Too Friendly to Date

“It’s no big deal. Jacob’s just going to pretend to be my...boyfriend while my family visits.” Leah pushed her plate around, never once touching the food on it. “It’s hard to explain, but it’ll help me out. And it’s not a big deal and we should all just agree not to talk about it as much as possible.”

“Your...” Kyle blinked a few times. Then he coughed. “Oh, I see.”

Awkward silence descended, and when Jacob caught Grace studying him, he crossed to the fridge. Anything to avoid his sister’s scrutinizing stare.

He didn’t need Grace reading anything more into this whole favor than just a friendly gesture. Or, worst-case scenario, telling Mom. That was another ground rule he needed to set with Leah. No telling his parents while they were trying to fool hers. God only knew what his guidance-counselor mother would read into the situation.

“I put an offer in on the house on Jasmine Street.” Way better to discuss business than anything remotely related to relationship stuff. Of the real or fake variety.

“Jacob.” The disapproval in Kyle’s tone was enough to loosen any awkwardness. Kyle’s conservative business nature, Jacob knew what to do with. How to circumnavigate it when he’d rather take a risk.

“Personal project.” Which Kyle very rarely approved of. Probably because they never stayed personal.

“You have a plethora of personal projects. What you don’t have are unlimited funds. Leah, tell him.”

Her body kind of jerked in response. “Why me?”

“He listens to you.”

She snorted, glanced his way and quickly looked back at her plate. Abruptly, she shoved her chair away from the table. “You know what? I gotta go.” She disappeared before anyone could argue.

Jacob ignored Grace’s frown and Kyle’s considering gaze and focused on making his sandwich. Even though he’d agreed to Leah’s plan, he hadn’t thought about the reaction from people they knew. What those people might think.

“Look, you two can get the pinched, worried looks off your faces. The thing with Leah is not a big deal.” And it wasn’t. A favor. A gesture. That was what friends did for each other. Why everyone was being weird about it was baffling.

“No big deal to you,” Grace said.

“What does that mean?”

Kyle and Grace exchanged a look. It was one that conveyed some shared idea, only Jacob didn’t know what it was. He hated that.

“Be careful with her,” Grace finally said.

It was the kind of admonition that irritated him. As if he was somehow careless with people. Just because he dated. A lot. “I don’t know where everyone got this idea I’m an ass to women. They do the breaking up—”

“You know Leah has a thing for you. You have to know that. And I think you’ve got a weird if not fully realized thing for her, and this pretending? It’s going to be messy. Leah’s been a really good friend to me. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

Jacob frowned. What a...weird idea. He just couldn’t imagine. Even for those seconds he’d imagined maybe, just maybe, Leah felt that weird attraction, too, he couldn’t imagine hurting her. Attraction or no, she’d never hesitated to kick his ass before. “Leah is tough as nails. How is she going to get hurt?”

“My point exactly.” Grace glanced at the clock. “I have to go to the gallery. Just... We can talk about this later.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Jacob called after her. “There’s nothing to talk about,” Jacob repeated before taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Ah.”

“What’s that ‘ah’ about?” Jacob demanded with a mouthful.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m sure it will be totally fine. And nothing will go wrong. And you two won’t...”

The way Kyle trailed off was meant to insinuate something, but Jacob wasn’t biting. “Mind your own business, Kyle.”

“It affects our business. The one we own together. And Leah is a marginal owner as well, if you recall. And then there’s the little fact that you weren’t exactly silent when Grace and I started...seeing each other. Maybe I am minding my business by speaking up.”

“So you guys don’t want me to do the favor she asked me to do because you think we’re going to—what? Fall in bed together and end up hating each other?” Which was really weird to think about. Both sides of that hypothetical equation.

Falling in bed together, well, it may have crossed his mind once or twice, but hating each other? They’d been friends for a long time. Friends who disagreed and argued and still remained friends. How would they end up hating each other?

“I don’t know the circumstances behind it, so I can’t say you shouldn’t do it. But I don’t think Grace cautioning you to be careful is unreasonable. There are some things at stake. Even more than Leah’s feelings, whatever they may be.”

“Because I’m such an asshole? We can’t even trust me to be around people?”

“Because...relationships are tricky. Especially when people are in business together. Because, though you are not an asshole, your track record with women is...less than desirable.”

“Everyone seems to be forgetting the fake part of this whole deal. It’s pretend. I’ve been around Leah for years without hurting these precious feelings she suddenly has. We aren’t really going to be dating. You guys understand that, right? It’s pretend.”

“But whatever...undercurrent runs between you and Leah isn’t.”

Grace said Leah had a thing for him. A thing. Whatever that meant. What could it mean? He was actually afraid to find out, because when it came to Leah, he wouldn’t be in control. So, he’d forget Grace had said anything. He’d ignore the things he randomly felt from time to time. They’d pretend for a week, then go back to normal.

“You guys are overreacting.” And they were. They had to be. Whatever “undercurrents” that were there had been ignored for this long. What would change just because they were going to have a few meals pretending to be a little more than friends?

Nothing. And that wouldn’t be hard. Not with a game plan. With a game plan, anything could be accomplished. So, that was where he’d start.

* * *

LEAH ATTACHED ELECTRICAL tape to the base of the light fixture she was rewiring to be put in the Council Bluffs house. The smaller work had always been her favorite part of being an electrician, even more so since she was working in restoration. Most of what she had to do was throwing away the old and putting in something new, but these smaller light-fixture projects meant making something old and past its prime useful again. It was all good work, fulfilling work, and it never failed to remind her how lucky she was.

These small projects also gave her the opportunity to work in her little shed office in the back of MC’s big house. She could blare her heavy metal and not listen to Jacob or Kyle whine about their ears or her mess. This was her domain.

She set the finished piece into some bubble wrap, then a box. The next few weeks would be slow until the planned trip to Council Bluffs at the end of January. She’d finished almost all her work on the Bellamy project and Jacob’s little side project downtown. She wasn’t needed on anything in the big house for a while. So, it was just light fixtures until mid-January.

The slowdown was purposeful for the holidays. Time to visit families, and most people didn’t want work done on their homes then, so it all made sense. In years past, she’d thrown herself into her own house, but this year she would actually have family around.

The thought filled her with equal measure hope and dread. Hope she could repair the lingering rifts with her family; dread this whole Jacob thing was going to blow up in her face in more ways than one.

She didn’t want Grace blabbing to Jacob she thought they had a thing or that Leah had admitted as much. Leah hadn’t been lying when she’d said she saw no scenario that would change her current relationship with Jacob. They might be friends and she might have a small investor’s hold in MC, but he was still her boss.

And she had a lot more secrets than being all but in love with him. Secrets that would change the way he acted toward her, that would kill any idiotic feelings she harbored. Jacob would hover. He would micromanage. He would ruin the life she’d built, simply by knowing and being himself.

Which was what she had to remember. Always. With her parents around, that shouldn’t be hard. In fact, worrying about this was silly. Everything would be—

A knock interrupted her pathetic attempts to convince herself she wasn’t an idiot.

When Jacob stepped in, she pointed a screwdriver at him. Antagonism was always the best shield against weakness. “You are not allowed in here, and you know it. Not after last time.”

“I was trying to organize—”

“And I couldn’t find my ammeter for a week.” She waved the screwdriver at him. “What do you want?”