“Stop it,” I said, trying to take the phone back. Like most people, Steph was considerably stronger and larger than me, so she held me at bay easily.

“Woah,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“Look at that.”

She turned the phone toward me and had it zoomed in on something in the bottom corner of the frame. It was a long, tanned stretch of skin. A leg. A very shapely, very bare woman’s leg in the vicinity of Dean, who looked like he was in some swanky penthouse from what I could see of the background.

He was either at a woman’s place or he had a woman over at his. So much for swearing off women, huh?

I caught myself fuming on the inside. Hadn’t we both agreed to swear off the opposite sex six months ago? Then what the hell was he doing with another woman?

I noticed Steph was grinning at me.

“What?” I snapped.

“Is somebody getting jealous? You look like you want to reach through the phone and strangle him.”

I sighed. “No, because it would be illogical and stupid for me to get jealous. He’s not my real boyfriend. He’s not my… anything. He’s just some guy I thought I was on the same page with. And besides, I don’t understand why he’s still letting me play along with the fake boyfriend thing if he’s dating someone. Is he just doing me a favor? Am I his fake girlfriend purely out of pity?”

Steph was grinning. “Or maybe it’s his sister.” She looked at the phone again, tilting her head. “His scantily dressed, long-legged, beautifully toned and tanned sister…”

“Somehow, I doubt it. Well, who cares? He can screw whoever he wants, because we’re not together. All I need him to do is pretend to be my boyfriend for two weeks, and then we can go back to never speaking or seeing each other.”

“Mhm. So what do you think he has in mind, anyway? He said he’ll make sure nobody doubts you guys have the hots for each other.”

I shrugged. Honestly, I had no idea what Dean Slater was planning. But, I had to admit a molten wave of excitement ran through me when I read that text. I imagined him pulling me into a tight hug when we arrived at the conference–a long hug for everybody to see. Maybe he’d kiss me on the cheek and hold my hand or something. And hey, it had been six months without any physical touch from a man other than hugging my dad and brother, so even that little fantasy felt wildly exciting.

“We’ll just have to see,” I said.

6

PEARL

I was not a fan of airplanes. My day had been spent worrying that I was going to the wrong gate, even though it was clearly printed on my boarding pass. Then I’d worried that maybe the sign at my gate clearly stating the plane was headed for Asheville, North Carolina, might be wrong. Yes, I’d seen dozens of my colleagues waiting at the same gate as we were all headed to the same work conference, but they could’ve been wrong too.