“Are you sure you want that?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Tough, remember? And,” she added in a teasing tone, “simply longing for your touch.”
He didn’t laugh, however. Instead, he stared at her for a moment, before reaching out to brush a wisp of hair back from her face and behind her ear. “How was that?”
She hoped he couldn’t tell she was practically gasping for oxygen. “Fine.”
“Good.” He brushed the backs of his knuckles over her cheek. “What about this?”
Praying her face hadn’t flushed red and given her away, she nodded. “Still fine. Should we move on to our get-to-know-each-other lists?”
His hand lingered on her skin a beat longer before he lowered it. “My favorite color is green.”
“Mine’s orange.”
“I’m one of seven kids,” he said. “My mother’s Irish, and my father met her in the town of Cong nearly forty years ago, then convinced her to marry him and move to Bar Harbor.”
“I grew up in Kennebunkport as an only child,” she said. “Then when my mother passed away, my dad married my stepmother when I was fifteen. We moved to Camden to live with her and Brittany, who is one month younger than me. I lived there until I moved here a year ago.”
He frowned. “After Brittany and your ex cheated.”
She’d been worried he would ask how her mother died. It was a relief that he’d focused, instead, on Brittany and Cameron. “Breakups in a small town are never good.”
“You’re right, they’re not,” he agreed. An expression that looked like a combination of guilt and remorse crossed his face, then disappeared so quickly she almost wasn’t sure she’d seen it. “Anything else I should know?”
“I’m allergic to cats. I’ll swim in any body of water I can get into, even if it’s freezing. And I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with your sister’s candy—and chocolate cake. What about you?”
“I was never going to let you know this,” he said, “but I’ve bought a half dozen of your frames over the past several months to ship off to my cousins on the West Coast and New York.”
“Seriously?”
“You’re great at what you do, Zara. You and I might not see eye to eye on many things, but you don’t need me to tell you that your frames are brilliant.”
“Thank you.” She met his olive branch with one of her own. “I might secretly covet your furniture once my financial ship comes in and I can afford it.”
“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t,” he said.
She grinned. “Who would have thought the two of us would ever agree on anything?”
“I’m just as amazed as you are,” he said, grinning right back. “What do you think? Will we be able to convince your stepsister and ex that we’re the real deal?”
“You know what?” Rory was the least-likely co-conspirator she could ever have imagined. And yet… “I think we just might.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Making furniture was the kind of work that gave you a lot of time to think. Which was precisely why, during the past year, Rory kept heavy metal music blaring in his workshop. Anything that could bash away his dark thoughts was welcome.
For the first time in a long time, however, it wasn’t guilty memories of the aftermath of his breakup with Chelsea that plagued him. Instead, as he worked to finish a custom table on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, Zara occupied the bulk of his thoughts. He’d even bowed out of his usual Friday night dinner with his family. If they found out that he and Zara were attending her stepsister’s engagement party together, his siblings and parents were bound to ask questions. Questions he had no desire whatsoever to answer.
What’s more, he kept circling back to how Zara had almost breezily dropped into the conversation the fact that her mother had died. When a friend in high school had lost his mom, the guy had gone off the rails—drinking, drugs, unsafe sex. While Rory couldn’t imagine Zara reacting in any of those ways, he also didn’t think she could have come away without scars. And though the two of them hadn’t had the greatest start this past year, he hoped she’d feel that she could talk openly to him about her mother if the conversation ever went that way again.
Now, as he stood outside Zara’s front door at a few minutes before four in the afternoon, his heart was pounding harder than usual. Not because he was nervous—on the contrary, he was looking forward to tonight more than he’d expected to.
He was simply acting the part of Zara’s date so that her stepsister and ex wouldn’t think they’d crushed her spirit. Nothing more.
And yet…
When he’d touched her yesterday morning, with just the barest sweep of his fingertips over her skin as he’d brushed back her hair, it had felt like more.
Which was crazy. Rory couldn’t imagine actually being with Zara any more than she could imagine being with him. They would do each other in within the hour.
All the more reason to have fun with tonight’s charade. Pretending something so wrong was right was bound to be a kick for both of them.
He was smiling as he rang her doorbell, and when she opened it, a sassy comment immediately fell from her tongue, as expected.
“You’re grinning like a dog who just snuck a bag of treats out from under his owner’s nose.”
“And you look like…” He stopped to take in her outfit. Head-to-toe black. Voluminous fabric without a hint of a shape beneath. Even her glasses were framed in black, which was odd when she normally wore vibrant hues on her face. “You’re headed to a funeral.”
She sighed as she let him inside. “Everything else I tried on seemed like I was trying too hard.”
“You are.” Her eyes widened at his blunt statement. He knew firsthand how bad pity felt when it was directed at you. He would help her, but he wouldn’t coddle her. “It’s like you’ve wrapped yourself in an I-don’t-care flag, which only shows how much you do care.”
“Tell it like it is, why don’t you?” she muttered. “I suppose you think I should change?”
“Only if you want to.” Having grown up with three sisters, he knew better than to tell a woman what she should do with her clothing. “I’m cool with standing beside you holding a hanky for you to weep into all night, if that’s the look you’re aiming for.”
“Fine,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll go change. But just in case I forget to tell you this later, I had a really annoying time with you tonight.”
“Right back at you,” he called as she headed into her bedroom.
Alone in the living room, he took in her space. She’d made the cottage her own with bright colors across every surface, from the artwork on the walls, to the throws over the couch, to the rugs on the hardwood floor. Her home felt eclectic, yet perfectly representative of the colorful, bold, fascinating woman who lived there. For as much grief as he’d given her over the past year, the truth was that she’d impressed him from the start with her determination, focus, and talent.
“Okay, let’s go.” She marched across the room to grab her purse and overnight bag. “And whatever you’ve got to say about my new outfit, I don’t want to hear it.”