The Love Wager

“Here’s your room key, hon.”

Hallie took the key from her mother as she climbed out of the van. The whole group had been met at the Denver airport by a fleet of passenger vans that drove them to their resort hotel in Vail. She’d planned on messing with Jack during the trek, but because of someone’s kids’ car seat needs, he’d gone in the van with Jamie and Chuck, and she’d been stuck in the one that was transporting her parents and grandparents.

Which, after twenty minutes of constant questions about Jack, required even more fake sleeping.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling as she got out and stretched. The mountain air was amazing, and she felt surrounded by the yellow leaves of the aspen trees and the sense that autumn was arriving that very second.

She glanced toward the hotel entrance . . . and saw Ben.

God.

Her ex was maybe more handsome than he’d been before, and her stomach filled with butterflies as she looked at that face, the face she used to know as well as her own. His brown hair was a little longer than he used to keep it, he had a short beard that looked really good on him, and it appeared that he was wearing the red plaid scarf she’d always loved.

Her heart started beating faster, but then she saw him laugh and noticed he was laughing with her sister. Her vision panned away from him and she saw that Ben, Lillie, and Chuck were all laughing at something Jack was saying.

She swallowed. Might as well get this thing started. She saw Jack notice her as she headed toward him, and damn, he was good at being a fake boyfriend.

Because even though he kept up with the conversation, his eyes landed on her with a focus so intense that even Lillie and Ben turned to see what he was looking at.

“Hey, you,” she said, wrapping both of her arms around his right one and going up on her tiptoes for a quick kiss.

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, like a question, before his lips kicked up into a smile and the question was replaced with his teasing, knowing glint. He kissed her back, a cute, normal-couple peck of hello, but instead of letting her go, he grinned at her and said, “Your glasses are smudged—here.”

He gestured for her to hand them over, and she bit down on a giggle as he took the glasses from her fingers and did the whole hot-breath-smudge-wipe thing with the bottom of his shirt. So chivalrous. Instead of handing them back, though, he placed them on her nose and gave her an intimate grin that she felt in her toes.

“Better?” he said in a quiet voice.

“Much,” she breathed, half hot and bothered, half trying not to laugh. All of a sudden, she was glad she’d decided to go with glasses for traveling instead of her contacts.

“Hey, Hal,” Ben said. “Long time no see.”

Hallie felt Ben’s voice like a punch, and she shifted her gaze to his face. He looked beautiful and just like the boy she’d loved with her whole heart, and her throat was tight as she turned her lips up into what she hoped was a casual smile. “Right? How are you?”

“Fantastic,” he said without a hint of awkwardness, like it was easy to face her.

“Great,” she replied, suddenly unfamiliar with words. She didn’t love him anymore, but his face was like a song: One look at it and she felt every single bit of sad emptiness from their breakup. “That’s really great.”

He nodded and smiled.

“Do you have our room key, babe?” Jack asked, knocking her back into the present.

“What?” Hallie tucked her hair behind her ears as Jack gave her a knowing look, like he was absolutely sure of where her head had just been. She nodded and said, “Yes. Key. I have it.”

“Where are you guys?” Jamie asked. “We’re in 326.”

“Everyone’s on three,” Lillie said. “We blocked off the whole floor.”

Chuck asked Hallie, “What’s your room number?”

“Um.” She bit down on her lip before muttering, “I’ll text you.”

“What?” Her sister put her hands on her hips. “Why are you acting all secretive? What room are you in?”

Hallie glanced at Jack, who was giving her that sexy smirk, before saying, “Can’t a girl and her boyfriend move to a quieter floor without it being a criminal offense?”

“You’ve never been to this hotel. Why would you assume three is noisy?” Hallie could tell that for some reason, this pissed her sister off. Lillie asked her, “Did you change the reservation?”

“I did,” Jack said, picking up his carry-on and putting it over his shoulder. “We, uh, just wanted a little privacy.”

“Privacy?” Her sister looked confused. “You have your own room, for God’s sake.”

Jamie started laughing, and when Hal looked at her, it was obvious what she thought.

She glanced at the rest of the group and she could tell that they thought the same thing now, too.

They all thought that Jack had reserved a room on a different floor so he and Hallie could have a weekend of wild sex. She felt her cheeks get hot as they all stared at her, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Suck on that, Ben.

She picked up her own luggage, pulled out the room key, and said to Jack, “Shall we go get settled in, baby?”

He looked like he wanted to smile at the endearment they both knew she would never use for him, and he said, “It would be my absolute pleasure.”

As they walked into the hotel, he quietly said, “Is Scarf the ex-douchebag?”

“Yes.” She started laughing, so glad she’d brought him. “Scarf is.”

Jack

“I’ll just call the front desk.” Hallie dropped her bags and walked to the phone on the nightstand. She pressed the zero key and said with a laugh, “But this is hilarious. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of this actually happening in real life.”

Jack watched her kick back on the king-sized bed, twirling the phone cord like everything was fine. “You’ve never heard of a reservation getting screwed up?”

“I’ve never heard of an only-one-bed trope actually happening.” She rolled her eyes at him and said, “It’s a romance novel thing. You know, two people forced to sleep together in one bed because there’s no other option . . . ?”

His collar felt tight. “That is ridiculous.”

She rolled over onto her stomach and muttered, “You’re ridiculous. Oh, hi. My name is Hallie Piper, and I’m up on . . .”

As she spoke to the front desk associate, Jack set down his suitcase and walked over to the window. The room was amazing—stone fireplace, overstuffed reading chairs, wood floor with a thick rug, king-sized bed—but the view from the balcony was even better.

He opened the door and stepped outside. The Rocky Mountains filled the horizon, a breathtaking panorama, and a wide, clear stream gurgled below with a thick border of yellow aspens on either side.

He braced his arms on the railing and took a deep breath of Colorado air.

“I have good news and bad news.”

Jack heard her step out onto the balcony, but he didn’t turn around. “Of course.”

“The good news,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her cheek against his back, “is that we don’t have to move to a room on the third floor.”

Jack could feel every tiny movement of her fingers on his chest, could feel her voice rumble soothingly against his skin. He swallowed and managed, “Nice.”

He looked down at the ten pink fingernails that were spread out on his chest. Fuck.

“But the bad news,” she said, kind of giggling as she spoke, “is that we have to stay in this room.”

“What?” He turned around and stared down at her face. She looked startled by his reaction, and her hands fell to her sides as he said, “You’re telling me they can’t find a single room?”

She blinked. “Well, they do have a couple of rooms, but they’re on the third floor.”

He said, “So let’s move.”

“By my family.”

“So?” he asked.

“So we just made a whole big thing about wanting a private sex room.”

She was seriously going to kill him with her Hallie-ness. He sighed and said, “We never said anything about a sex room, for the love of God.”

“It was implied,” she said, as if he were the ridiculous one. “So how do I explain the change of heart? We didn’t want to have wild sex in the same bed, we like to use two? We prefer to sleep separately after we bang?”

“Will you stop saying ‘bang’?”

“You don’t like ‘bang’?” She smirked and said, “You, Jack Marshall, don’t like ‘bang.’ That’s right; you prefer ‘jostling’ and ‘railing.’ ”

He sighed. “No one will have to know we’re down there.”

“They’ll know,” she said.

He tilted his head and cracked his very-tight neck. “I’ll make sure they don’t.”

“Can you just do this for me?”

“No,” he barked.

“Why not?”

He knew he must sound totally unreasonable to her. He said, “I just think it’s a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He very nearly yelled the word as he tried getting through to her. “Sharing a bed while pretending to be in a relationship? That doesn’t seem like it’s treading something that could fuck up a friendship?”

She shrugged, and something about the gesture made him want to pull her coat tighter around her body and make sure she was warm enough. She said, “I get what you’re saying. I mean, even though we don’t ever talk about it, this friendship means a lot to me and I’d hate if something got in the way of that. But . . . ”

He clenched his jaw together as he waited for her to continue.

“We don’t have a normal friendship. We became friends after we slept together. Sex and feelings can’t get in the way, because we drove over them right at the beginning.”

He swallowed. Why did it irritate him that she was so cool about it, so positive that more intimacy wouldn’t add feelings?

Dammit, he knew he was all over the place and making zero sense.

But the reality was that he hadn’t considered how much of a mindfuck the fake dating might be for him. He didn’t like that it felt real when she wrapped her arms around him, and he didn’t like the way he felt when he kissed her; it felt like everything he wanted. And since she was, in fact, faking it in accordance with their agreement, if he acted on his feelings under the guise of faking it, that felt like lying. Or fraud.

He wanted to tell her how he felt about her and then give her time to explore her own feelings and respond accordingly. But if he told her how he felt now, would she think it was part of the game? Or a result of the game?

Or, worse, would she confuse their pretend relationship with her true feelings for him?

The best thing to do, as much as he didn’t want to, was wait until they got back to Omaha to discuss his feelings. They needed to fake date for her family like he had agreed to do, keep their hands off each other in private, and revisit what was really going on once they were wheels-down at home.

He said, “Hal, maybe—”

“You’re overthinking this, Jack.”

Something about the way she said it and the look on her face made him pause. “What do you mean?”

She looked a little bit shy but also entirely confident as she lifted her chin and said, “I really liked kissing you at the airport, and if it happens again under the guise of fake dating, I will enjoy every minute of it. But I also think sleeping in the same bed with you sounds like an absolute blast, like a grown-up platonic sleepover. We can handle it.”

He had no idea how to respond to that tempting but terrible idea, and he could smell her perfume, which somehow made everything worse.

When they had made their travel plans, he’d imagined they would behave like roommates for the weekend. In that scenario, they would be watching TV from two separate beds on opposite sides of the room and telling jokes in the dark.

But talking in the dark in the same bed? Watching TV under the same blanket? His head felt like it was going to explode when he thought about it.

She said, “The minute we cross the security line back home, we can return to being friends who are each respectively searching for their soul mates.”

He turned his head to the side and cracked his neck again, suddenly stiff as hell. “Well, I don’t think—”

“Tell me one good reason why we can’t make this work.”

He had a very good reason, but not one he felt like sharing until they were home. He let out his breath and said, “Fine. We’ll stay in this room, but if you touch me, I swear to God I’m screaming.”

Hallie

Was it weird that she found this side of him adorable? Teasing, hilarious Jack was being uncharacteristically uptight and genuinely worried about jeopardizing their friendship.

He was sweet under all that Jack.

She really didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, though, so she asked him, “Are we good?”

He rolled his eyes and tousled her hair. “Fuck right off with the coddling, Hal. I’m fine; I’m just trying to protect this.”

“Great.” Hallie smacked his hand, stepped away from him, and straightened her hair while feeling punched in the gut by the emotions behind his words. Protect this. Something in the way he said it made her feel . . . unsettled, but it was probably the fact that she didn’t like admitting how important his friendship had become to her.

“So do you want to go do Vail or what?” he asked, sounding like a total grump.

“Let’s do it,” she said. “Care if I change first?”

“Yeah, I will, too.”

She went into the bathroom and changed into a black turtleneck sweater, jeans, and hiking boots. She rolled her clothes up into a ball to hide her underwear, the same way she did when she had to visit the gynecologist.

God forbid people knew she wore underwear.

“Listen, Jack,” she started, pulling open the bathroom door, “maybe we . . .”

The words died on her lips when she saw him standing in front of his suitcase in just his jeans—jeans that were hanging low enough that the waistband of what appeared to be boxer briefs was visible.

Dear God.

He had that jutting-hip-bone thing that she had thought only existed on the covers of cowboy romance novels.

“Yes?” he asked.

She looked up from his stomach. “What?”

He smiled a little. “You said maybe we . . . and then you trailed off.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She gave a breathy laugh and said, “God, you caught me off guard. I forgot how, um, how that you are.”

And she gestured with her free hand toward his naked torso.

“ ‘That’?” he repeated, with one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, that.” She rolled her eyes and said, “You know exactly what I mean, Jack Marshall.”

He repeated, grinning, “That.”

As she opened her suitcase beside his and dropped her clothes inside, she said in an octave lower than her usual voice, “My name is Jack. I’m so hot. I’m so that.”

He started laughing.

“Please put on a shirt before I kill you,” she said, grabbing her jacket from a hanger and sliding into it.

“Because my . . . that is bothering you?”

She shook her head and narrowed her eyes into her meanest squint. “Y’know what? Don’t wear a shirt. See if I care. Go hike naked. I’ll laugh my ass off when the bears eat your that.”

“I’m pretty sure I can outrun you,” he said, still laughing as he pulled his gray Henley over his head and threaded his arms through the sleeves. “So I’m confident my that will remain intact.”

“But,” she said, “as soon as you attempt to outrun me—”

“Piper.” He reached out a big hand and fisted the front of her jacket, his eyes still smiling as he playfully yanked her a little closer. “I don’t believe for a second that you’d let a bear eat me.”

“No?” she asked, her heart doing a little stutter in her chest as she was instantly aware of the distance between his mouth and hers.

“No.” His eyes dropped down to her lips, like he was thinking the same thing. For a beat they were both frozen in possibilities, neither moving nor speaking, but then Jack cleared his throat and said, “Because I’m the only one who gets your taco order right.”

“True.” Hallie nodded, and her lips slid into a smile of their own accord as she felt all warm inside. “No one else understands that it’s ridiculous to put the cheese on top.”

“I mean,” he said, his grin matching hers, “what is the point of cold, hard cheese?”