I cough. “Okay. Can you keep the cougar inside until I’ve left the house? Please?”

She laughs, her blond hair curling on her shoulders. “Only if you take your sister with you.”

The insinuation makes me shudder. “I’ll be going now.” I step into the front room and see Aidan and my dad discussing the latest football scores. I blink quickly and cough just before they get too into it. God forbid if my dad actually liked a guy like Aidan Burke.

Aidan looks up. A grin spreads across his face slowly, and damn if it doesn’t make him look stupidly hot with his blue eyes and his lightly stubbled jaw. “Hey, sunshine.”

I take a deep breath as my dad laughs. “Hey. You ready to go?”

“Sure.” He stands and tugs his pants up a little. Jeans that happen to hug his butt really well. . . . “Jessie?”

I snap my eyes up and sigh. Footsteps thunder across the hall upstairs, and I grab the sleeve of his T-shirt and shove him toward the door. “We’re going. Now. Bye!” I yell to my parents. I close the door behind us and propel Aidan down the path and out of the gate before he can ask me what I’m doing.

“Here,” he says, clicking a button on his keys and making the lights on a black Dodge truck flicker. “What was that about?”

“Well, one, you were playing happy family with my dad, and two, my sister was about to come downstairs and find you in the front room.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

I climb into the car and stare at him flatly. “Her bedroom has been covered with Dirty B. posters and interviews and printed selfies and album art for at least the last year. There’s a small section reserved for her friends special enough to hold the honor of being up next to the godly Burke brothers.”

Aidan laughs, setting the truck into drive and pulling away. “Next time, I’ll wait in the truck.”

“Next time, meet me there. Wherever there is.”

“Percival Town,” he replies. “We have a quick show tonight. We’re supposed to be there to meet fans and stuff.”

“And I’m there, why?”

“In an official capacity as my girlfriend?”

“To see crazy teens swoon over you every ten seconds and scream your name? Why, Aidan Burke, you sure know how to impress a girl.” I glance at him, annoyed.

He smirks, the curve of his lips slow and calculated and a little bit sexy. “Don’t worry, Jessie. I’ll make it clear I’m only taking you home tonight.”

“Oh, if only you were,” I reply in a dreamy voice before staring at him stonily. “Don’t take this too far. You didn’t say anything about official capacities and stuff.”

“You’re dating a rock star, baby, what do you expect?”

“I’m fake-dating a rock star, and I expect full disclosure and honesty in the vein of a little thing called respect.” I cross my arms and look forward. “Something this so-called gentleman supposedly threw away with a condom when he was sixteen.”

“Hey now.” Aidan swerves off the road into a turnout in the wooded area we’re driving through. “You think I don’t respect you?”

I spin in my seat and meet his eyes. “Do you?”

He hesitates just a second too long.

“Seems to be a problem all y’all Burkes have, except for Conner. Who pissed on your Lucky Charms, huh?” I lift my eyebrows.

“Jessie—”

“No.” I jab my finger into his very firm bicep. “You stop runnin’ your mouth and listen to me, Aidan Burke. I agreed to this bullshit charade because I’m getting somethin’ from it, too. I get my asshole ex off my back. But this sure as hell ain’t gonna work if you can’t put your dick back between your legs and show me the respect I deserve. I’m not gonna roll over like a little puppy expecting a belly rub and let you tell me what to do. You want me to do shit like this, tell me, so I can be prepared for the fact I’m gonna get flashed by the media more times than your eldest brother has been flashed by chicks in his whole life. I’m not your groupie, and I sure as hell won’t be treated like one.”

He breathes in, turning in his seat. His whole body is facing me now, and his hand is coming toward my face, his fingers stretched toward my hair. The tips of his fingers caress the side of my face, tucking my hair behind my ear, and his eyes search mine. The brightness of them makes me swallow, but the intensity gleaming from them in the midday sun has me paralyzed.

His gaze—it’s that crazy flurry of snow falling at midnight. It’s the rough crash of a wave in a storm. The first bloom of a flower at spring. It’s the thing that makes you stop and stare with amazement, and fear threading through the awe you feel at something so special, so unique.

His gaze is the thing that renders you powerless, amazed, catatonic with delight.

His touch is hot, his stare hotter, but I don’t back down. I won’t back down. I’m not a groupie whore. I’m a woman who deserves his respect for no other reason than the fact I’ve never done anything to lose it.

“You got it,” he says softly, his fingers curving down my jaw and beneath my chin. He holds it for a moment before turning back to the wheel and restarting the engine. A black Hyundai passes us, and he grabs the wheel as if he’s gonna pull out.

I put my hand on top of his. “ ‘You got it’?” I ask. “That’s all you’ve got to say? ‘You got it’?”

“You want me to say anything else?”

My mouth opens and closes, but I have nothing. Damn—his reply seems so inadequate yet so perfectly right at the same time. How is that possible?

“I thought not.” His grin is so mischievous that I can’t even respond as he pulls out onto the road, ending the conversation.

I’m kind of annoyed at his short response, but I’m equally amused at his smugness about it. And his amusement—damn, I wanna laugh while I slap it off his handsome face.

For the first time, it strikes me that this fake relationship could be rather dangerous.

I stay quiet as we drive down the country road that’ll take us to Percival Town, a couple of miles up the coast. I’ve been before—it’s the stereotypical little beach town, more so than Shelton Bay, even—but it isn’t my favorite place. For one, the size of the town and its population makes Shelton Bay look like a minuscule village unworthy of a supermarket or school of its own, and almost everyone who lives here acts like they’re from a city, when they’re not.

We also have a high school football rivalry, so that could play in, especially since I was head cheerleader and may or may not have gotten into a catfight with Percival’s head cheerleader in senior year.

Who also happened to be Aidan’s girlfriend at the time.

Yeah.

You could say Percival Town and I don’t get along. Neither do me and cheerleading, to be fair. I might have burned my pom-poms after graduation. Twice. Just to make sure.

“Aren’t you worried about seeing Shannon here?”

Aidan glances at me, lips quirked. “No. She got knocked up by some guy freshman year of college. She already tried the “He’s the daddy!” route two years ago. Let’s just say my lawyers shot her ass down when I proved I wasn’t even in town.”

“Nice of her to make the effort,” I reply. “I can’t imagine her with a baby. Wasn’t she worried it’d make her size-zero body inflame to a two or something?”

He coughs out a laugh. “Probably, but I guess she thought condoms would inflame her vagina.”

“Irony at its finest.”

This time, his laugh is free. “Right? What is a baby’s head? Like four inches around?”

I raise an eyebrow. “The hell kinda newborns you seen?”

“What? Isn’t that big?”

“Uh, they’re usually, like, eleven-plus inches around.”

He puts on the brakes. “Shut the fuck up,” he breathes. “And that comes outta . . . there?” he gulps, pointing between my legs.

“Uh-huh.”

“You know a lot about this.”

“I’ve watched more than my fair share of Teen Mom.” I shrug. “I’ve also spoken to the mom of your niece.”

“Holy shit! I guess I never really thought about where Mila came from before. Sofie pushed something eleven inches around out of her vagina?”