She smiled. “I was curious how far you and Audrey were going to take this thing. All the way, it seems.”

“Well, not all the way,” he said, smiling back in spite of himself.

“Good, because I’ll happily host a fake engagement party, but I do draw the line at hosting a fake wedding.”

“Noted. How’d you know?” he asked curiously.

“That your engagement wasn’t real?”

He nodded.

“Well, that’s the thing about being a mother. You get to know pretty quickly when your son is just trying to push your buttons.”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Clarke said, thinking of the petty Scandal Boy bullshit.

“I figured. Leave it to that girl to turn even marriage into a dog and pony show.”

Defending Audrey to his mother had always been a waste of breath, but Clarke had never quit trying. And he wasn’t going to stop now.

“You know,” he said, taking another slow sip of his drink, “in all the years I’ve known Audrey, she’s never not been there when I needed her.”

“And?”

Clarke shrugged. “I’m just saying, there are two types of women. The ones who stay by your side. And the ones who move to Washington, DC, without asking you to go with them.”

Leaving his mother to stew on his parting shot, and maybe, just maybe, realize he could manage his own life better than she could, Clarke began making his way toward Audrey, stopping to shake hands and accept congratulations along the way. Strange, that although this party was all for show, the congratulations misplaced, none of this felt in the least bit odd. Shouldn’t this advanced game of pretend feel wrong?

A hand caught his sleeve, and Clarke turned, smiling when he saw Naomi Powell and Claire Hayes. No, Claire Turner, he amended, remembering her spontaneous marriage to Scott Turner a few months earlier and her decision to take her new husband’s name.

Clarke had thought Audrey’s relationship with these two strange at first, considering how it had begun. Clarke had known enough women over the course of his life to think that a friendship between three women who’d all slept with the same man couldn’t possibly be built to last.

He was wrong, though, and happy to be wrong. The three of them may have come together over their shared scorn for Brayden Hayes and their desire to protect one another from future heartache, but whatever had kept them together was much stronger than any man. Of all Audrey’s friends, and she had dozens, these two ladies were perhaps his favorites.

Clarke cared for Audrey more than anyone, save perhaps her immediate family, but he knew Claire and Naomi came close in terms of being willing to do just about anything for her.

Which is why, seeing the troubled look on both of their faces, he dropped his smile immediately. “What’s up?”