“We aren’t traipsing,” he said. “We’re walking to the clearing so we can talk in private. Unless you’d rather go back into the bar?”

Sloane glanced over at the door and then back to the trees. She sighed and followed him until they were in the clearing with the bar’s utility shed, a picnic table that had been in the small clearing since the early nineties, and a partially busted, short lamppost standing between the two.

“I didn’t know this was back here,” Sloane said, following him to the ring of light the lamp was putting out.

“My uncle owns the bar but hates sitting inside it. Says he needs the fresh air to think better when he’s looking over the books, so he put all this out here.”

“I get that. Sometimes you just have to step away from it all.”

Brady stopped just within the circle and waited for Sloane to face him. He could still read tension in her shoulders. Better to dive in headfirst than tire himself out by doing baby strokes.

“Okay, so here are the facts,” he started. “You have the hots for Marcus Robertson and don’t want to admit it but also know that you can’t keep it a secret forever. I’d like some good publicity for the bar after The Drinking Spot started taking our customers. Since you’re internet famous now, you can make that happen. So why not take out two birds with one stone and pretend we’re together?”

“I don’t have the hots for Marcus,” she shot back, eyes narrowing.

Brady clapped. “Even better. But I’m still guessing you don’t want him to know you did?”

Sloane conceded that with a slow nod.

“Then let’s use us fake dating as the one stone to take out our problems.”

There was no reason, as far as Brady was concerned, to add in the part about Felicity. So he didn’t. Even without that complication, Sloane was in a pickle. An embarrassing, awkward pickle.

And she knew it.

“That’s a really weird stone,” she said after a moment.

“Weird doesn’t mean it’s not effective.”

She tucked her bottom lip into her mouth in thought. Once again, it was oddly distracting.

“Let’s say I play along and tell everyone that we’re dating and you’re the guy I’ve been writing about in my blog… What keeps you from changing your mind, admitting we’re not together, and making me look like I’m just out for attention? What keeps you from also telling everyone it was Marcus I was talking about, not you?”

Brady hadn’t expected her to question his honor. He didn’t like it.