It was no big deal, she told her thundering heart. Just a perfunctory stamp of a kiss to get the doubters to back off. It’d be over before she knew it.

Clarke’s lips moved against hers, his head tilting to the side, deepening the kiss slightly as his hand slid up her back, pulling her more firmly against him.

Audrey felt something strange and unfamiliar flutter in her stomach. Before she could identify it, Clarke lifted his head. His gaze stayed locked on her lips for a long moment, giving her a second to gather her thoughts.

Damn. He’s really selling this, she realized. She knew it was all for show, but she still could have sworn she felt heat in his gaze, as though he were silently willing the rest of the room away so it was just the two of them.

His eyes lifted to hers, and she thought she saw a flicker of confusion before he straightened and grinned at his colleague and her husband, who were watching them with bemused smiles.

“Leslie!” he said in a cheerful voice. “So glad you could make it. Apologies for the, ah—moment,” he said with a wink.

“I get it,” she said with a laugh. “Chris and I were young once, too.”

“You say that like I have a walker,” her fifty-something husband grumbled.

“And yet, you don’t kiss me like that anymore,” she said teasingly.

Nobody kisses like that, Audrey thought.

She desperately wanted a moment to gather her thoughts, to find out what had prompted the kiss, but she couldn’t let Clarke carry the show alone, so she linked her arm through his and chatted with the middle-aged couple. “I’m so glad you could make it. I haven’t seen you since, what, Joel’s wedding last summer?”

For the next several minutes, she made small talk and fielded wedding questions, all the while trying to ward off the sense of panic, the sense that things were spiraling out of control. Her panic escalated another notch when after her mother rejoined them, handing Audrey a glass of champagne, Clarke took her free hand, linked his fingers in hers, lifted her hand to his lips, and planted a kiss on the back of her hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You guys mind if I steal my fiancée for a moment?” Clarke asked the group surrounding them. Audrey noted the way his eyes sought out and found her mom’s and the way her mom immediately took control of the situation, launching into an animated story about how Clarke had come home from college to accompany Audrey to prom after her high school boyfriend had come down with mono. She’d known then and there that he was the one.