Free Doing It for Love (All About Love #1) by Cassie Mae Page B

meeting.
    So I snake my arm around his torso and squeeze.
    “Okay.”

Chapter 9
    SEPTEMBER
    Something is dying in my stomach. I get major butterflies when I’m nervous, but these butterflies are possessed. Devil butterflies. And they’re beating their iron wings against my innards so hard I have to clutch my gut and beg Landon to pull over
again.
    “What did you eat?” he jokes as I bolt out of the car. I haven’t eaten anything—can’t imagine what my stomach would feel like if I had.
    Breathe in, breathe out.
Oh, sweet cherry pie, I may hurl. Cars whiz past behind me as I latch onto my knees and prepare to throw ladylike out the window.
    This is just like that time on the Rock-O-Plane at thirteen with Justin Prescott, the only preteen who didn’t have an awkward phase. His pinky touched mine and we rocked, and from then on I was known as “Blue Slurpee” as it went flying from my stomach.
    Somewhere behind me I hear the car door. Landon’s gonna touch me, and I don’t want him to. Blue Slurpee needs to puke in peace. But his hand hits my upper back even after I wave at him not to step another foot closer.
    “Do you want some water?”
    I shake my head, continuing to breathe out like I’m in labor. Landon tucks my ponytail into the back of my T-shirt, and I manage to say, “Thanks” between breaths.
    What is this nonsense? Stupid stomach. Stupid nerves. They need to back the hell off and let me be a strong, confident woman. Or at least let me fake it for the weekend.
    “You okay, Tumbles? You’re all sweaty.”
    Eww, he’s right. Maybe I do need that water.
    “Hang tight,” Landon says, and clearly my thoughts have run out of my mouth again. I wipe my brow with a shaky hand and curse at the ground like it’s at fault for my inability to handle pressure.
    Landon hands me a Dasani and I take small sips. The September wind picks up and that helps the sweats. After a minute I think the devil butterflies have been exorcised.
    “Do we need to head back?” he asks, adjusting his faded blue
Miller
cap. “If you’re sick we can reschedule, no problem.”
    “I’m fine.” I take another swig of water. “Not sick, just…”
    A cocky smile pops up on his mouth. “Aww, Lizzie. You’re nervous.”
    “I am not.”
    “There go your pants again.” He pulls me into a hug, which I don’t return. “Will it help if I say I know they’ll love you?”
    “Of course they will. I’m awesome,” I grumble into his T-shirt, but really, what if they don’t? What if this weekend is a living hell? What if they think it’s all a big joke that Landon brought home this twenty-two-year-old posing as a fiancée just to piss them off, and damn it those iron-winged butterflies just reincarnated and want to explode out my belly button.
    Landon rubs a soothing hand up and down my back. “You know what helps with nerves?”
    “Alcohol.”
    “Sex.”
    “Are you giving in?”
    “No.”
    “Sounds like you are.”
    “Please. I don’t even know how long it’s been.”
    Three very long weeks.
“Me neither.”
    “I am seriously concerned about your pants. We should get you fire-resistant ones.”
    I shake my head, burying it farther into his chest. “Can we stop somewhere? I haven’t eaten.”
    “Well,
that’s
why you’re sick!”
    He pulls me back to the car, and I try not to think about spending money while we drive to the next rest stop. I’ve got too much stress on my plate as it is, and when Landon’s hand squeezes my thigh twice before staying there to rest, I have to ignore the throb in my lady regions screaming at me that “Yeah, girl. Sex would seriously help right now!”
    Damn him.
    —
    “This is it.”
    Landon turns the ignition off in front of a nice house in the middle of a noisy neighborhood. Kids are playing basketball down the street, a dog barks at a beefy man jogging past a fence, and there’s an old lady with a cat on her porch, a cat in her lap, and a cat on the patio table next to her.