They turned their boards, and Olivia let out a squeal of joy.
The way my mind works.
Her mind.
Chuck jumped out of his chair with a cheer. He flung his board aside and reached out to hug her.
Olivia was halfway out of her chair, reaching back, when she froze. “Wait!” she blurted. “No touching.”
They both looked at TJ, who was watching them with bright, eager eyes.
“Can we hug?” Chuck asked.
“You can do whatever you want. It’s your money,” TJ said.
His message was clear, so they settled for a fist bump even though Olivia wanted to fling herself at him and dance in celebration.
She stepped out from between the chairs and did a small celebratory dance on her own. “We did it!” she squealed.
“Yeah, we did!” Chuck crowed. “Wild how much we know about each other, right? Also—” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Well played with the boobs joke, but you didn’t need to do that. I remembered,” he said proudly.
Olivia flushed at the thought that he’d been thinking of that day in her bed too. The urge to fling her arms around him hit her again, and a realization hit her even harder.
“Wait,” she said, and glanced over at TJ and the crew breaking down the little set. “Oh, those sneaky bastards,” she hissed.
“What?” Chuck asked, and followed her gaze.
The crew wasn’t paying attention to them anymore; theywere too busy cleaning up and chatting. Olivia pinched Chuck’s arm and dragged him away and back closer to the house.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
She stopped under the eave outside the bedroom’s back door. “I think they played us, Chuck!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I think that was on purpose—that game! They set it up to make usfeelthings. TJ even pointed out how well we know each other and said we should still be a couple. I think they wanted us to be inthisposition after.” She pointed at the ground between their feet.
Chuck narrowed his eyes at her, trying to keep up. “What position?”
She punched her hands into her hips and looked up at him. “Do you want to kiss me right now?”
“Yes,” he said plainly without a second’s hesitation. And then realization dawned over his face.
“See?” She flung her arms out in exasperation. “I think they are trying to manipulate us.”
“I get it now—wait. Does that mean you want to kissme?”
She threw up her arms again and widened her eyes into an obviousyes.
“Oh,” Chuck said with a smile. “Well, that’s good.”
“That is notgood, Chuck! They are trying to sabotage us into losing more money! They know we made out last night, and now they just spoon-fed us a bunch of horny memories on purpose to get us to do it again!”
He was still looking at her with a dopey grin. “You really want to kiss me right now?”
She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Chuck! Snap out of it! We’ve got a problem on our hands!”
He shook himself and scrubbed his face with a hand. “You’re right. Sorry. What should we do?”