The first thing I see is the ocean, waves lapping against the sandy shore. There’s a balcony outside the window that the gray sky is pouring through. There’s a king-sized bed with a navy blue upholstered headboard. And just two steps down is a small sitting area with a couch and two chairs.

“They didn’t have another room available,” Asher says as he tosses his keys and wallet onto the dresser. “But I think you’ll find the couch comfortable.”

“You’re going to make me sleep on the couch?” I ask. “Is that really the gentlemanly thing to do?”

“This gentleman just paid five hundred dollars to stay here for the night.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, Olivia, these things aren’t free.”

I never considered that this might be expensive. I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation.

“I can pay half.”

I really can’t. I’d have to pick up extra shifts at the restaurant and pay him in installments.

“I don’t want your money,” he says as he kicks off his shoes and shrugs out of his coat. “I would just like you to stop cackling and ordering bed linen. I’m an adult. I don’t need snowman sheets.”

“But they’re flannel,” I say. “And I don’t cackle!”

“You sound like Ursula in that scene in The Little Mermaid when she steals Ariel’s voice.”

I blink at him.

“I have a niece.”

“I’m offended that, out of all the Disney characters you could compare me to, you pick Ursula and not Tinker Bell.”

Asher rolls his eyes as he collapses onto the bed. I’m ready to tell him just how mean and grinchy he’s being, but when the headboard hits the wall in a rather suggestive way, a light bulb goes off in my head.

“Yes.” It growls up from my throat and startles Asher’s eyes wide. They only seem to grow when I jump on the bed. There’s another thump. I grin. “Yes.”

“What are you doing?” he hisses.

“We’re having sex,” I whisper. “God, Ash.”

His entire body tenses.

“You belong is a mental institution,” he says. “It’s not even noon!”

“We can’t have fake sex before noon?”

What kind of fake relationship am I in?

“Oh my God, do you really have a scheduling kink?”

“Do I have a what? You just told her you were going to sleep for the next twelve years.”

“You persuaded me otherwise.” I shrug against the pillow. “That look of absolute misery really turns me on. I’m practically falling out of my clothes right now.”

“Well, fall back into them,” he says and turns onto his side. “And get out of my bed. You smell like the everything bagel you vomited up on the side of the road.”

“Wow, you sound so sexy right now.”

“It’ll give you something to think about when you’re alone with Betsy at night.”