Good Boy (WAGs #1)(40)

Hmmm. Something just doesn’t add up. I can’t figure out why Blake would need a fake date for a family party. Unless there’s someone else giving him the willies. “Who else am I meeting? Anyone I should look out for? Any exes?”

And, aha! He flinches.

“That bad, huh?”

Blake scowls. “It’s no big deal.”

Riiiiight. “Is she the reason you suddenly needed a girlfriend? Just level with me, and this will be easier to pull off. What’s her name?”

He sighs. “Molly. She’s my sister Brenna’s best friend. I don’t see her that often, but sometimes she gets all clingy.”

Ah. “But if I’m there she’ll back off?”

“She’ll have to,” he grunts.

We turn down a tree-lined street in some area called Brampton. It’s lush and pretty in a way that’s completely different from California. I know nothing of Ontario, I realize, and this short break from my textbooks is a welcome reprieve, even if I was secretly brought here to defend Blake from the sharpened talons of an ex.

“You should have warned me,” I say quietly. Then I immediately feel guilty because I tried to pass off Dyson as my boyfriend at Jamie’s wedding.

Hypocritical much?

He parks the car at the curb of a sprawling house with pink and blue balloons tied to the mailbox. There are potted mums on the front porch and a hedgerow of sunflowers. I love it already.

Blake snaps the keys from the ignition and turns to me. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I really appreciate you coming with me today.” His green eyes look uncertain, and it’s an expression I so rarely see on his face that I can’t help but melt a little. Blake Riley’s confidence has slipped? Call 911 and administer CPR.

I reach up and pat his cheekbone. “Am I allowed to have a little fun with it? Can I make up a story about our first date?”

“Go nuts, girlfriend.” He grins, making his face instantly more familiar. “I told ’em we met when we were both looking after Jamie. But I skipped the part about taking off my pants and daring you to find out if Wesley’s massage chair would turn my dick into a real-life vibrator.”

All my nether regions give a big shimmy at the memory. Gah.

Blake points his finger at me like a gun. “Keep that expression.” He winks. “You’re very convincing with that sexed-up look in your eye.”

I frown on purpose. “I do not look sexed up. Nobody here is sexed up.”

The backseat laughs behind me.

Blake doesn’t bother arguing the point. He gets out of his monster truck and comes around to my side, opening the door with a flourish. “Come and meet the Rileys, girlfriend.”

The house is chaos inside. Blake steers me into the kitchen, where at least a half-dozen women buzz around like bees. Though it’s no trouble identifying the Riley sisters. One of them is hugely pregnant, but the other two are just as easy to pick out. The female editions of Blake are basketball-player tall, with wide shoulders and even wider smiles. They wear floral-patterned dresses in different colors, and I can’t decide if the similarity is intentional.

In contrast, I look positively bashful in my little blue sleeveless dress.

They don’t notice our arrival, because they’re clucking over a giant bakery box that just arrived. “Omigod!” the pregnant sister shrieks. “These are the best thing ever.”

I stand on my tiptoes for a peek in the box. Row upon row of beautiful cupcakes wait, each frosted with a cloud of white icing and a single chocolate sperm swimming across the top.

“Damn, those are scary!” Blake crows.

Heads swivel, and then the clucking hits a deafening pitch as his three sisters charge him. “BLAKEY!” “He’s here!” “Have a beer!”

Instinctively I engage in defensive maneuvers, ducking behind Blake’s bulk to avoid being trampled. With a cheerful roar, he lifts each of his sisters off their feet in turn. “Let the fertility festivities begin! Where did you say the beer was?”

“I’ll get you one,” a sister volunteers. It’s easy to see that Blake is well-loved by his family.

“Bring two,” he says. “I brought someone to meet you all, and she’s probably thirsty.”

He turns his head left and right, wondering where he’s misplaced me, so I duck under his arm to show myself.

His fingers graze the bare skin of my shoulder. “Girls, this is Jess. My girlfriend.”

The room goes so quiet so fast that at first I think I’m suffering some kind of audiological anomaly. But then I see the surprise crisscrossing all the women’s faces. One of Blake’s not-pregnant sisters has her hand on the refrigerator door, but she’s forgotten to open it. Instead, she’s staring at me, jaw dropped like a hungry grouper.

The silence is as deep as the Pacific, and I use the time to study all the shocked faces. Besides the sisters, there are two or three more women gaping at me. One in particular—she’s got springy curls that frame her pixie face—has slapped a hand over her mouth in dismay.

“Uh, girls? Hello?” Blake prompts. His palm strokes my shoulder absently. “Come over here and meet Jessie. Cheezus.”

“Sorry.” The sister at the fridge recovers first. She crosses the room on giraffe’s legs and grabs my hand, giving it a bruising shake. “I’m Britt, the youngest of us four. It’s so nice to meet you,” she says, pumping my hand. “Blake didn’t tell us he was seeing anyone.” She lifts big eyes—green like her brother’s—to Blake, and there’s a question in them.