eyebrows drew together, and he cut me a hurt look. Double crap. “Your boyfriend?”
“Well …” My mouth opened and shut like a guppy. “You see … I was going …”
“We haven’t been dating long. On that note”—Rhys clamped a hand on his brother’s shoulder—“Tink, this is my baby brother, Dean. Dean, this is Parker.”
Dean gave me a knowing smirk. The fact that it was sexy was more of an observation on my part, rather than a reaction. Huh. Strange, because Dean Morgan was definitely more my type. Although he and Rhys shared similarities in their features, Dean was blond and clean-cut while Rhys was all dark, rugged masculinity. Dean was in shape, but he was an academic, while Rhys was the ultimate athlete. Dean was all-American handsome; Rhys was …
Rhys was … just looking at him caused a delicious ache between my legs, even in the midst of my anxiety over lying to my friends.
How was this possible? How could this mortifying nightmare be happening to me?
Rhys Morgan was so not my type.
Argh!
And I was definitely not his.
Therein lies the problem.
“Nice to meet you, Parker. Heard a lot about you.” Dean shook my hand, and I couldn’t help but glare at him as I noted the laughter in his eyes. Obviously, he shared his brother’s twisted sense of humor.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied politely. I avoided direct eye contact with my friends as I gestured to them. “Elijah, Navin, Ren, this is my … boyfriend, Rhys, and his brother, Dean. Rhys owns a boxing gym right around the corner. Rhys, these are my college friends. I think I told you about our quiz nights.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Before anyone could say another word, Bill the bar owner returned to the stage to continue the quiz.
Rhys bent toward me, his lips near my right ear as Bill’s voice quieted the bar. My fake boyfriend’s breath caressed my skin, and I hunched up a shoulder to chase away the answering shiver. “We’ll just grab a beer and be right over. You want anything?”
Trying to make my smile as natural as possible, all the while cursing my bad luck, I shook my head. “We’re good.”
“An encomium is a speech or piece of writing that does what?” Bill asked into the mic as Rhys and Dean walked away from the table. Bill looked up from the card in his hand toward the bar. “Jesus fuck, Della, where the fuck did you get these fucking questions?”
The tables of quizzers chortled. It wasn’t the first time Bill had stopped in the middle of the quiz to ask Della, whom we’d soon learned was his wife, where she’d found what were truly random, difficult questions.
“It’s like an admiration thing, right?” Elijah said, his voice low as he sat forward. “To praise a person.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Navin nodded. “Write it down.”
Ren looked at them like they were crazy. “Are we seriously not going to talk about the fact that Parker is dating an ex-heavyweight boxing champion and didn’t tell us?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know who he is?”
My friend glowered. “Yeah, I know who he is. As soon as you said boxing gym, I remembered why he’s so familiar. So, what’s going on? Is this why you’ve been quiet?”
My belly roiled. Oh my goodness, I did not want to lie to Ren. But if I told him I had hired Rhys to be my fake boyfriend, he would probably take a swing at Rhys, assuming I was being taken advantage of, and not caring that the Widowmaker could crush him.
“As you can imagine,” I started, trying not to lower my eyes because he’d know I was lying if I did, “I’ve been somewhat surprised by this turn of events, and I’ve been attempting to figure things out and … I honestly didn’t even know we were dating until he just said it.” I fibbed the last part.
“Do you want to date him?”
Oh boy, wasn’t that the question of the century.
“Yes,” I said shyly.
Ren studied me a second and then nodded. “Okay, then. Just would’ve been cool if you’d told us about him.”
Elijah tapped the table in front of us. “Uh, this is all very interesting but we’re missing the questions.”
“Bill asked”—Dean suddenly appeared, sitting down beside me with a beer in hand, forcing me to budge up next to Ren—“‘What is nanoscience?’ Easy. It’s the study of molecules and structures whose size ranges from one to a hundred nanometers.”
The guys all looked at him; Rhys drew my attention