Say you Love me

Stifling a harsh expletive, Rhea Palmer awoke with a start as the phone beside her rang shrilly in her ears. Groggily, she rubbed her hooded eyes which were still swollen with sleep and sat up glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. With a defeated sag against her pillow, she suppressed a groan. Unfortunately, she had a pretty good idea who could be calling at this ungodly hour.“Adam Devin Crighton! Why don’t you do both of us a favour by leaving me alone?” she nearly barked in the phone, her voice still husky with sleep.“Goooood morning sweetheart. I won’t ask you how you are feeling this morning because I think I have a pretty good idea,” replied the voice from the other end of the receiver.Rhea raised her eyes heavenwards in an exasperated manner although she knew nobody could see her and slammed down the receiver with a disgusted sigh. Surprise, surprise! The phone rang again almost immediately.“Okay,” she capitulated knowing full well it was the only way to keep her wits ab

Rhea heaved a huge sigh of relief and sagged against the closed door as Adam left without using any of his usual charm on her. It was starting to get on her nerves that every time he was around she felt so uncomfortable that she could barely say a decent word to him. And she was also fed up of his supposedly undying love for her.It was not that she did not like him. She did. In a big way. But had never thought of him as anything except her elder brother. Just like Zach Cooper. She had grown up as Ashton’s Cooper’s daughter and was closest to Zoey. But had been brought up with Adam and Zach, the one she considered her brothers. The only family she had after her own father Slade Palmer had disowned her like she was dirt.And when Adam had so openly told her that he wanted her, she had felt insulted. It had been something beyond her imagination and her already poor opinion of the male species had not helped. She had been so shocked by his vehement declaration on her birthday party that

Damn! And double damn! Rhea stood stunned at his last sentence not knowing what to make out of Adam. He was such a paradox. Last year, he had tried to seduce her and this year he was acting like the past two years had not even existed!Like he was the best friend he had always been. Rhea would be damned if she could figure out what was going on in his mind. He was so damn unpredictable! So she managed a tentative smile instead deciding not to give him more importance.She was already unhappy with herself for not having the audacity to tell him that she did not love him. She knew that she would have lost him forever as a friend and she so did not want that. If that made her weak, then so be it.“Sure, let’s go,” she said casually and followed him downstairs.Which was quite a sight. There was a crowd gathered in every empty space available in the living room which was big enough to accommodate at least a hundred guests. Damn! How had the party gotten so out of hand? She had not realize

Rhea’s plan was not working. The first advice for being the perfect girlfriend was “Be feminine but not weak” and that was why she had been acting like a fragile emotional wreck around Adam last night. But instead of feeling angry with her, Adam had been patience personified.Damn! Zoey had been right; it had backfired on her. She had been so tempted to cancel their “date” at the last minute. Especially when she had been damn sure that Adam was reading more into their dinner than he was supposed to. And the way she had behaved had only served to fuel his imagination instead of tampering it. Everything had gone out of hand. But she had acted exactly the opposite of what the magazine had said.By letting him open doors for her, letting him pull her chair and letting him choose the menu. It had not exactly been a show of weakness; but she knew it was something Adam would not appreciate. Back in high school days, he used to complain about how his girlfriends were too dependent on him; he

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the article had read in the paragraph where it had advised a good girlfriend to cook for her man. And that was exactly what Rhea had done. Well, cook for him to show him just how bad a cook she was.And it had worked! For the first time since the whole episode had started, Adam had suddenly grown disheartened and grumpy instead of his usual infuriating enthusiasm. Rhea had given herself a mental high-five when he had practically fled from the kitchen when she had started on her “poor me” self about how she could not even manage to boil a decent pasta.It had been unbelievably fast and she had never expected her plan to work out so quickly. But it was too early to hope for the best; she would only confirm her theory the next morning when Adam would skip the dreaded morning call. And she could only hope that it never came again.Of course if it happened that way, she would never raise the subject again and they would be back to being good