I DIDN’T KNOW HOW to stop what was happening.
Part of me wondered if I should reach out to Noah, get to the bottom of why he’d ditched Juniper. Because I highly doubted it had anything to do with football. But the last thing I wanted was to give him a hard time only for him to change his mind.
Like hell did I want him taking Juniper to this wedding.
Which left me as her only option.
This was a bad idea. For fuck’s sake, I’d spent years keeping Juni at arm’s length, and now I was pretending to be her boyfriend for a weekend?
Bright fucking idea.
But Halloween had fucked me over, and now escorting Juniper to the wedding was exactly the excuse my brain needed to justify being close to her. I couldn’t shake the itch to touch her. I couldn’t stop thinking of how it had felt to have her beneath the sheets. Christ, I thought about her more than any man should think about a woman who was his coworker and sister’s best friend. And it was damn annoying, honestly.
There were so many reasons why this was a terrible idea. And incidentally, one of those reasons was blowing up my phone.
GEMS: You better be nice to her this weekend.
GEMS: She’s really nervous about meeting Sofia.
GEMS: She doesn’t need your ass to be moody on top of it.
GEMS: Maybe, you know, be encouraging for once. Give her a smile. Or a hug. You might actually enjoy it.
I did fucking enjoy it. That was the problem. I hated how much I enjoyed it.
Not that Gemma needed to know that.
I’ll be nice, Gems. I’m not an asshole. I know this is important to her. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it.
GEMS: I know you’re not an asshole. But sometimes you act like one when Juni’s around.
GEMS: Thank you for taking her.
I owed her.
GEMS: For what?
She’s helping me with something for work.
GEMS: I still can’t get over that you guys work together.
“Ready?”
I pocketed my phone at the sound of Juni’s voice, ignoring Gemma’s last text. Everyone seemed to think Juni and I working together was amusing as all hell without realizing just how much of my sanity it cost me.
And now I was about to lose more of it.
Juniper, looking almost unrecognizable in jeans and a sweatshirt, rolled her bags toward where I waited outside her apartment. I took her suitcase, sliding it into the trunk of my SUV before opening the front passenger door for her to get in.
She rolled her eyes. “I feel like you’re taking this whole nice thing too far.”
“Oh, so now I’m too nice?”
She looked from me to the open car door pointedly, chewing on her lip in a way that made it nearly impossible not to stare at her mouth and those soft lips. Shit.
“Get in the fucking car, Juniper,” I growled.
Her eyes, wide and wondrous, flew to mine. Pink lips parted in surprise. She hesitated only a moment before settling in the passenger seat, but that single moment made my pulse tick up.
After putting on her seat belt, Juniper looked at me from beneath her lashes. “That better?”
“Much.”
She held my gaze for one more beat before glancing down and clearing her throat. When she spoke, her words were crisp and diplomatic. That single moment from before had vanished, and God, I was thankful for it.
“You know, I think you could work on finding a middle ground, Julian. Between nice and…whatever that was.” Her manicured hand waved in my direction, a finger flicking up and down.
“Noted.”
Ten minutes later, we were on I-90W, undoubtedly headed toward a catastrophe. Juniper connected her phone to my car’s Bluetooth and had her head down, searching for a playlist. Meanwhile, I could barely think because of all the fucking flowers dancing around my head.
“What’s it called?”
“What’s what called?”
“Your perfume.”
“Bloom. Why?”
“I’m going to buy out their entire stock so you can’t torture me with it anymore.”
“I regret saying that you were being too nice.” She sniffed, pursing her lips. “Why did you even volunteer to be my date?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone else to.”
The words were out before I could stop them, but I wasn’t sure how much I cared.
Noah taking her to this wedding was a ridiculous idea, and I didn’t know why we had ever run with it. He barely knew Juniper, had probably only wanted to see if he could sleep with her, and likely wouldn’t have stuck around afterward. It had been a shit idea. And setting her up with anyone else would have been a shit idea, too.
While this idea was still absolutely a bad one, it was better than all the others that didn’t involve, well, me.
“Anyone else?” Juni questioned. “You mean any of your other friends, right?” When I failed to answer that question, she added, “I think you’re just afraid they’re going to get to know me and realize they like me better than you.”
“No, Rosie,” I grunted. “That’s not it.”
“No? Then maybe I should have asked Cameron.” She paused. “Although the professional boundaries would have been a definite concern.”
My grip on the wheel tightened at the mention of Cameron. “Professional boundaries? We share an office. And here I am.”
But she hit the nail on the head on the second reason I shouldn’t be doing this. Whatever happened this weekend, I still had to share an office with Juni for the foreseeable future. And I liked working at Gardner Law. Despite how often I perused job ads these days, I didn’t really want to get a new one.
“Our boundaries aren’t the same, and you know it.”
I did know. I fucking knew it all too well, and I doubted it was a good thing.
“Why is it important that you bring a date anyway?” I asked, changing the subject. “I obviously understand not wanting to go alone, but why do you want Sofia to think you’re in a relationship?”
Juniper snuggled lower into her seat, crossing one leg over the other. “Different question, please,” she said.
After quick consideration, I didn’t ask a different question. I really wanted to know the answer to this one. So I waited, tapping my finger on the steering wheel and keeping my eyes on the road.
Eventually, Juniper sighed. “Look, I’m well aware that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a single woman. There are many, many impressive single people in this world.”
“Yes.” I side-eyed her purposefully. “Yes, there are.”
“But…”
Juni hesitated. Meanwhile, I trained my eyes back on the road, hoping it would make it easier for her to find words. But then a booming male voice broke through the silence in the car, cutting off whatever Juni might have said. And shocking the hell out of me.
“Georgia leaned back on the bed, spreading her legs wide. I sat back on my knees, taking in her glistening pussy, wet and waiting for me. Fuck, she was gorgeous. And she looked at me with those eyes—”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Juni muttered as she fumbled with her phone. “That was not what I—”
“By all means,” I half yelled, half laughed over the man telling me exactly how he planned to fuck some lady named Georgia, “don’t turn it off on my account.”
“I’m trying—ah, there.”
The car abruptly fell quiet again—quiet enough that I could hear the tires spinning on the highway beneath us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Juniper glance sheepishly toward me.
“That was, uh, supposed to be a diversion,” she admitted before that familiar twinkle brightened in her eye. “Plus, I know how much you were looking forward to listening to my audiobooks.”
The ridiculousness of it all made me laugh again, harder this time. I’d known she spent her lunch hours listening to audiobooks; the cadence of the narration was just loud enough to make out. And while her reaction yesterday made me wonder exactly what she thought I overheard, I hadn’t imagined it would be that.
“Well planned,” I said. Except it wasn’t, of course. Juni looked slightly mortified that the book had picked up in that spot, and meanwhile, it diverted me to my next line of wondering, one I knew she wouldn’t like anymore. “I think you should let the scene finish. Ya know, to give me a better idea.”
“A better idea?”
“Of what my fake girlfriend likes.”
“Oh.” Juni shifted in her seat. “Well, as you can tell, I mostly read romance books. I’m not sure we need to listen to the rest of the scene to explain that.”
Luckily, my many years of knowing Juni had given me the practice I needed to keep my expression motionless, even though my lips itched to curve in a knowing smile.
“I wasn’t talking about books, Lily.”
It took exactly five seconds before I heard the quick intake of breath and felt a simultaneous slap on my arm. “Julian!”
“This is your mistake, honestly. You blasted an explicit sex scene in my car,” I pointed out, giving in to the smirk that wouldn’t stay off my face. “We could go back to the conversation about impressing your family if you want.”
“We are not talking about my sex life.”
“Are you sure?” I shrugged, ignoring my internal irritation at the thought of Juniper sleeping with other guys—most of whom I bet didn’t deserve even a hug from her. Case in point, Greg Kennedy. “Seems like something that two people who are fake fucking and fake dating should talk about.”
“No, it does not.” She crossed her arms over her chest, pouting in her seat. “Remember those professional boundaries we were talking about earlier? This is very much crossing them.”
“You said our boundaries aren’t the same,” I reminded her. “And even if they were, this is where we draw the line? It wasn’t when you crawled into my bed on Halloween?”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about that,” she hissed, glaring at me. The heat of her look singed my skin.
“We never agreed on anything.” I raised my brows. “We’ve never talked about it at all.”
“Exactly!” Juni threw her hands up. “We never talked about it. Ergo, we never were going to. It was an unspoken agreement, Julian.”
I chuckled, hoping that maybe she wouldn’t see how much it affected me to even think about Halloween weekend. She didn’t need to know that I’d reimagined her beneath me far too many times by now. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
Juniper huffed in a very Juniper way. “If you’re so eager to have this discussion, why don’t you share first, huh?”
I glanced over at her. Despite her sulky appearance as she slouched in my car, her eyes shone. And if I wasn’t mistaken, curiosity simmered there.
There she was—the girl from my bed that morning. I’d been scared to confirm it, but she was there. And I wasn’t sure exactly what, but she wanted something.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
Considering how my pulse couldn’t seem to find any consistency during this car ride and how my palms were starting to sweat on the steering wheel, I probably shouldn’t encourage this conversation. But she’d presented this rabbit hole, and I’d dragged us down it. So here we were.
Juni thought for a moment, tapping her nose adorably. Her cheeks had grown pink, matching her lips, and I wished I wasn’t driving so I could keep watching her.
It was precisely that fact—that I had to look back at the road—that made me miss the change in her expression. My only warning of her next words was the low tone of her voice when she started speaking.
“As your girlfriend, how satisfied would you say I am?” she questioned, stirring up heat within me. “I need to know how to act.”
I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel, wishing I could do something else with my hands. “You’re more than fucking satisfied.”
I could feel Juni watching me, but I didn’t dare turn to look at her. I had a feeling it would ruin everything. So I bit my tongue, keeping myself from saying anything I’d regret.
“Well.” Her voice was forcefully light. “That’s an awfully bold statement without any pro—”
“Don’t ask for proof unless you’re ready to get it, Juniper.”
Fuck. Speaking of words I’d regret, there they were. She’d been right. We shouldn’t be having this conversation. Because while I still refused to look at her, I heard Juni suck in a breath, and suddenly, the car was stiflingly hot.
“You could have proven it to me on Halloween,” she said quietly, a low murmur beneath her breath. But I heard it loud and clear. “There was a moment when I wondered if you were going to.”
Oh, God. Hearing Juniper talk like that made all my nerve endings feel like they were about to explode.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about Halloween,” I said, matching her tone.
Juni twisted to look out the window, avoiding my attempts to capture her gaze. “You’re right.”
This weekend would absolutely destroy me.
I softened my voice. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
As much as I wanted—and had been trying—to ignore whatever this was between us, it was really fucking hard. And the fact of the matter was that we were two adults who had to work and exist around each other. Eventually, we might have to talk about it. Ignoring Juni might not be an option for much longer, even though I hated to admit it.
Juni nodded without taking her eyes off the passing landscape, and I took that to mean that the conversation was over and closed. For now.
“We should stop for something to eat,” I said, changing the subject. “You skipped lunch again today.”
“I was too anxious to eat.”
“About the weekend?”
She nodded, and I noticed how her shoulders were slumped. Guilt instantly sank into my gut, heavy as a rock. I was being an asshole, doing exactly what Gemma had told me not to do. Juniper was undoubtedly worried about meeting her sister, and here I was, probing her with uncomfortable topics.
I watched as Juni fiddled with her phone, popping the case on and off in the corner. I reached out and grabbed that fidgeting hand, forcing it to still. Her fingers slowly relaxed, letting mine thread between hers. I squeezed, ignoring the heat of her skin. And how soft it was. She stared down at our hands for a moment.
“You can turn your book back on if you want,” I said.
“Oh, no.” A nervous giggle cut through the tension in the car. “No, that’s okay.”
“I was only teasing you yesterday,” I said, holding her hand even tighter, not wanting her to slip away. “I don’t really mind if you want to listen to it.”
“I don’t want you to ruin all the best moments.”
“Me?” I pretended to be affronted. “I would never.”
Juni flashed me a look that told how much she believed me: not one bit.
I couldn’t help but laugh. She was right; I probably would end up ruining something.
“Tell me about it, then,” I insisted. “Are you enjoying it?”
“I am,” she said, and I watched as a light switched on in her eyes. In her whole face, actually. “It’s the third book in a series, and I think this one might be my favorite. But I’ll probably say that about the next one, too.”
“How many books are there in the series?”
“I think there’s going to be five, but only four books have been released.”
“What’s this one about?” I nodded toward her phone.
Juni smiled brightly.
And then she told me all about it.
It was late when we finally made it to Manhattan.
Our hotel was a stunning high-rise with room rates that were likely more than Juniper could reasonably afford. And even though it would cause an argument, I made a mental note to pay her back for our stay later.
After Juni checked us in, I followed her to the elevator, where we shared a quiet ride up to the sixteenth floor. She was more than tired; I could tell from how she dragged her feet as she pushed open the door to our room. A full day of work and hours of stop-and-go traffic had made my eyelids droop, too. We’d been forced to take at least four detours due to construction.
Sometimes detours were nice. A surprise diversion. New sights that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Old sights but in a new light.
These weren’t those kinds of detours.
Juniper’s obvious fatigue made me frown with worry when she stopped short just after entering the room. Her purse dropped to the floor with a loud thunk.
“Juni?”
I stepped beside her, looking over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of her face. She stared blankly ahead, causing my frown to deepen.
That is, until I followed her gaze.
The room was nothing short of elegant. The finishes screamed luxury and unheard-of expenses. But most importantly, in the middle of the room sat a large bed with fluffy white linens and a sleek, black headboard.
One large bed. One set of fluffy white linens. One sleek, black headboard.
One.
