Ain't She Sweet (Seven Brides for Seven Mothers #2) - Whitney Dineen Page 0,69
one?”
“You want a cold shower, do you?” He recognizes my intent and grabs my hand just as I push him off the rock into a moderately deep pool of creek water. We both land with splash and a scream.
“I can’t believe you did that!” He’s between wearing a grin and gasping in shock.
My body turns into a head-to-toe goosebump. “It was that or have the whole world think I was in a relationship with a pornstar.”
“That’s farmer/pornstar to you,” he teases, before grabbing my hand and pulling me to the shore.
We hurriedly dry off and slide into our clothes which doesn’t do much to warm us, but it’s sure better than nothing.
In the golf cart on the way back to the lodge, Rachel says to me, “You and James aren’t really in love, are you?”
“What?” I practically swallow my tongue. “Why would you think that?” I mean, hello, we just gave her a great show.
“Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely tell you’re into each other, but you act like you’re at the very beginning of a relationship. You know, kind of awkward and unsure.”
Damn, damn, damn. I thought we were doing so well, too. I can’t come clean and tell Rachel the truth. Not only would that go against every hardcore rule I have about the press, but I’ve pulled an innocent party into this charade and I have to protect him. The last thing James needs is for the Tattler to accuse him of trying to make a buck off of them. His reputation cannot be left tarnished once this is over.
“My relationship with James is different from anyone else I’ve ever dated,” I tell her. Rachel pulls out her trusty phone and turns it on while I continue, “He’s not savvy in the ways of celebrity. He’s just a small-town guy living his life. You being here is throwing him for a bit of a loop.”
“What does that have to do with whether or not you’re in love?”
“It has to do with how fast things are going,” I tell her honestly. “James is exotic to me. I don’t want our relationship to move so quickly that it changes him. Does that make sense?” Why am I saying this to her? I should just continue with our ruse and redouble my efforts to sell the story we first concocted.
But I don’t stop talking. “James is my unicorn,” I say. “He’s rare and special and I don’t want to scare him off before I can convince him I’m worth sticking around for.” I stare out into the passing woods and feel the full impact of what I just told her. “When you live under a microscope for so long, you lose your perspective on what’s real and what isn’t. I’m not saying that what Romaine and I had wasn’t real. It’s just that our relationship had more than two people in it.”
Rachel’s eyes bug out like I’m confessing to something sordid. I shake my head to make sure she knows that’s not what I’m talking about. “It had the press, Romaine’s fans, my fans, assorted agents, and publicists. Everyone felt like they had a stake in our relationship. With James and me, it’s just us, no one else. Normal.”
“If he’s such a rare commodity, why are you introducing him to the world? Aren’t you worried that will change what you have together?”
“I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted everyone to know I’d moved on and that it was time to forget about me.” Damn, am I ruining the possibility of something real happening between us? When I asked James to pretend to be my boyfriend, I wasn’t thinking about a future with him. But now that we’ve spent so much time together, and I know what a wonderful man he is, have I already ruined whatever chance we had for normalcy by making him public domain?
My brain is spinning but I know I have to say something else. “James Cavanaugh is a good man who deserves better than people making up stuff about him to sell papers. Do you really want to be the one to hurt a unicorn?”
She shakes her head. “I already told you, I’m not here to write lies about you. I’m here to tell the truth. I think you should be asking yourself if that’s what you really want told, or if you’re just trying to perpetuate more lies. Because that’s where you’re going to get into trouble.”