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“Okay.” She blew a sigh out of the side of her mouth, flicking one of her curls aside. She looked around her office. “Then… I guess we’re still fake married. For a while at least.”

Fake married. I had no idea when I’d blurted that two weeks ago that I would find myselfreallyenamored with my enigmatic humanities doctor. The word “fake” in front of anything that had to do with Ruth Coldwell sat in my gut like a stone-cold weight. There wasn’t anything fake about the way I wanted to throw her over my shoulder, lock her in my bedroom, and have my way with her for the rest of the weekend. And there definitely wasn’t anything fake about the way I lost my breath over her sharp wit or got sore cheeks from smiling around her. I could tell she was reluctant to accept the way I felt about her. I knew what it was like to feel that heavy impossibility that someone might care for you when the past had presented nothing but evidence to the contrary.

But I’d be damned if I let those insecurities win. I hadn’t lied when I’d told Ruth I was competitive. She just didn’t know that I was competing forher. I moved to the doorway, putting a handon the door jam, and then I gave her a glance with raised brows. “Correction, Shortstop. We’re real dating.” Then I left her with her mouth hanging open.

Chapter nineteen

Ruth

Ruth

Real dating. It sounded like something an elementary school student would come home and tell her mom. “Hey, Mom! Cal and I arereal dating!”

And yet, to me, it was everything.

It propelled me through my day on Friday, lightening my steps like fluffy little clouds under my feet. It brightened my voice as I spoke to my clients about their matches, and it painted my successful work in a rose gold glow that kept me flushed and warm all day.

Gemma noticed around lunchtime when she came in to check on me. She caught me in the lobby where I limped toward the elevator doors. Despite my aching knee, I had a dopey, permanent smile on my face that probably looked just shy ofcreepy.

She caught up to me, dancing around me to block my path before I could make it to the elevator doors. Gemma had her hair in her signature half-up, twin buns style, and it curled around her shoulders and down to her waist where her ribbed black top had been tucked into a burgundy and burnt sienna plaid skirt. She cocked her head as I halted, and she smiled wider. “Wait.Wait.” She leaned forward, her blue eyes boring into mine. “You got laid.”

“Shh,” I chided, looking around the empty lobby, but grinning nonetheless.

“Yougot some!” Gemma crowed, fist-pumping. “I knew it. Iknew it.You owe me Chinese. And extra rangoons. And probably part of your soul because Itold you, bitch.”

“Oh my God,” I groaned, reaching for her in an unsuccessful attempt to shut her up.

“Hey Olivia,” Gemma said louder, spinning to face the desk. “Ruth got laid!”

Olivia blinked at us in confusion, which made sense because as far as Olivia knew, I was married. I reached around Gemma, ignoring the twinge in my knee, and clamped a hand around her mouth. “Ignore her,” I apologized. “Obviously I got laid.” Gritting my teeth, I added with a growl, “Because I’m married.”

Gemma cackled. “Sorry, sorry. Yes.” She turned and hugged me, surrounding me with the scent of roses and fresh soap. “You lucky little nerd. All the details. Now.”

I waited until our Chinese dinner that night to fill Gemma in on everything that had happened. I included the bathtubdisaster, and skipping over the details she actually begged me for, I admitted that I got thoroughly ravished the night before. Several times.

Gemma sighed, sitting back in her booth with half-eaten rangoons and a plate of lo mein on the restaurant table in front of her. She patted her soft belly with a pout. “No fair, Ruthie P. You get sex, and your boyfriend is a sexy-as-fuck doctor, and I’m on like my thirtieth failed date this year.”

I tilted my eyebrows up in concern, sitting back with a full stomach myself. “Thirty?” My knee was on fire, and my head had started to pound sometime after lunch, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care much at the moment. Everything seemed sosparkly.

Gemma picked up a fortune cookie and unwrapped it sullenly. “I brought a guy home last weekend and he lasted like forty seconds tops before blowing his load. Then he got a look at Mini and said he was allergic to dogs, but I’m pretty sure his pansy little pale ass was afraid of her. That might be a record for fastest fuck and ditch for me.”

Mini was basically a small horse of a Doberman, so I couldn’t really blame the poor guy for being afraid of Gemma’s dog. “You didn’t tell me you had a guy over last weekend. Stop bringing random guys to your place. It’s dangerous.”

Gemma snorted, nibbling on the edge of the fortune cookie. “I’m pretty sure I weighed more than that guy. Mini was there, anyway. The most dangerous thing about it was how bad the sex was.”

I smiled, grabbing a fortune cookie of my own. “Was this before or after you rescued me?”

“After. We’d been talking through text for a couple of weeks, and I met him for dinner Saturday night.” Her eyes widened with irritation as she cracked the cookie and pulled out the slip of paper. “I’m pretty sure it was the half a bottle of wine that made him look appealing, now that I think about it.”

“Oh good, you’re getting drunk before you bring them home,” I said sarcastically.

“Not a word from you, Speed Dating Ruth.”

I grimaced. “Fair point.”

Gemma read her fortune and then burst into laughter. She tossed it onto the table for me to read, but said it out loud anyway. “‘Letting new people into your space doesn’t take up room, but rather, broadens your horizons.’”

I pulled a face. “That’s eerie. Don’t do that.”