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I point to myself with my thumbs.

Her head pulls back.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Me. I could be the boyfriend. Or, well, in this case, the fiancé.”

“Whose fiancé?”

“Yours. Jesus, Sunny, keep up.”

“I … what?”

“Okay, I’ll be clear as day. We tell people we are engaged and that we are getting married. The lodge will have the love story, and my board will see I can, in fact, commit.”

Grace takes my wineglass from my hand.

“Okay, that’s enough for you for tonight.”

I take my glass right back.

“I’m not drunk. I mean, maybe a little, but not so much that I don’t know what I’m saying right now.”

“Are you sure? Because you sound crazy.”

I groan. “Come on, it would be perfect and you know it. Everyone knows our families are lifelong friends. The kids falling in love—it’s classic.”

“People are also aware we hate each other.”

“Do we actually, though?” I want to be sure.

“Yes.”

Okay.

“We could spin that part of the story.”

“No, we won’t spin anything, because there is no story.”

“Think about it: all we’d have to do is post a picture, maybe add a ring emoji or something with a short caption, and the entire story changes. For both of us.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is,” I insist. “Sure, some reporters will want to interview us, but that’s easy. We’ve both done that before. We just have to pretend we like each other long enough to get through it, and if tonight is any indication, we can do that easily.”

“And in the meantime, what? We just go about our lives?” she asks, not completely sold yet, but at least she’s inquiring about it now. I get it, but fuck, this is the first idea I’ve had in a long time to take back control of my life, and I truly think it could work.

“Yeah. You’ll keep working here on all those ideas you have to change this place, and I’ll go back to LA. Before I leave, we can stage a bunch of photos to share, and then when we both think the time is right, we can say that we’ve split. We don’t have to make it a huge thing. We don’t have to set a date. Just a long engagement while we both focus on work. Let the media take center stage with praising our names while we do what we really need to behind the scenes. That erases our stress.”

She bites her bottom lip, and I inhale. Why is she even more beautiful when she’s thinking this over?

“Can I get final say on all storylines?”

Holy shit. She’s going for it.

“Absolutely.”

“I don’t know, Preston.”