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you.”
    “Before I go, you need any help putting this furniture back?”
    “No, but thanks. I’m not done scrubbing the baseboard trim yet.”
    He lifted a hand in farewell and let himself out. They had three days to become intimately enough acquainted to pass themselves off as a cohabitating engaged couple.
    Mentally, he backspaced out the word intimately. There wouldn’t be anything intimate about their relationship, despite the close quarters. They’d be playing a role, with stage kisses and fake affection. Once the curtain dropped—or the bedroom door closed, as the case may be—so would the act.
     
    “You’re going to what? ”
    It wasn’t anything Sean hadn’t asked himself every five minutes or so since getting sucked into Emma’s plan, but it sounded different when his cousin said it. Or maybe it was Kevin’s subsequent pointing and laughing his ass off that changed the tone.
    “It’s only a month,” Sean shot back, maybe a little defensively. The shorter, dark-haired waitress—Darcy, he thought her name was—put a beer in front of him and he took a long pull. He’d been looking forward to it all day.
    “A month of living with a total stranger, pretending you’re so madly in love with her you’re going to marry her? For real?”
    “No, not for real, moron. For pretend. That’s the point.”
    His cousin laughed some more, then pulled out his cell phone and started texting. Sean craned his neck, but couldn’t see the screen.
    “What the hell are you doing?”
    Kevin chuckled. “Telling my wife.”
    “You could have waited until I went upstairs.”
    “No, I really couldn’t.”
    Kevin shut his phone, but it was only a few seconds before it chimed. He looked at the screen, chuckled, then was texting again.
    Sean pulled out his phone and opened a new message to Kevin. I’m still here, asshole. Send.
    A couple minutes later, Kevin grinned and slid his phone back into his pocket. “Beth wants to know the sleeping arrangements since there’s no way even a grandmother will buy a separate bedrooms story.”
    “Beth wants to know, huh?”
    “Trust me, by now the whole family wants to know.”
    Sean was tempted to bang his head against the bar, but he wouldn’t be able to knock himself out so he didn’t waste the effort. “There’s a sofa in the bedroom. She’ll sleep on it and I get the bed.”
    “Chivalrous.”
    “I’m too tall for a sofa.”
    “I don’t know Emma well, but I seem to recall she’s not exactly short.” Kevin gave him a knowing look. “Not exactly hard on the eyes, either.”
    That she wasn’t. But the last thing Sean wanted to do was get tangled up with a woman. Tangled up in the sheets? Usually okay but that, along with playing house, could give Emma the wrong idea. Permanence wasn’t in his current vocabulary. Not that it was necessarily in hers, either, but no sense in taking any chances.
    “When does your future grandmother-in-law arrive?” Kevin asked when he finally caught the hint Sean wasn’t going to discuss his fake fiancée’s easiness on the eyes.
    “Saturday. We’re supposed to have dinner together tonight and get to know each other, I guess.”
    “You think you’re going to get to know each other well enough over a meal to fake out her grandmother?”
    “She thinks we can do it.”
    “What do you think?”
    Sean shrugged. “I told her I’d do it, so I’ll do my best to make sure we pull it off.”
    “Does Ma know about this yet?”
    “Not yet,” he said, grimacing. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her, either. Assuming Beth wasn’t on the phone with her already, giving her the big news.
    Sean stood and picked up his beer, intending to take it upstairs with him. He could return the empty mug later. “I know as soon as I walk away you’re going to call Joe and Mike, so I’ll just leave it to you to spread the word.”
    Kevin laughed. “Don’t forget Mitch. And Ryan and Josh and Liz.”
    Sean froze, beer halfway to his