Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kieran

Ellie picked a café she knew on Washington Square, and when we walked in there was the rich smell of fresh espresso, and the dudes behind the counter were yelling in Italian.

"What would you like?" she asked as she took her wallet out.

"Oh, hell no, I'm buying," I said with a laugh. "Celebrating, remember?"

"But you don't have to."

I put my hand on her wrist. "I insist."

Did her mouth just open a little? This kept happening. Every time I was a little bossy with her, like when I'd fed her the blood orange in Sonoma, she went all dreamy-looking. It made me think very bad thoughts.

"All right. Thank you," she said.

I shook my head hard and tapped on the glass counter full of baked goods. "Do you want a croissant or anything?" The pastries were a little pale and flabby, but I'd seen worse.

"No thanks. I'm against sad pastry."

I snorted. "Sad pastry. I like that."

The sun had finally won the fight against the fog, and the light made the grass in the square shine bright green. Older people and a couple with a little black-haired boy took up most of the benches, and I snagged the last one for us.

Ellie put her coffee down beside her, then rested her elbows on the back of the bench and tilted her face toward the sky. A few inches of her coat touched my leg. My fingers twitched with the urge to rub the wool between my fingers.

"Are you not sleeping again?" I said to stop myself.

She shook her head. "Sorry. I like to take a second to really feel the sun on my skin. Something my therapist told me to do. It's the small things, I guess."

I smiled. That was Ellie's whole philosophy in a neat little phrase. She believed in the small nice things that made life better: half-and-half in her coffee, purple coats instead of black, a romance novel always on her nightstand. "If those croissants were sad pastries, what are happy pastries, and where can I get one?" I asked.

"You went to France. I'm sure you ate some good ones there."

"Yeah, but I want to hear what you think."

She sipped her drink. "Well, the ones from the bakery around the corner from my apartment in Lyon were awesome, but it was my first time in Europe and basically everything blew my mind. I'd be a little scared to try them now. Maybe they were mediocre."

I said immediately, "I doubt that. You have good taste."

All of a sudden, she looked giddy. "Oh my God, can you say that in front of a witness? No, wait! I should record it, so I can play it back when you're questioning me about a recipe!"

"You think you're so smart," I fake-grumbled.

"Anyway. In the States, the best ones I've ever eaten were at Bedford Street Bakery, in Brooklyn."

"I heard the pastry chef at Qui raving about that place. The woman who runs it is Kiwi, right?"

"Yeah. She bakes these beautiful seasonal pastries. I was there around this time four years ago, and there was one with apricots, crème patissière, and toasted almonds, and it was just gorgeous." Her shoulders dropped, and her mouth went slack remembering the pleasure.

I pressed myself back into the hard bench to hold off the wave of horniness that crashed over me. Jesus, Kieran, get a grip . "That was a quality Homer Simpson drooling noise," I said. Jokes were safe. Jokes meant I wasn't turned on.

"Yeah," Ellie said softly, not noticing my struggle. "That was a really good day. Max was running a seminar at NYU, so I just wandered around Williamsburg, went to a bookstore, ate pastry, and read under the trees in the park."

She looked so peaceful, and it quieted down everything that darted around inside me. A crash of piano keys from my phone broke the silence.

"My mom. I should take this," I said.

Ellie nodded, and I hopped up and walked ten yards away. I pressed the green button and heard my mother's cool voice ask, "Kieran?"

"Hi, Mom. How's party prep? I definitely pressed Yes on the Evite last week."

"I saw, and I'm pleased you can make it. But you're really not bringing anyone to the party?"

Well, she'd said she was pleased, so I kept my expectations a little above rock bottom. "That's right," I said carefully.

A deep sigh. "I would have hoped you'd found the right person by now. You can't be a bachelor forever. Goodness knows Brian is trying to be for some reason."

I swallowed a groan of frustration.

"Don't you have anyone in your life you'd be happy for us to meet?" she asked hopefully. "Anyone at all?"

I jammed the heel of my hand into my eye socket, all twisted up inside from not being able to give her what she wanted. Then my eyes found Ellie on the bench, ankles neatly crossed as she studied the paperback in her lap. She was everything my mom would want on the outside: polite, soft-spoken, tidy. But I knew on the inside Ellie would be there for me. An ally. I took a deep breath and said, "You know what? Let me get back to you, Mom."

"I don't have much time for any unreasonable delays, Kieran," she said, all worry. "The caterers need final numbers by tonight."

I gave my best Ellie-style eye roll. "I'll know today. Talk to you later."

As I walked back to the bench, hands jammed in my pockets, Ellie said dryly, "That looked fun."

I laughed a little. "Yeah, Mom's a riot." The snark eased off some of the tension, and I knew it would be exactly what I needed when I faced my parents. "I need to ask you for another massive favor."

She blinked. "Bringing you to Mr. Murphy was my pleasure. Don't worry about it."

I threw myself off the conversational cliff. "Can you come home with me and pretend to be my girlfriend?"

She went still. "Pardon?"

The word was polite, but her voice made it feel like the fog had blocked out the sun again, and I shivered. "I said, can you come home with me and pretend to be my girlfriend."

"And I thought I was having a romance-novel-induced hallucination," she said. "No, Kieran." She hesitated, then said slowly, "I mean, maybe I could come with you. Maybe. But I'm not going to be your fake girlfriend."

But she'd hesitated. I could work with that. "It could be fun?" I suggested.

"It would be lying ."

"It would be performing ."

"You're the TV star. Leave me out of this."

I reached for her hand. "Ellie, please. I'll go down on my knees and beg right here in front of all these people."

"Don't bother," she said incredulously.

I'd put one knee on the ground when she grabbed my T-shirt in her fist. Which was absolutely not a hot move at all.

"They'll think you're proposing," she hissed. "Get up here."

Once I was back on the bench, she asked, "Why on earth do you need a fake girlfriend in the first place?"

"My mom's got all fixated on my brother and I being single. I think she wants grandchildren, sooner rather than later. But from that phone call I can tell she's just going to nag me about it all weekend."

"But you know you're OK just the way you are."

I nodded. Years of therapy had laid down that foundation, and Ellie's validation reinforced it. "I do. I know I've moved on. But when my parents really get going, I'm afraid it won't feel like it." The little kid inside me was crying out, and the whole truth came out, sad and plaintive. "I just want someone there who knows me, Ellie. Really knows me."

She rested her elbows in her lap and pressed the bridge of her nose.

Maybe this was a dumb idea. I should have asked someone else. Or not asked anyone at all and been braver. "Ellie?"

"I'm thinking," she said, muffled by her hands.

"I've never met anyone who thinks as loudly as you."

She didn't laugh when she took her hands away from her face. "What am I supposed to do with you, Kieran?"

"Save me," I half-joked. "Pretty please, with whipped cream and a cherry on top?"

The seconds ticked by. She suddenly looked at me, and her face made me think of a mountain lion honing in on a furry little rabbit.

Was it weird that I was OK with being the bunny?

"What will you do for me?" she asked slowly.

"What do you mean?"

"We haven't been friends for super long. This is too big a favor to do out of the goodness of my heart. So what's in it for me?"

I straightened up as Ellie asked the blunt question. There was a little bit of steel mixed in with her softness. I couldn't push her around, and I liked that. I liked that a lot. "I'll buy you happy pastries of your choice every week for a year?" I tried.

"No pastry is so happy that it makes me feel good about lying for twenty-four hours straight."

I rubbed my head. "Money?"

Laughter shot out of her mouth. "Yeah, no. Absolutely not."

"But I've got cash from Fire on High and the book deal, and you can't want to live with your in-laws forever."

Her teeth left deep indents in her lower lip. "I'm not planning to. With my fee from Tad I'll have enough to make a down payment on my own apartment. And even if I didn't have savings, I wouldn't take from you like that. Next suggestion?"

Of course she would be careful enough to save, and proud enough not to take money. What else was there? I blinked at the images my libido threw up of Ellie using me for sex. Not that she'd be into that.

Or would she? She was private, and uptight, and a workaholic. But that didn't mean she was frigid. Not with the way she hummed and licked her lips when she bit into a ripe strawberry. Or how she'd stared at my bare stomach that time after my run. Passion flowed under Ellie's surface like a creek under rocks. You couldn't see the water, but if you listened, you would know it was there.

Wait a minute, there was something else. Her book proposal. Nourish had honestly made me want to hug her with how much I liked it. It concentrated all the stuff that made Ellie Ellie: food as love and caring and generosity, how making and eating great meals with good people made her happy. It would be a crime to let those beautiful pages sit on her desktop gathering digital dust.

"I'll help you get Nourish published," I said.

She shook her head hard. "You don't have that kind of power."

"I kind of do, though. Tad really wants to publish my book, right?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I could speak up for you. Tell him he has to put your book forward, too."

"But I'm not a big enough name. I have only one thousand people following me on Instagram, and I think most of them are bots."

I snorted. "Tell me you remember the two of us yelling at each other in that video that bajillions of people saw? That Tad said got positive publicity for the book?"

She put her face in her hands. "How could I forget? And it was hundreds of thousands, not bajillions."

"But those hundreds of thousands of people know who you are." I nudged her. "Come on, Ellie. Why not give it a shot?"

She put her hands in her lap, and her face got the distant expression that meant she was chewing over a tough problem.

It was kind of amazing that I knew what her different faces meant.

"You could make me your coauthor too," she said. "Something like, Kieran O'Neill with Ellie Wasserman."

"I'll do that, and you'll help me with my family. Deal?"

She exhaled. "Deal." She pulled out her notebook and pen. "But if I'm going to pretend to be your girlfriend, we need ground rules."

I sat back and slung my arm across the back of the bench. "Of course, always the rules and the note-taking with you."

"Number one: no kissing." She wrote and underlined it.

"I like my tongue, so I wouldn't be stupid enough to try to put it in your mouth without your permission. But not even on the cheek?"

She paused, then said, "Cheek is fine. Hand is fine, too…"

"Who's kissed anyone on the hand in the past century?" I interrupted.

"But no kissing on the mouth."

That's a shame . I shook my head hard. "What else is allowed?"

"Adoring looks, and laughing at all my jokes."

"You make jokes?" I asked, faking confusion.

Her face was all seriousness. "For your information, I am hilarious ."

I rubbed my neck. "My family is a tough crowd."

"Just you wait. I am awesome at parents. I can charm the pants off them."

"No pants off, please, for the love of God."

"All right, I will charm to just before the point of pants removal. Another thing: endearments. Do you have a preference?"

"As in, what you call me when you don't use my name? I think as long as you don't call me an arrogant brat, we're good."

Her head dropped back. "That was a bitchy thing to say, and I'm sorry about it."

"Apology accepted, and I'm sorry I provoked the hell out of you."

She smiled. "Apology also accepted." Then she studied me like my name was written on my skin somewhere. "How does ‘honey' sound to you?"

All of a sudden, I wanted to be the kind of guy she called "honey." Then I saw that smartass smile flirting across her lips, and I remembered the farmers' market. "Does anyone else know how sneaky and mean you really are?"

She grinned. "All for you, honey."

"That's what I thought. What about you? You look like a ‘kitten' to me," I joked.

But Ellie didn't laugh. The little black-haired boy ran across the grass in front of us. As she followed him with her eyes, she finally said, "That's not going to work."

"Why not?"

"Because Max used to call me that."

Ellie

A dead-husband-shaped silence fell. I hadn't felt Max's absence in a while. Maybe all Kieran's light and noise filled the space. I knew I'd definitely found Diane's visits easier for the last few months.

I took a long, deep breath to let missing my husband pass through me, then redirected. "What about you? Is there someone your parents will be comparing me to?"

He shook his head hard. "No. I don't have girlfriends."

This mischievous, playful, gifted man who was dynamite in a suit didn't do relationships? What a shame. What a waste . "Ever?"

He shrugged. "I hooked up a lot in my teens and early twenties, and then I got to Qui and I didn't want to be distracted from doing my best. Now I think it's better for everyone if I keep things casual. I won't disappoint somebody by not being around because I'm working super long hours and don't get home until the middle of the night."

Everything hit me at the same time. "Oh, God. I'm going to be the first girl you bring home. And we're going to fake it."

"It's not that big of a deal," he said, sounding less confident than his carefree words.

"Spoken like a man in his late twenties who's never had a real girlfriend." The bells in the church across the square pealed twelve times. "I actually need to head home to take Floyd to the vet. But I have one other request before I go."

"Shoot."

"Get a haircut."

He covered his shaggy head to protect himself from an invisible pair of scissors. "Why? The hair's kind of a trademark."

"I'm not saying buzz it. But you need a style that doesn't cover your eyes."

"I can see fine," he said defensively.

I reached, then hesitated. "Can I touch you?"

"Yeah." His Adam's apple jumped with his surprise. "Go ahead."

His hair was thick and soft when I pushed it away from his face. "See?" I was so close I could see his pupils dilating. "There. Now you're not hiding."

After a long second, he grinned. "Wow, thank you for literally showing me the light."

"Smartass." Smartass with eyes that made me think of a stream hidden deep in the woods. "Sorry," I said as I moved back. "I didn't need to do that."

"Don't be sorry. It's practice for fake-dating, isn't it?" His tone was light, the opposite of his darkened eyes.

"Yeah. Practice." And if I said it enough times, I wouldn't feel an electric shock from touching him.