Page 47 of Finding Grey
The suggestion seemed to mollify him. “All right,” he said with a nod. “I’d like to meet your friends, especially Gabi.”
Gabi’s name had come up a few hundred times during our dinner conversations. Mainly because all my funniest and most interesting stories involved her in some way. Anytime I’d gotten up to mischief, she’d been right there along for the ride. “Good, because she’ll skin me alive if I don’t invite her.”
Dante sat up straighter as he warmed to the idea. “I could hire caterers to do the food.”
I shook my head. “No way, you’ve had too much catering in your life already. We’re going old-school for this one. I’ll throw some snags on the barbie, potato salad on the side. Enough tomato sauce to drown every one of your ARIA music awards. How does that sound?”
Frowning, he shook his head. “I don’t want you doing any work for this. I mean, I know it’s your job to take care of me, but—”
“Not this time, it’s not,” I insisted. Couldn’t the man tell the difference between what was paid for and what wasn’t? “This is not me being a good host, Dante. This is me being a good friend.” The word still seemed like a bad fit, but I had to use something. “Let me do this for you.” He smiled then, the most beautiful, genuine, smile I’d ever seen on his face. “If you’re lucky,” I added, wanting to see more of it, “I might even get you a birthday present.”
A laugh fell out of him and he leaned over to kiss my cheek. “You’re a good man to have around, Sean Kelland,” he said, before returning to his end of the couch. It took all my willpower not to follow him there.
“Yeah, I’m awesome.” Grinning, I started writing a guest list, with Gabi’s name at the top.
“You should invite Alan.”
The pen stalled, making an illegible squiggle on the paper. “I should?”
“Of course,” Dante insisted. “He is your boyfriend, isn’t he?”
This was the perfect time to reveal I’d been lying about that too. Dante would be angry, but he’d get over it. I was his muse, after all.
“Besides,” he continued, “I want to meet the man who’s cock-blocking me.”
My mouth fell open. “He’s not cock-blocking you.”
His head tilted. “You think I’d settle for sitting all the way over here if you weren’t claiming to be in love with some wanker who’s not me?”
Technically, I never said I loved Alan. Dante made that assumption all on his own. Still, his words made me gulp. Maybe it would be better to keep the truth about my single status to myself. If Dante decided to renew his seduction, there was no way I’d be able to resist. My life would be officially fucked from then on. In all the good ways at first. But then, after Dante went home, in all the worst and most painful ways. The idea of having to see the usual photos of him with women plastered all over the internet after our affair ended turned my desire to ash.
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea to put you and Alan in a room together.”
“We’ll party out by the pool, no rooms involved,” he countered, as if he wasn’t missing my point altogether. “And I think it’s a grand idea, unless…” The sudden silence made me glance at Dante in time to catch him giving me a once over. “Are you concerned about seeing the two of us side-by-side?” Sexual confidence dripped from every word, and I had to fight the urge to whimper. “If comparisons are made… well, your boyfriend is no rock star.”
I rolled my eyes at the return of his supreme arrogance. He hadn’t used it in a while. “Careful, Dante,” I drawled. “Your ego is showing.”
Laughing, he moved closer again, stretching one arm out behind me on the back of the couch. “I think you like a man with a big ego.”
The fact we were centimetres away from kissing, while talking about my supposed-boyfriend, only proved Dante’s point, that I wanted him more than Alan. Which was true, but he wasn’t supposed to know that. “Fine,” I snapped, pressing myself back against my end of the couch. “I’ll invite him.”
“Great.” Dante seemed surprisingly pleased by my announcement, as if everything was going according to plan. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
My mind raced as I searched for a viable solution to this new problem. I couldn’t invite the real Alan. He’d been genuinely interested in me. Now we’d parted ways, I wasn’t about to lead him on by reinitiating contact. But surely I could find someone to be my fake boyfriend. It was only for one lunch. How hard could it be?