Page 14 of A Real Good Lie

He couldn’t get that blue-eyed stranger out of his head.

He stood up and tugged his shirt over his head, gathering up all of his clothes and throwing them in the hamper, then he padded into his en suite. Jace bent over and plugged the tub, then turned the water on hot, squirting an unnecessary amount of eucalyptus bubble bath under the spout.

The room quickly filled with steam and one of his favorite smells in the world. He waited until the tub was halfway full then he stepped in, gingerly, to make sure he hadn’t overdone it with the hot water. It burned, but it was enough to draw his mind to the present, which was what he wanted.

Jace lowered himself into the tub, patting his hands gently on top of the bubbles as he settled under the water. When the level was full enough, he stretched, using his foot to turn off the water.

He leaned back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, then he did everything he could to forget about the magical mouth he’d kissed so he could worry about what sort of story he needed to weave with Callahan.

Chapter Five

Callahan and the Second Bloody Mary

TWO WEEKS LATER

“Are you at the airport?”Sebastian asked.

“Of course I’m here.” Callahan rolled his eyes. “My flight is in an hour.”

“Where is Jace?”

He could hear the smug amusement in Sebastian’s voice over the phone, and he frowned.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“He’s not here,” Callahan said.

Two weeks ago, Sebastian had texted Callahan the contact information for a man named Jace Dare, and Callahan had passed it all off to Blanche and asked her to take care of it. He hadn’t seen the need to reach out himself because it wasn’t like this Jace person was really his boyfriend, or really someone he was meant to be interested in. The longer he thought about Sebastian’s whole fake boyfriend plan, the less he liked it, but the days moved on and then it was too late to back out.

Blanche called the hotel to change his reservation and added a ticket onto the flight itinerary. It had been too late to add Jace to first class, so he would have to fly coach, but Callahan didn’t think Jace would mind as he was getting a free vacation anyway.

“Did you not…did you not coordinate with him?” Sebastian asked.

“Blanche took care of everything.”

“Did she? What’s your story then?” Sebastian pressed.

“My what?”

“How did you and Jace meet? How long have you two been together?”

“We haven’t. We…what?” Callahan balked, dropping his messenger bag into an empty seat at the gate and sitting down beside it. He adjusted his ear buds and stared out the window at the tarmac.

“This is going to be an absolute disaster.”

“Yeah, I know,” he agreed.

“You didn’t even come up with a plan!” Sebastian shouted at him. “You could have spent the last two weeks getting comfortable with this guy so it would be even halfway convincing when you run into Rhys and Ashley at St. George’s, but now you’re both going to look like awkward strangers.”

“It can be a new relationship,” he said.

“Right. Because you’d bring someone new to an event like this.”

“Remember, I wanted to go alone,” Callahan reminded his best friend. “This was all your idea.”

“I didn’t think you’d fumble the whole thing.”