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My stomach did a little lurch. Who was she to me anyway? Not a friend. An acquaintance? That sounded so… distant.

“Friend of my brother’s,” I landed on. I didn’t like that either. It took me out of it.

“You look at all your brother’s friends like that? What happened to our pact?”

Heat rose up my neck as I jerked my eyes from Michelle. “It’s intact.”

The night after Eli had made his first appearance for his divorce hearing, we’d made a half-drunken oath at a bar here in Millerville that we’d rescue each other if we saw the other getting sucked into anything resembling a relationship.

I should have just taken off then–I was going to be late for the session upstairs, and I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about Michelle. But Eli looked so stricken, and so thoroughly unsure of what to do with Jack, who was stuffing something in his mouth, that I hung back, gently extracting what turned out to be a stick from Jack’s pudgy fingers. “You have anything for him to eat?”

Eli nodded, patting his coat pocket and pulling out a cheese string that looked a little worse for wear.

“Talking to the ex is always rough,” I said. Maybe he needed to talk about it.

“It wasn’t her,” he said, unwrapping the snack.

“What?”

“It was my sister. Our parents’ business is going down the tubes.”

“I didn’t know your parents had a business. I thought your mom—" I cut myself off, but Eli nodded.

“Yeah, she passed, this year,” he said, the words slightly choked in his throat. “But she left some weird stuff in her will, apparently. Related to the business.”

Then he waved a hand, clearly not wanting to talk after all. “Anyway. Thanks for helping with Jack. You’re the only person I know who’s any good with kids. Sorry the meet-up was kind of a bust. Family shit, you know?”

I knew about family shit. But I glanced over at Michelle and her girls, still over by the play equipment. “Not a bust,” I said before I realized I’d spoken.

After saying goodbye to Eli, who said he was going to camp out at the park specifically to avoid having to head back to his family, I began heading toward the office. The blonde woman was still standing there. It had been a half-hour coffee break, but still, she was clearly willing to be late waiting for me.

Shit. The thought of having to head upstairs with her, be in an elevator, maybe having her sit next to me at the conference…

I veered in the opposite direction, my legs carrying me before I knew what I was doing.

“Hey,” I said.

Michelle turned, her gorgeous curls swinging around her shoulder.

I cleared my throat, reached into the breast pocket of my coat, and pulled out a card and the pen I always kept there. My eyes darted to the woman by the office to make sure she was watching. Then I bent over the card, scribbling a note on the back. “Remy—my youngest—is always bugging me for new babysitting clients. I don’t know if you’re ever in need, but here’s her number. Just in case.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Also… I’m hoping you don’t mind me handing you this card kind of… suggestively.”

She blinked. “What?”

I held the card in two fingers, tipped toward her.

“The woman at the door.”

She turned to see.

“Don’t look!” I said sharply. “It’s the same woman from before. I need her to see me interested in someone else.”

Michelle’s eyes met mine. Some invisible thing crackled between us.

“Just for show,” I clarified.