Zaf grinned. “Was it Kiran?”

“No!” The word was twice as loud as Jamal’s usual soft-spoken tone. He cleared his throat and said more quietly, “Why would it be Kiran?”

“Because you two have known each other for decades, but over the past few months you’ve been acting like you’ve never met.”

“What does that—”

“And every time I mention you in front of K, she blushes.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jamal said immediately. Then he paused. “Does she? No, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? I don’t care. You’re being . . . you’re just . . . Don’t try to distract me. What’s with the fake-relationship bullshit?”

Zaf shrugged, trying to look casual. Unconcerned. The opposite of a man who was planning to sleep with his fake girlfriend. “It’s just a publicity thing. Fluffy gave me the idea. And it’s working, right?” He nodded at his emails.

“It is,” Jamal agreed slowly. “But . . . are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Well, not usually, but I get by okay.” So far as Zaf could tell, life was all about keeping an end goal in mind and sticking to—

Jamal blinked, slow and deliberate, which was code for Give me strength. “I meant with her. The woman.”

Oh. Zaf set his jaw and looked away. “Her name is Danika.”

“I know what her name is.” A flash of that familiar grin. “I just like making you say it so I can hear the adoration in every syllable.”

“Tonight I’m going to let myself into your house and smother you in your sleep.”

“Uh-huh. All I’m saying is, you’ve been half in love with her for, like, six months, so just be careful.”

“I’m not in love with her,” Zaf gritted out. Because he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. There were lines and boxes and sensible paths, and Dani was over the line and out of the box and in the middle of the woods, so no, he was not in love with her.

He just really wanted to sleep with her, and hold her hand, and keep her fed and watered while she worked late into the night, and sometimes he wondered what shampoo she used and how he could make all his pillows smell just like it, and he’d better not say any of this out loud because he didn’t think it would help his case.

“Liar,” Jamal said succinctly, clicking through Zaf’s emails.

Zaf stared. “What?”

“That’s your lying voice. It’s all tight and scratchy.”

“Who are you?” Zaf spluttered. “The bloody . . . voice police?”

“I hope next time you’re in the shower, you think of seventy things you could’ve said just then that would’ve been way better than ‘voice police.’ ”

“I hope next time you’re in the shower, you drown.” Although Zaf agreed that, at thirty-one years old, he should probably have developed better comebacks by now.

“Look,” Jamal sighed, meeting Zaf’s eyes with a seriousness that did not bode well. “You read a lot of books, so you probably don’t realize that in the real world, faking a relationship is actually an incredibly weird thing to do—”

“Er, no, I definitely realize that.”

“—and if she’s agreed to it, that says something.” Jamal gave him a significant look. “You know, something. So if you like this woman, you should probably let her know.”

Zaf swallowed hard and rubbed a hand over his beard, avoiding Jamal’s gaze. “I can’t.”

“Why? This better not have anything to do with your stick-up-the-arse happily-ever-after thing. I don’t know how you can be so flexible when you teach the lads about mental health and so uptight with your—”

“I don’t have a stick up my arse,” Zaf snapped. Really, was dating with purpose so bad? No, it was not. Goals were important in life, thank you very much. “She’s not interested, okay? In any kind of relationship.” Except a fake one. And a sexual one. If Jamal knew about that, he wouldn’t call Zaf uptight, now, would he?

Although, he might say some other shit. Shit Zaf didn’t want to hear, like You’re making a mistake, or You take sex too seriously. None of which was true, obviously, because Zaf had this all figured out. He’d sleep with Danika, and then this mind-numbing hunger he felt for her would naturally fade, and he’d be able to concentrate long enough around her to remember she wasn’t for him. Or rather, she didn’t want to be for him. Different angle, same view.

“She’s not interested,” Jamal repeated flatly, his raised eyebrows screaming disbelief. “And you know this because . . . ?”

“Because she told me. Seriously. She was very clear.”

Jamal paused. “Oh. Hmm. That’s rough, man.”

“It’s fine.”

“Not really. You gonna be okay with all this?”

Zaf didn’t know and didn’t want to investigate, so he shot back, “Are you in love with my sister?”

Jamal snapped his mouth shut, then made a sound like a cat hacking up a hair ball. “No,” he spluttered, his eyes fixed determinedly on the laptop screen. “Why would you—? No.”

Zaf snorted. “Because that wasn’t suspicious at all. You two are so—”

Jamal’s expression changed. “Zaf.”

“—fucking weird. If there’s something—”

“Zaf.”

“What?”

“Are you busy tomorrow night?”

“Yes,” Zaf said immediately, his mind going back to the library. Tomorrow. After work. “Very busy. Hugely, enormously busy. Don’t come here, because I won’t be here. And if I am here, I won’t answer the door.”

“I have a key,” Jamal said dryly. “But whatever you’re doing, cancel it—”

“No.”

“—because you just got offered a local radio interview, and they want to talk about Tackle It.”

“Oh,” Zaf said. “Shit.” And then all the possibilities, all the opportunities hit him, and he repeated, slightly breathless, “Shit.”

Dani woke up the next morning with electric excitement thrumming through her veins and an enormous, loopy, I’m getting laid grin on her face. It was, to be frank, sickening.

Even Sorcha muttered, when they met at the cafe that morning, “You’re way too cheerful. This have anything to do with your”—she coughed dramatically—“boyfriend?”

“Shut up,” Dani said, and tried to glare. But the loopy smile was stuck to her face like glue. “If you must know, I’m cheerful because Oshun’s hint was, of course, correct. Zaf is well on his way to spring-cleaning my vagina, hopefully with his mouth, exactly as the goddess intended.”

“Right. Thing is, Dan, I’ve known you for ten years, and you haven’t been this cheerful about a bog-standard shag since . . .” Sorcha frowned, as if thinking back. “I don’t know, Mateo? So basically,” she snorted, “the dawn of time.”

Dani tried to laugh along. She really, really did. But something about the name of her first boyfriend made her laughter congeal in her throat.

And by something she meant literally everything about it.

“Are you sure this whole arrangement is fake?” Sorcha prodded, still laughing. “Because either you have a crush on your friend, or he’s packing some kind of glow-in-the-dark, vibrating equipment you’re not telling me about.”

“Shut up,” Dani hissed, looking around furtively. She wouldn’t even address that nonsense joke about a crush, but using the word fake in public might undo Zaf’s professional progress. The Social Media Forces That Be could be lurking anywhere. The tatted and pierced teenager gloomily gnawing at a croissant in the corner might whip a badge out of nowhere and arrest them in the name of publicity stunts. “Don’t make me regret telling you.”

Sorcha rolled her eyes. “As if I couldn’t have guessed. All jokes aside, even Zaf isn’t hot enough to cure you of your relationship phobia.”

“Another word about this in public and I’ll shove you through a window.”

“I might believe that if you didn’t look as blissed out as a dead saint.”

Considering the turn this conversation had taken, that couldn’t possibly be true anymore. Yet Dani caught a glimpse of her distorted reflection in the metallic side of the coffee grinder and realized that Sorcha was, somehow, correct.

Well. It had been six months without sex, and for Dani, that was rather a while. A little excitement was to be expected. Which explained why, by the time she sailed into Echo and slapped down Zaf’s morning coffee, she was ready to vault over the desk and rip his bodice like a true romance hero.

Until she saw his face.

“Morning,” he said gently, the low gravel of his voice standing out above the familiar whining of passing staff and students. His hair was messier than usual, falling over his forehead like glossy ink, which meant he’d been running his hands through it. His heavy-lidded eyes were cradled by shadows like indigo thumbprints, which meant he’d slept even less than usual, and his golden skin looked pale against the black of his beard.

“Oh no,” Dani blurted.

He blinked, then arched an eyebrow.