to turn this evening around. An hour to convince her that she should have a nice time tonight. An hour, in other words, to try and get those smoking hot jeans off her, because they’d both have a better night after some loving.
For heaven’s sake, he knew many woman felt it ladylike to wait three dates before allowing a man into their bed (something he’d not quite ever understood; men loved sex! They should have sex all the time to win a man over! Ladylike was utterly overrated in comparison to frequent sex. He planned to write a self-help book about this topic someday.) but he was on the verge of losing track of how many dates they’d been on at this point. And he’d already promised to third-date her like crazy.
Fake relationship or not, he was ready for a real good time. And despite the frown on her face, he was willing to bet Greta was too. How else did you show a woman how deeply into her you were besides getting … deeply … into her and complimenting her profusely?
“Let’s take a walk while the bread rises, shall we?” He offered her his arm without giving her any time to answer. As he walked her out, she grabbed a roll and tore off a bit to eat.
God, but it was sexy to see a woman who wasn’t ashamed of her appetite. He’d never once met a man who believed women should live on salad, but he’d also never once met a woman who didn’t believe men truly thought that. She continued to eat the roll as they walked out, and he continued to appreciate her. Jon planned to eat her even more ravenously than she’d enjoyed her roll.
Once outside, it was only a short walk to a nearby park he knew of. She was silent for the walk. Jon wondered if this was about her seeing the pictures of Leah on his Facebook page. It was all so confusing. Yes, his ex-girlfriend was fetching, but she was also cruel, and had a severe addiction problem besides.
Surely Greta wasn’t jealous? Or feeling inferior? But why would she? She was so … everything. Girls were utterly complicated, he’d given up on understanding them almost as soon as he’d discovered he liked them.
The park was deserted, much to his delight. Time to show her how much he wanted her. How cute she was in jeans, even ignoring the fake date she’d set up. How, even though it was a bet she didn’t know about, he truly wanted to consider a future with her, this talented, snarky girl that had no problem mocking his fears and dancing to his songs. The kinds of things that he couldn’t put words to, only melody.
Jon didn’t ask her how she was feeling. He didn’t ask her what was wrong. He just held her close and kissed her deeply, kissed her with all the feelings he was having. If she wasn’t willing to tell him what was bothering her, he’d simply make sure she didn’t think about whatever it was for the next hour. And if, as he’d suspected, the issue was his ex-girlfriend? He’d make certain she knew he wasn’t thinking about anyone but her.
* * *
Jon’s arms encircled her and Greta immediately forgot about all her prior irritation and insecurity. Which only irritated her further. She chose to act out in the best way she knew how—by kissing him even harder.
Their lips crashed together, fighting for dominance. She bit him, and he bit her back. His hands tightened around her back, digging in exactly the way she’d done to him in the alley outside the skating rink. Just like he’d done, she collapsed into his arms. Now, she understood why, though.
There was something indescribable about allowing someone else to have dominion over you like that, to master you, to touch you in a way that says they see you. They feel you. They desperately want you.
God, she really wanted him too, and pretending she didn’t was exhausting.
Her right hand grabbed his hair and tugged on those shaggy blonde locks even as her fist pulled him closer to her face. His tongue was inside her mouth, fighting hers—no, dancing with hers. It tasted like fresh-baked bread, which was something she’d never associated with sexiness before now, but suddenly did.
How would she ever taste bread again without imagining this moment, with his hands halfway up her shirt, hers tangled in his hair, both of them pressing as tightly against each other as humanly possible while still remaining, somehow, vertical?
The closeness, the heat they generated, the wet she felt in her center mirrored by the hardness she felt in his made it hard to breathe.
Greta slid her tongue along the length of Jon’s one more time, marveling in how beautifully they fit together and how turned on she was right now. It was so hard to breathe.
His palm closed over her breast and she inhaled sharply, hoping no one else was in this park, but also wouldn’t that be kind of hot? She’d never done sex things in public. He squeezed sharply, and it hurt but it felt good and oh god it was hard to breathe.
And then suddenly—she remembered. In her haste to avoid this kind of meaningful moment, she’d guaranteed a way out. She’d eaten a roll. It wasn’t hard to breathe. It was near impossible.
Suddenly, her scrabbling hands were involved in pushing Jon off, not pulling him close. Greta collapsed to the ground, head between her legs, breathing as deeply as her tightening throat would allow her. But his arms weren’t going anywhere, they were still around her, giving her support, but why?
She couldn’t worry about that, she had to focus on breathing, which at this point came accompanied with some dry heaving and a lot of hacking coughs. The sexiness turned to scary in a matter of seconds.
Lungs, overworked. Chest, pained. Throat, closing. Why the hell had this seemed like a good idea? Oh, yeah, because she was supposed to be showing Jon how much he didn’t want to date her. Well, that much had certainly been accomplished, she decided, as she sat on her butt in the middle of a gorgeous park with a gorgeous view and a gorgeous man while hacking up something decidedly not-gorgeous.
It wasn’t celiac, her doctor had determined at a pretty young age. But the gluten sensitivity was real. It affected her the same way other people felt when they were around too many cats. Nothing life-threatening, but it was horrible and disgusting and honestly, a little bit frightening from both ends. As much as she didn’t like what was happening right now, Jon had to be freaking out.
“I’ll call the hospital, you’re fine,” he was crooning and digging around for his phone. Why was he so stupid nice? She was so not nice. Just the stupid part.
“No,” she managed to croak out between labored breaths. “No need. I’ll be fine in.” A few breaths. Maybe a hundred. “A little while.” She could tell he didn’t believe her. She couldn’t blame him. “Give me. A minute.”
He rubbed her back, held her hair back. He was so damned gentlemanly. Where was the catch? She’d been waiting for weeks for a catch to this guy and hadn’t found one. It was just as hard for her to swallow his undivided, sweet attention as it was to swallow gluten. He wasn’t supposed to do this. He was supposed to run. They always ran. He was supposed to be horrified by this, if nothing else.
But there was the rub. On what could have been one of their best dates yet, she’d decided to show her trump card. So now there was no chance at all at Jon didn’t know she was playing the saboteur here. Because she knew full well Summer had mentioned her gluten issues, and she’d definitely eaten that roll in front of him.
And behind him. And next to him. Anywhere she could enjoy him in a pair of jeans, truly, but it wasn’t a secret that she’d eaten the stupid roll. So now he knew.
Greta Steinburg was an asshole who was so scared of real feelings that she would even ruin fake dates.
And weirdly enough, Jon’s arms were still around her. She could kind of breathe now, but she wasn’t ready to let him know yet. He was murmuring in her ear. Soothing her. In other words, a perfect gentleman. Just like he’d said.
How was that even going to be possible? How could he see exactly what she was doing and not just . . walk away? Maybe she hadn’t given this guy enough credit. Maybe she hadn’t given herself enough. Because something super-strange was happening here. It was like he saw exactly who she was, and stuck around. No, that couldn’t be right—was it?
She let out another gasp. Not because it was hard to breathe. The inside of her throat wasn’t as clenched as it had been a moment ago, but Greta wasn’t ready to tell Jon that yet. Once she told him that, he’d want to talk. They’d have to talk. She’d have to to admit that she’d done exactly what he thought she did. She’d have to tell him she was trying to call his bluff. She’d have to tell him that letting him break off the fake date was preferable to her than telling him how she really felt—as in, she needed some time to sort out how she felt, but she was a little worried that he wasn’t the caricature she’d painted him as in her head. She’d have to be honest. It was going to be terrible. She let out a deep sigh.
“Just like that. You okay, love? I’m here.” He was peering into her eyes, she tried to avoid it. A gigantic twenty foot-tall wave of shame was washing over her, she couldn’t look at him.
“Okay. I’m here too.” And she kind of was. Not ready to admit that he was someone she needed, but ready to admit that she owed him a few explanations. And possibly an apology, though she’d drag her feet on that one. Who was dumb enough to date her, after all? She’d told him she didn’t date. She’d told everyone.