Page 47 of The Omega's Fake Mate

But I'd always knownthat.

“Will you let me read your book when it's done?” I asked.

“If you'd like to.”

“I think I'd like it a lot.”

He smiled at me and butterflies danced in my stomach. I had to make myself rip my eyes off him before I said or did something stupid. Looking out the window, I watched the other cars on the highway and took a deep breath. We had a couple hours left to go before we reached Connecticut. Confessing my crush to Zander now might make them really uncomfortable.

“Are you hungry, by the way?” Zander asked.

“Not super hungry, but I guess I could eat,” I said, turning to him again. He still had a smile on his face. I sighed. Why did he have to be so damn handsome like that?

“There's something for you in the basket on the back seat.” He gestured behind us. Indeed, there was a basket there with a blanket over it. I'd figured that there was some sort of food in there, but now Zander made it sound like he'd packed something especially for me. What could it be?

Stretching a bit, I managed to reach the basket and put it on my lap. Something smelledgood.Like chocolate and... coconut?

Oh, could it be?

When I lifted the blanket, I found a batch of brownies sprinkled with coconut flakes. I’dlovedthese when I was younger. My mother used to make them all the time whenever we had something to celebrate.

Well, until I became allergic to coconut anyway. But Zander couldn't know that.

“I can't believe you remember these,” I said. “Did youmakethem?”

“I did. It wasn't too hard.” He gave a little wave with his hand. “I mean, they're just brownies with coconut flakes, but I thought you might enjoy them.”

“I would! If I could eat them!”

“You can't?”

“No, I became allergic to coconuts when I was about sixteen.”

“Really?” Zander glanced at me, eyes wide. “I'm sorry! I had no idea.”

“It's okay. It's not like you were trying to poison me. Not deliberately, anyway.” I added a little bit of laughter to my words to make him see that he hadn't upset me. Still, I looked wistfully at the brownies in the basket on my lap. It had been such a long time since I'd been able to enjoy the taste of coconut mixed with chocolate on my tongue. If I wasn't careful, I was gonna start drooling. Suppressing a sigh, I put the basket back where I'd found it. “By the way, you can't eat these either.”

“Would that be too painful for you to watch?”

“No, you idiot, it's because you can't kiss me with coconut on your lips and tongue.” Breaking out in rashes was decidedly not sexy.

Zander's eyes snapped to me, brows climbing up.

“You don't have to act so shocked. We have to kiss, right? To make people believe that we're married.” Was he forgetting why I'd needed him for this road trip? Or did he already suspect that there were other reasons I wanted to kiss him? “Anyway, no brownies for you.”

“Oh. Okay.” Zander fixed his eyes back on the road.

“You can give the brownies to my brother, but not to his husband. He's an ass.”

“All right. I shall secretly feed your brother brownies without his husband noticing.”

“Oh, don't be silly. You know I didn't mean that.”

Leaning back in my seat, I closed my eyes and listened to the music as the car continued to zoom over the highway. I didn't want Zander to feed my brother brownies. I wanted him to feetmebrownies. Allergies be damned. He could feed me brownies without coconut flakes. He could feed me anything.

I sighed to myself. I was in deep, wasn't I?

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