The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            And the way she’d kissed him back at the airport—holy shit. He’d assumed it would be a flashback of their night in the hotel, but everything had changed since then, and it was totally different.

            That night had been all about hot chemistry with a stranger.

            Kissing Hallie in the security line—that was something else entirely.

            That was like coming home.





Hallie


            Jack is so good at this.

            She put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes, relaxed by the sound of Chuck and Jack’s conversation. There was something about hearing the deep voices of her two favorite people that made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

            But as she listened to Chuck hit it off with Jack, she wondered if she should just tell him. He was terrible with secrets, but she hated lying to him.

            Aside from Chuck, though, she would’ve thought she’d be stressed or concerned about what they were up to, the whole fake dating bit, but she wasn’t. At all.

            It felt too good.

            For once, when facing a family event, she wasn’t even the tiniest bit stressed—and it was all because of Jack. It reminded her of when she was a kid and everything was somehow tolerable when her parents let her bring a friend along. He was her favorite friend, and his presence was making everything okay.

            And that included the idea of seeing Ben.

            She was very aware that once she was face-to-face with her ex everything might change, but at that moment, the thought of it didn’t make her lose her neurotic mind.

            And yes, Jack’s PDA made her hot and bothered—she was only human, for God’s sake. The man kissed like he was going to be murdered if he didn’t pull off the world’s hottest kiss, like a gun was pointed at his head and his only shot at life was to weaken her knees with his mouth.

            Any human would need smelling salts after Jack Marshall’s mouth touched their mouth.

            But she was kind of attributing it to what Jack said before, about their bodies knowing each other. They had slept together, so it made sense that their sexual chemistry would skew less on the friends-faking-love side and more toward the raging-wildfire-scorching-thousands-of-acres end of the spectrum.

            She wasn’t even fazed.

            In fact, she thought the one-up game sounded like the most fun she’d had in ages. She spent the rest of the short flight with her eyes closed, but she was far from sleeping. She was downright giddy as she thought about messing with him, of amping up the PDA in delicious ways.

            And if she was giddy at the thought of her own actions, she was downright obsessed with the thought of his. What one-ups would Jack Marshall be capable of?

            She heard him say to Chuck and Jamie at one point, “I think she’s asleep.”

            Not asleep, Jack, she thought, forcing herself not to smile. Just lying in wait.





Chapter

EIGHTEEN





“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.