Page 12 of One Little Favor
CHAPTER5
AVERY
I don’t know how to react to the look on Tom’s face. Is it gratitude? Relief? Desire? Confusion? I feel like maybe I see all of those rolled into the shock that currently has his face frozen.Shit, I hope I haven’t overstepped.
“Why would you do that?”
It’s not the response I was hoping for and has me worried that I have, in fact, overstepped and made myself look like a fool. So I aim for a light “this is no big deal” response and hope he lets me back out of this gracefully.
“Because it sounds like you need a fake girlfriend for the night, and since my parents are leaving tomorrow morning, I’ve found myself with some unexpected free time. I know you well enough to fake your brother out for one night, I think. But if you don’t want help, no problem.”
“It’s the perfect solution, actually,” he says. “But how will your boyfriend feel about you pretending to be my girlfriend?”
What the hell?
“Um,” I stall, not sure how to respond. How does he know about my ex-boyfriend? “I assume you mean Logan, and since I haven’t talked to him in months, I have no idea.”
Tom’s whole body draws back in surprise. “Wait. You aren’t still dating?”
I don’t know what to address first—the fact that he knows of the existence of my ex-boyfriend, or the fact that he thinks we’re still dating. “Tom, how do you even know about him?”
I squat down and send the paint roller back and forth through the paint on the tray just so I have something to do that doesn’t involve looking at him.
“You took a day off in the fall to go away with him for a long weekend.”
I don’t know how he knows that. The only person I told was Mitzi, and only because my paid time off was different as an executive assistant than when I was in the admin pool, and I wasn’t sure how to schedule that. And then it hits me:shetold him why I was taking a day off, but I have no idea why.
“Yeah, well, then we broke up and didn’t go away after all.”
“What happened?” he asks, and instantly I feel my cheeks heat up. There’s no way I can admit it’s because Logan was jealous of how much I thought about and apparently talked about Tom.
“We just weren’t a good fit.”
I can’t quite place the look that passes across Tom’s face when I glance over at him, but he doesn’t join me in speculating about Logan’s motivations. “So,” he says instead, “about this fake date tomorrow night ... how are we going to pull that off?”
“Does your family think this is a new relationship? Or have we been dating for a long time?”
“New.”
“Well, that makes it easier. So we’re clearly still learning about each other. How long have we been together?”
He looks like he’s trying to remember when he first told his mom. “I don’t know, like a month?” He tells me about the event he was trying to get out of, and I pull out my phone and search for the gallery opening so that we can be straight on our timeline.
“Looks like it was right before Thanksgiving. So did you say anything at that point about how long you’d had this mysterious girlfriend?”
“I don’t think so. I told her I was dating someone and she wouldn’t appreciate me going out with another woman.” He pauses and is it my imagination or are his cheeks a little pink with the admission? “I’m pretty sure I didn’t give any more details than that.”
He clearly tells his family as little as possible, which is hard for me to relate to given how close I’ve always been to my parents, but in his case I think I understand. They sound pretty terrible.
“Okay,” I say, thinking through the possibilities, “so we’ve been dating for a month or more.” I like the sound of that so much more than I should. Despite how interested Tom was in the fact that I’m no longer dating Logan, and despite the fact that I totally watched him check me out earlier, I’m a realist when it comes to dating. There’s no way something can happen between us while I’m working for him. And given his dad’s history, I’m guessing Tom wouldn’t want to put himself in that position either.
The “hmm” that rattles out of Tom’s throat is so damn sexy, it has me clenching my entire core, hoping that the wetness I feel pooling between my legs doesn’t become an issue with these leggings I’m wearing.
“Do we tell them I’m your assistant?” I ask.
I glance over at Tom, and his paintbrush is paused against the corner where two walls meet and he’s looking at me intently. “What do you think?”
The question isn’t asked with his usual biting sarcasm, so I assume he’s asking for my genuine response. “I guess it depends. Are you trying to impress them? Or just get them off your back for a while?”
