Too Friendly to Date. Nicole Helm

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      A few little secrets. A few little lies. What could be the harm?

      * * *

      JACOB HAD SEEN Leah wear that red dress only twice now, but he hated it. Hated every last inch of the bright, clingy fabric that was bound and determined to scream at him that Leah was a woman. A hot woman.

      It was so much easier to ignore in her usual getup. Flannel shirts or ratty T-shirts, baggy jeans, work boots. Not that he didn’t notice her then, too. It was just way easier to pretend he didn’t when she wasn’t a bright red dot of fantasy right before his eyes.

      She was coming his way, so Jacob looked for an escape route while reminding himself of all the ways Leah was off-limits.

      She was his employee, his friend, and she could be downright mean. She was as tall as him in heels, which meant she was too tall. And her swearing was way more creative than his.

      She hated the Cubs. Which was, by far, the worst strike against her.

      He was only thinking about her that way because he still had four weeks left of his self-imposed six-month women sabbatical, and just about anything had him dreaming about the next time he’d have sex.

      Not that he was ever going to think about Leah and sex in the same sentence.

      Okay, it was too late for that. But a guy could pretend, couldn’t he?

      “Hey, can I talk to you?”

      Jacob offered his best version of a smile under the circumstances. “Sure. What’s up?” He wasn’t going to look her in the eye for fear she might see something unacceptable there, but then he found himself glancing at her breasts.

       Yeah, eyes. Way better choice.

      “Um, can we do it in private?”

      Not a good idea. Not when he’d apparently regressed to being a teenager and “do it” made him think of sex.

      It was just the sabbatical. The get-yourself-together sabbatical. No women. No relationships. No sex. He was figuring himself out.

      Five months in, and he still had no idea what was wrong with him. Why he was attracted to women who inevitably broke up with him for a wide variety of reasons he couldn’t make any sense of.

      “Jacob?”

      “Right. Private. Uh, now?”

      She nodded and for the first time he realized she looked nervous. She was chewing on her bottom lip and kept clasping and unclasping her hands. Which was so unlike Leah he actually got worried enough to forget about the other stuff.

      “My office?”

      She nodded, heading for the stairs. Jacob followed, keeping his eyes on the oak of the staircase. The planks of wood he’d refurbished himself, this house being MC’s first restoration project.

      He smiled. It had been his dream to bring new life to old homes since he’d had to watch his grandparents’ falling-apart house be demolished, and now he got to do that every day. Bring life to old. Save memories. Thinking about that never failed to bring him satisfaction.

      Then he stepped into his office, Leah in that stupid short dress showing off long, toned legs, standing in the center of his room. All satisfaction faded into discomfort.

      “So, what’s so important?” Jacob focused on the ornate wood trim in the room. Trim it had taken him months to bring back to its former glory. If he focused on that, he wouldn’t have to think about how the makeup Leah was wearing made her blue-green eyes even more noticeable than usual.

      “My, um, family. They’re coming to visit for a week over Christmas.”

      Jacob let out a breath of relief. He didn’t know why he was relieved, but whatever this was was about her family. So innocuous. No big deal. “That’s great. I know you’ve had your problems. That’s really great. You need time off? You didn’t need the buildup and the nerves. Of course you can—”

      “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”

      “Oh.” The relief disappeared. He leaned against his desk, tapping his fingers on the smooth, glossy wood.

      “Um, so, this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. Actually, it doesn’t just sound crazy. It is crazy. Nuts. Totally cuckoo.”

      She paced the bright patterned rug in front of his desk, in front of him. Jacob focused on the pattern of black and gray. Anything was better than red.

      “But...I have to ask. Only choice.” Her voice was low enough he wondered if she was talking to herself more than to him.

      She stopped pacing, took a deep breath, which caused his eyes to wander to her chest until he mentally reprimanded himself.

      “My parents are old-fashioned. Really old-fashioned. You know, think a woman needs a man to be safe and happy and all that.”

      Jacob snorted. No wonder she didn’t get along with her family. That was about the opposite of everything essentially Leah. She was fiercely independent and took shit from no one.

      She was not someone he worried about being safe. Or at all in need of a man.

      “So, you know, I haven’t always been on speaking terms with them, but we’ve been trying. Trying to get back to being a family and the past year has been good. Really good.”

      She started pacing again, her heels faint thuds against the rug. “So, to keep that going, to keep them from annoying the hell out of me by insinuating I can’t take care of myself, I...told them I had a boyfriend.”

      Jacob was trying hard to follow what this had to do with him. Maybe she wanted him to corroborate her story if she brought her parents around. But why the secrecy and the uncharacteristic nerves?

      “The thing is... Okay.” She stopped pacing, took a deep breath and let it out. “I kind of told them you...were my boyfriend.”

      “Uh, say what?” He’d heard wrong. Or something.

      “I know. I know. It’s totally insane, and please don’t read anything into it. It’s just...I’m around you every day. I know everything about you. I couldn’t get caught up in a lie because it’d all be the truth. Except for the us-being-together part.”

      “You don’t know everything about me.”

      She waved the sentence away as if it was an inconsequential bug. “Please. You’re an open book.”

      He frowned, not at all liking the assessment. Besides, if she knew everything about him she’d know he was attracted to her. She obviously didn’t or she wouldn’t be walking around his office in a short dress and heels. So, there.

      “The thing is, I can’t tell them it was a lie, because then things will go to shit again. They’ll be mad about the lying and I’ll lose it with my mom about the man thing and...” She shook her head, looked at the ceiling as if she couldn’t believe what was happening.

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