Page 43 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

‘Listen, I lead a very boring life so I’m choosing to live vicariously through you.’ She props her phone up on her kitchen worktop and moves around, emptying the popcorn into a bowl. ‘I want to be fully situated so I can appreciate this.’

‘I haven’t got that long to chat.’ I glance over at the door and nerves leap in my stomach. Despite my air of breezy confidence with Nico, I’m far from feeling sure of my own capabilities when it comes to pulling off a proper ruse.

‘You know you don’t have to do this, right?’ Tara pauses and looks up, straight into the camera, clearly trying to read my own expression; there’s a flash of concern in her brown eyes. ‘You can just come home, no one would blame you.’

‘I know. But I want to help. And it’s not even really lying, is it? We are actually married.’

‘That’s not what I mean. Don’t you think you’re a bit… emotionally compromised?’

‘I care about Nico and Phoebe. I want the best for them, that’s all.’

‘Hmmm.’ Tara is giving me serious side eye at this. ‘Yeah, I think that we all know that you “care” about Nico.’ She does the finger quotes and everything.

‘I deeply regret telling you everything about my life,’ I sigh.

‘You’re just upset because you’ll never convince me that you don’t have proper feelings for Nico.’

‘It was a childhood crush,’ I insist. ‘I’ve hardly even thought about him for the last year.’

‘Sure.’ Tara’s flat delivery tells me all I need to know about how much she believes that story. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt… Playing happy families with the guy you’ve been in love with for decades feels like a real recipe for disaster, babe.’ Her brow is crinkled with obvious concern.

‘Message received.’ I keep my tone light even as her words strike a definite chord. It’s not like Nico had exactly been enthusiastic about this plan to keep me around. It’s important that I keep a tight lid on any feelings I may have. ‘But this really is just a practical thing. It’s not Nico’s fault his dad was the worst.’

Tara nods slowly. ‘Yeah. Absolutely mad that there’s an actual trust full of money at stake. And that you’re married to a duke!’ She brightens at this, as if she can’t help herself.

‘He’s not a duke,’ I protest. ‘His estranged half-brother is a duke.’

Tara pays no attention to this, settling herself on her sofa and digging into the bowl of popcorn. ‘In a marriage of convenience with a duke,’ she says dreamily between bites. The stacked gold rings on her fingers gleam against the deeper tawny gold of her skin as her hands move. ‘And you’re the ill-suited peasant who has to save his reputation.’

I choke on a laugh. ‘I wouldn’t say peasant,’ I manage, apologetically. ‘There’s quite a lot of generational wealth and privilege on my side. Plus I don’t do too badly myself.’

Tara waves this away. ‘Yeah, but that’s like when the duke marries the factory owner’s daughter. It’s a class thing, isn’t it? Worlds apart.’

‘We literally grew up next door to each other,’ I say dryly.

‘Just let me have this!’

‘Please stop trying to tropify my life.’

My friend lets out an impatient huff. ‘I’ll never understand you. We met and bonded over reading romance novels and you’re the least romantic person I know.’

‘Just because I can appreciate a good romance novel doesn’t mean that I believe they’re representative of real life. I like them the same way people like reading science fiction or fantasy. It’s an escape from reality.’

In my experience, the reality of getting caught up in an ‘epic love story’ means excusing a lot of terrible behaviour on both sides. People literally wrote songs about my mum and dad and their passionate romance, but living with them was like being braced in the back seat during a decades-long car crash.

However, this is an argument we’ve had before, which is probably why Tara simply ignores me.

‘So how long are you going to stay out there?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know. I guess that depends on what happens with the trustee.’

‘It’s not like you to be without a plan,’ Tara says after a moment.

I shrug. ‘Maybe it’s good that it’s out of character.’ I think about the argument I had with Gran. ‘Maybe I need to make some changes. You’re always saying I should shake things up.’

‘Well, yeah, but I meant get a haircut, a fringe that will look great at the hairdressers but that you’re bound to regret as soon as it rains… not a husband, a stepdaughter and a dog in another country in a town full of strangers for an unspecified amount of time while some lawyer examines your fake life.’

‘Anything sounds bad when you list it all out like that.’