“No one’s ever done that for me.”
“Done what?”
He cupped the back of her head, allowing his fingers to weave through her hair. Damn, touching her felt incredible. Especially when she sighed a little and leaned into his palm. “Defend me.”
She scrutinized him for a few beats. “How long have people been speaking to you like that?”
“A while,” he whispered, a hot pulse pounding in his temples.
“They shouldn’t. You deserve better,” she returned, going up on her toes and laying a soft kiss on his lips—just as a flurry of flashes went off, making her eyes go round. She rocked back on her heels, dislodging his hand. “I . . . This thing between us . . . will make it stop, won’t it?”
This thing. This thing. Their arrangement, which would end when they were both satisfied with the results.
That’s why you’re here.
“Yeah,” he managed, needing like hell to pin her to the car and tongue fuck her into a stupor, the family-friendly persona he was trying to achieve be damned. God help him, he couldn’t keep his neck from craning, breathing once, twice, against her mouth. “That’s what this is all about, right?” He said it mostly to remind himself that their relationship wasn’t real. But when Georgie took the hint and eased away, climbing into her car and driving out of the parking lot, he couldn’t keep the regret at bay.
Striding past the gleeful cameraman to his truck, Travis could only hope tonight had done the trick. Because this fake relationship was either going to kill him before he got the job . . . or start to feel far too real before it was over.
Chapter Fifteen
Georgie woke up from a nap with thirty-one text messages and fourteen missed calls.
There was also a half-eaten granola bar stuck to her forehead, but that was beside the point.
She jerked into an upright position and picked a mini chocolate chip from where it had been embedded above her eyebrow, shrugging and popping it into her mouth.
She’d had a midmorning birthday party for a one-year-old, which should have been easy peasy, but both of the organizer’s sisters had come down with a cold, leaving no one to help decorate and serve food, so Georgie had pulled double duty. Made a nice tip out of the whole thing, too, though it had been unnecessary. She’d been far more grateful for the woman’s candor as they’d plated apple slices and ransacked the house for matches to light the birthday candles. They’d been in it together, as opposed to being employer and employee.
It had almost felt like her dating experiment with Travis was already working, but that couldn’t be right. Barely enough time had passed for people to find out—
Fully conscious now, she snatched up her phone again. Oh, this was it.
The Travis was out of the bag.
Leave it to her friends who hadn’t bothered to pick up a phone in months to be texting her now. They’d each messaged her five times.
You’re dating Travis Ford?
Have you . . . you know . . . met the second bat??
You’ve been holding out on us!
Georgie frowned down at her phone. Those kinds of questions weren’t out of the ordinary between her and her friends. But reading them made her feel hollow. There was no excitement to text them back and overshare, like they used to do about their boyfriends before time and distance caused a strain. It was all a hoax, so obviously there wasn’t that typical feminine urge to squeal to her friends.
It was more than that, though. Reading the messages, she could only think about the couple in the bar last night. How they’d treated Travis like a punch line and how he’d allowed it to happen—to a point—as if it were his due. Her irritation renewed, Georgie rose from the bed, continued to scroll through her plethora of messages and missed calls. Most of them were from her mother and she’d be taking the coward’s way out on that one. For now. Vivian Castle didn’t like to be left in the dark, so there would be a wave of passive aggression headed in Georgie’s direction. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Bethany had called several times. No Stephen. Huh. She couldn’t decide if she was surprised or not by that. On the one hand, Stephen never bothered himself with her social life. On the other, Georgie was dating his best friend. At least that’s how it would appear. Had Travis told Stephen