Party Foul - Abby Knox Page 0,16
her friends.
Levi turned to her when they’d reached the secluded corner, angled his face down and kissed her. In the half second before her body went rigid, he tasted strawberry vodka on her tongue, and smelled something coconut on her skin. Her strands of thick hair felt good in his hands. He moved his body in closer, pinning her against the wall, at which time she squealed and pushed back.
“Dude,” she breathed. “What are you doing?”
Levi backed up. “Whoa. I’m sorry, I thought you wanted to make out.”
“Make out? No. What made you think that?”
“You said you wanted to talk privately. Usually that means find a place to…you know.”
She looked genuinely horrified. “Usually? Ew. Do you do that a lot?”
Levi lifted one shoulder. He quickly replied, “No” and apologized again, dabbing her saliva off his lip. “So uh, what did you want to talk about?”
“I have to go to an important Christmas party on Saturday, and I need a plus one.”
Levi smirked. “Are you asking me on a date?”
She shook her head. “No. I need someone to agree to be my fake boyfriend for one night, just to put my parents and their stupid friends and the gossip mongers at ease.”
“So it’s, what, like an office Christmas party?”
Fiona squinted and cocked her head from side to side in a way that was so cute it almost made his lips ache with the absence of kissing her. “Kind of.”
“Well, like I said, I’m working,” he reminded her.
She blinked at him as if holding down a job was not something she ever had to worry about. “How much do you earn on a Saturday night?”
The truth was, he would skip work for free if it meant just being in the same room as her tomorrow night, fake date or no fake date. She could ask him to walk across the ice-covered roof of the skybridge between Newcastle’s two tallest skyscrapers and he would do it, no questions asked. He’d thought about nothing but her for the last 24 hours. Because what else in his life did he have to think about besides keeping his nose clean?
He told her the approximate amount. She nodded. “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars if you get out of it for one night and be my date. And then you won’t have to talk to me ever again.”
Levi looked around for a second, almost wondering if someone was pranking him. That’s how incredibly lucky he felt. “That’s too bad, cause you’re real pretty and I was a jerk last night.”
“No, no you weren’t,” she said, smiling as a rush of pink bloomed across the skin of her neck that was just visible above her fitted turtleneck. “Last night was…fun…and…” Fiona trailed off.
Levi took a step closer. “Yeah? And what?”
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “And I figured since we’ve already, you know, kissed and stuff, I thought it would be convincing. You would be a convincing fake boyfriend. That’s all I was thinking.”
He thought for a second he saw a flash of something in her eyes. Fire. Attraction. Heat. She couldn’t stay away from him, just as much as he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“I’ll do it,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, but mentally punching the air like he’d just won the Powerball.
She remained businesslike. “You have a suit?”
He shook his head.
Fiona tapped her bottom lip and considered. “It’s too late to have something tailored by tomorrow night. But I have an idea. Just make sure you answer your phone tomorrow.”
Pleased and relieved, she shared the address with him.
When he looked at it, his stomach clenched.
It was an address in Shoreline. Just a few miles up Oceanside Drive, but it may as well be a thousand.
Of course. You read the girl like a book last night, you guessed where she was from. How is this a surprise?
Cancel. A fake date is one thing, but a total fraud is another.
When he looked up to ask her a question, she was gone.
Chapter Five
Levi
* * *
The longer he went without seeing her, the more he wished he could have called this whole thing off.
First thing Saturday morning, Fiona had sent him a text with instructions to ask for someone by name at one of those fancy department stores uptown. “The buyer will help you find something off the rack. It’s the best we can do at this point.”
He felt like a bad employee getting Billy to cover his shift at Crow Bar. Sure, between him and