Intentions.
Le mie intenzioni?The word dropped onto the table like a grenade.
My intentions? My intentions were to heal, to disappear, to figure out who the hell I was if I wasn’t the man behind the wheel of a multi-million-dollar machine.Madonna.
My intentions were to not be here, at this table, being interrogated about a woman I barely knew who seemed to be a walking, talking agent of chaos.
I could feel the weight of a dozen pairs of eyes on me. Say the wrong thing, and it would be all over town before the apple pie was served. Say the right thing—not that I had any idea what that was—and it would be even worse.
I opened my mouth, a sterile, noncommittal phrase forming in my head. Something about being friends. Something about Ben. But before I could speak, Ben scraped his chair back.
“You know what? I need to borrow these two for a second. Important festival business.” He jerked his head toward the hallway. “Top secret. Involves… hay bale logistics.”
He grabbed my arm with one hand and Lily’s with the other, hauling us both out of our chairs before anyone could object. Margaret looked momentarily disappointed, her interrogation cut short, but she acquiesced. Town festival business was, after all, serious business.
Ben frog-marched us out of the dining room, down the hall, and through the kitchen, not stopping until we were outside on the small, enclosed back porch. He shut the glass door behind us, plunging the small space into relative quiet. The only light came from the kitchen window, casting long, distorted shadows around us. The air was cold, smelling of potted geraniums and impending rain.
Lily immediately wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her elbows as if she were freezing. She still wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at a crack in the floorboards.
I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. My entire body felt like a clenched fist. “Hay bale logistics?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You’re welcome,” Ben said, ignoring my tone. He turned to his sister. “Are you okay?”
Lily finally looked up, her eyes wide and glassy in the dim light. “Okay? Ben, the entire town thinks I’m throwing myself at him! June is probably already Photoshopping our wedding photos. Mom asked about hisintentions. This is a nightmare.”
“And I’m a celebrity again,” I cut in, my voice hard. “Which is the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to be. Your sister and her runaway vegetables have compromised my entire reason for being here.”
“Okay, first of all, it was a gourd,” she snapped, her head whipping around to glare at me. “And I didn’t ask you to catch me!”
“You’re right. Next time, I’ll let you taste the dirt.”
“Maybe you should!”
“Enough!” Ben held up his hands, stepping between us like a referee. “Both of you, stop. You’re both miserable. I get it. The town’s talking, Mom’s plotting. It’s a mess.” He took a deep breath. “But I have an idea. A way to fix this for both of you.”
I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t like the look on his face. It was the same look he’d had in college right before he convinced me that street-racing a pizza delivery scooter was a sound investment of our time.
“What idea?” Lily asked, her voice wary.
Ben looked from me to her, a slow, calculating smile spreading across his face. “You should pretend to date.”
The silence on the porch was absolute. The chirping of crickets outside seemed to stutter to a halt. I just stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. Of all the insane, hare-brained, monumentally stupid things I had ever heard, this was a podium finisher.
Lily found her voice first. It was a choked, incredulous squeak. “What?”
“Are you out of your mind?” I said, my voice dangerously low. “Pretend to date her? The entire point is for me to be invisible. How is publicly attaching myself to the town’s resident flower-pusher going to accomplish that?”
“Hey!” Lily bristled.
“Think about it,” Ben said, his voice dropping into a persuasive, reasonable tone. “Strategically. Right now, you’re a mystery, Mario. You’re the big-shot F1 Italian racecar driver back from a crash, hiding out in Autumn Grove. That’s interesting. The press loves interesting. Tabloids, sports blogs—they eat that stuff up. And Lily, you’re the perpetually single mom everyone’s trying to set up. That’s a project. Mom will never stop.”
He paused, letting his words sink in. He had a point, and I hated him for it.
“But,” he continued, pointing a finger between us, “if you’re dating … what does that story become? Famous driver leaves the fast lane behind for a quiet life. He falls for his best friend’s sister, a sweet single mom in a small town.” He spread his hands. “It’s boring. It’s a cliché. It’s a Hallmark movie. And you know what the press does with a boring story? They leave it alone. There’s no angle, no drama. You’re not a mystery anymore, Mario. You’re just a guy with a girlfriend. You could hide in plain sight.”
I stared at him, my brain processing the logic. The cold, tactical part of me, the part that analyzed race data and calculated braking points, whirred to life. He was right. A quiet, stable relationship was a perfect piece of misdirection. It was a shield. A boring story was a safe story.
“As for you, Lil,” Ben said, turning to his sister, who still looked like she’d been struck by lightning. “Mom gets off your back. The whole town gets off your back. No more surprise Todds showing up with pie. You’re with Mario. End of story. Everyone’s happy.”
