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“Well, if you think it might be a distraction from your grief…” His voice drifted away.

“I was trying to do you a favor,” Krissy said, her voice low, faintly wounded, but faintly angry, too. “Not have you take pity on me and feel like you’re doing me the favor. Besides, I think based on my milkshake choices, you have found me lacking in some way, so I withdraw my offer.”

He slid her another look. She turned her head quickly to look out the window, as if something really interesting was happening out there, when in fact they had just left New York and were now flying along in near total blackness.

How had this happened? He now felt like he should be begging her to do what he least wanted her to do, which was accept his original poorly conceived proposition.

“I haven’t found you lacking,” he said.

“Oh, please.” She did not turn to look at him.

“No, really. It’s not that at all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Krissy, to be honest you just seem like the kind of woman things could get really complicated with.”

“So, it wasn’t all about giving me room to grieve!” she said, triumphant at having caught him in the little white lie. Told for her own good, but no brownie points there.

And thinking of her own good, Krissy was a little too smart for it. And definitely too smart for his own good, as well.

“In what way am I complicated?” she said dangerously.

In this way, right here, he thought, but wisely refrained from saying it. There would be no way to answer that question correctly, so he said nothing.

“Like I might not understand it was a game? Like I might forget it was all fake? Like my grief might make me needy and clingy? Like I might find you irresistible and cross the line? Like I’m just some pathetic homely girl who would be so far out of her league—”

“Stop it! You are neither pathetic nor homely. This is exactly the problem—you’re complicated.”

“And you like uncomplicated.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” he said, relieved that she got it. “That’s what I asked your aunt for. Uncomplicated. Someone who would understand the clearly defined parameters of our arrangement from the beginning.”

“I can’t believe my aunt went for that.”

“Well, she did. Not only did she go for it, but she took a big deposit and she guaranteed my satisfaction.”

“Well, I offered to fulfill the contract, and you said no, so—”

“I didn’t exactly say no.”

“Your unenthused silence spoke volumes.”

“I was thinking!”

“Yes, about how to get out of your ridiculous offer and my misguided acceptance of that offer. Which I accepted to help you. But you thought it would be too complicated, so now you have gotten out of it. Your contract with my aunt is null and void. And I’m not giving you a refund, either!”

“That’s fine,” he said tightly. “No refund is required.”

What was required was that this awful journey with her be over. He was not cut out for rescuing damsels in distress. He was not a man accustomed to second-guessing himself, but he wished he had not offered her a ride home.

He was so glad when they pulled up into the tiny hamlet of Sunshine Cove. He put the address she gave him into the GPS he’d added to the car and avoided its instructions to take Main Street, which would bring them right past Moo-Moo’s. Instead, he took the alternate route.

He pulled up in front of a cottage. Once it must have been the carriage house for the manor house that shared the lot. Now, its postage-stamp-size yard had been separated from the larger house with its sweeping lawns, by a thick hedge of lilacs, heavy with wilted blooms. The carriage house itself was tiny and looked like something out of a fairy tale—paned windows and pansy-filled window boxes, Tudor timbers exposed under the curving A of the roofline.

Krissy scrambled out of the car as if she was trying to escape something that smelled bad. He would have been quite happy to roar away, but unfortunately he had to help her with her boxes.

“Just put them there,” she ordered outside her front door, not looking at him, fishing for her key. The scent of finished lilacs was heavy in the air.

A dog that sounded huge howled on the other side of the door. He decided he might be wise to make his exit before the beast was unleashed.

“Well,” he said with relief, “it’s been nice meeting you. Again, I’m sorry about your aunt.”

“Likewise,” she said. “Sorry for your losses. Nice meeting you. Have a nice life.”

That was supposed to have been his line!

Before he could make good his escape, she said, “And just for your information, I would have been the safest bet ever for a fake mate, because I am never getting married. Ever. There was absolutely no possibility of a phony engagement to me becoming complicated.”

Jonas highly doubted that. It was already complicated, because he wanted to ask her what had made her so vehement on the topic. Instead, he turned quickly and went back to his car.

Escape was within reach. Once he got to that car, he never had to see her again. Fake mate, indeed. Not complicated? From their very short acquaintance it was more than evident to him that Krissy was too sensitive, too smart and way too sensual in that understated way of hers.

Even glancing back at her, seeing her standing under the glow of her porch light, he had a renegade thought what it might be like if he had delivered her home after a date, what it would be like to be standing there debating whether or not to kiss her good-night.

You couldn’t have thoughts like that with a fake mate!

He was sliding into his car when she got her key in the door.

The dog that erupted out that door was every bit as big as it had sounded