How to Ruin a Wedding(28)

I’ll keep that in mind is what he said.

Anders moves behind me, sliding his hand down the small of my back. I feel every one of his fingers burning there, leaving a perfect trace of his palm as he guides me into the vehicle.

I nearly throw myself in to get away.

He shuts the door, and I have to fight the urge to lock him out. Enough that my fingers lie on top of the button by the time he lets himself in the driver’s side.

“So,” he says as he starts the engine, “how tired are you?”

Eager to focus on anything other than the shock of want coursing through me, I answer, “Not at all.”

“Okay,” he says, “then if you’re up for it, want to meet my family?”

My eyes widen, and the heat within me cools into sheets of icy nerves. “Right now?”

He casts an apologetic look my way before turning to reverse out of the spot. “My very adorable, very nosy preteen cousin overheard me talking about picking you up from the airport. A fact she kept to herself for all of thirty seconds before my sister knew, then my aunt, and so they are all at my aunt’s place, dying to meet you.”

I am tired. And I didn’t think I’d have to be on so quickly after touching down. I barely have had time to memorize all of Anders’s fun facts. I definitely don’t know anything too personal if anyone asks.

“We don’t have to,” Anders says at my silence.

I shake my head. “Yes, we do. It’s the whole reason I’m here.” And being overpaid for. Frankly, if Anders asked me to lick the floor of a gym locker room, I’d do so. “I just haven’t picked out a disguise, or a name, or a backstory.”

“The red wig and crooked nose.” Anders cocks his head to the side as he pulls up the memory of me beneath a bush. “It’s smart, but do you need one for this?”

“I always do.”

“We’re in an entirely different state, and you’ll be here a while, so it’ll be a hassle to keep it up. I’d rather remember actual things about you than made-up ones. Just be Lucinda.”

I open my mouth to tell him he shouldn’t remember things about me. That I’ll be a fleeting memory in his life, and three months from now, maybe even sooner, we won’t see each other again. But some mangled emotions I can’t patch up enough to fully understand stop me.

My body turns to face him as he drives. My gaze scans his profile, sharp and defined, aside from his eyes. Tiny creases mark the skin around them, a symbol of years and years of laughter.

Usually, the people I work with want nothing to do with me once the job is done—understandably so. Maybe I’m so used to it that it’s a reflex to reject the thought of someone doing something different. Would it be so bad not to be a complete stranger to Anders?

“Okay,” I say automatically. “Let’s go.”

His hand reaches over and squeezes my knee.

Uh-oh, my heart warns again. Are you sure about this?





8.


After a look in the rearview mirror and a muttered curse at Anders, I demanded he pull over so I could grab my makeup bag. It’s now sitting on my lap, and I pat concealer under my eyes as he pulls off the highway. He reaches over and presses his finger on the side of the vanity mirror, where LED lights surround the glass.

“Wow, I can see every single pore on my face. Turn it back off.”

His laugh is warm and echoes, or it does in my head, anyway. “You don’t—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are something along the lines of you don’t need makeup, then swallow them.”

He raises a hand from the wheel. “Note taken.”

After some silence, I speak, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he says.

I swipe gloss over my lips, then drop it back into my bag, zipping it shut. “Why are you paying me so much?” He’d agreed to double what I needed to buy my share of Save a Paw, simply because I asked. “I mean, you know I’ve been evicted, and I’m unemployed, so really, you could have paid very little, and I might have agreed.”

“I have the money. You need the money. Why would I say no?”

“Because my pricing is unreasonable?”

His head tilts slightly to the side—a habit I’m noticing he does whenever he takes a few extra seconds to think before answering. “But your reasoning is not.”

I squint my eyes, but I can see nothing in his face that seems like an ulterior motive or a lie. He answers everything I ask, not vaguely either, yet I still feel more questions take root after he does.

“You seem pretty steady, so I can’t imagine why your aunt would have to worry about your spiraling,” I say without thinking, but Anders doesn’t tell me if the statement crosses any boundaries.

Instead, he shrugs. “My aunt says I keep my emotions in my bones. That no matter what I’m feeling, I don’t let it show or let it out. It just merges with my body and becomes part of my foundation—she’s worried for the day it crumbles. What’ll be left behind.”

“Are you? Worried, I mean.”

“I’m not sure. I feel fine, more often than not.”

I purse my lips and watch a man walking two large dogs on the sidewalk as we drive. I have to know, seeing as I’m meeting with his family, but it still feels like trespassing into Anders’s private, meticulously locked corridors when I ask, “Where are your parents?”