Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(12)

“It’s time, Luca Antonio. The stars told me so, and the stars are never wrong.”

“We’re this close.”

“And you need to give up all of your preconceived notions of love and accept that the universe needs you to find the one.”

“If she’s the one, she’ll have to understand the sacrifices involved.”

“That’s nonsense. You’re a grown man. It’s time you act like one.”

“Says the woman with the unicorn hair. Ah!”

Something hot, sticky, and gooey lands in my ear.

Something like a damn clump of ziti fixings.

There’s too much of it to stay in my ear, so now it’s dribbling down my bare shoulder and chest and onto the floor, which I can’t mop too much because the linoleum is cracked, and I’ll damage the subfloor and have to replace that too.

I’m usually further into renovation projects at this point in the season, but I’m not usually enjoying being part of a team as much as I’m enjoying being a Fireball this year.

Dammit, I hope they don’t trade me.

But with my track record—it’s only a matter of time.

You could say commitment and I don’t go together anywhere.

I bend over the sink, glaring at my grandmother while I rinse out the cursed food.

She lifts a brow. “I could’ve set your hair on fire.”

“Not if you want a good Christmas present,” I grumble.

“Luca, how many women have you dated?”

I straighten, turn off the water, and grab a towel to dry my ear and face. “Don’t you have to bake the ziti before we get started with you shriveling my nuts?”

Shut up, Rossi. SHUT. UP.

“Your oven isn’t heating fast enough.” She thumps the wall oven, which looks like a double-oven, but is actually the world’s smallest oven with the world’s largest broiler.

“It’s an antique,” I hear myself say. “Works better if you light a wood fire in the broiler.”

She frowns at the oven.

Frowns bigger at me.

Her eyes start to narrow, and I am not ready for this.

My cousin Louie got the Eye put on him, and he was married to Isabella within two months. My cousin Joe? Seven months to a pregnant bride. Alonzo? He told Nonna to go to hell, and three days later, he was in a full body cast in the hospital.

Alonzo’s an accountant. He drives a Volvo with a crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror, takes Fiber One every morning at breakfast, collects stamps, and has a YouTube channel where he discusses the ins and outs of button manufacturing.

For fun.

The only brave thing he’s ever done in his entire life is to tell Nonna to go to hell when she put the Eye on him.

He slipped in his tub and broke every bone in his body while replacing his shower curtain hooks three days later.

I went to his wedding to one of his nurses the next Christmas. Under protest, for the record, but I went like I’ve gone to every one of my cousins’ weddings.

Don’t tell me The Eye isn’t powerful.

And I play baseball for a living. Do you know how many opportunities there are for broken bones, torn groins, and balls to the head—not to mention freak bat accidents—every single day?

I shower naked with twenty other men on a regular basis.

I am not getting The Eye.

“Nonna, this isn’t necessary.”

“Oh, I think it is.”

“It—Jesus.”

I leap, because something furry brushes my leg, and I don’t own furry.

Except—fuck on a fuck sandwich.

I have a houseguest.

I have a female houseguest. Who needs to leave. Now. Without Nonna seeing her.

“Luca Antonio,” Nonna growls, and I don’t know if it’s for the Jesus out loud or the fucks in my head.

But I’ll keep both of them, thank you very much.

Henri’s cat—dressed in a bunny outfit—has plopped her ass down beside my foot and is lying on her side while she licks at the bits of ziti that fell off my ear.

And I’m getting an awful idea.

An awful, terrible, horrible, I’ll-probably-get-a-concussion-and-end-my-baseball-career-for-this idea. In fact, it’s such an awful idea, I give myself idea whiplash.

“Can you give me a few months before we do The Eye?” I hiss. “I don’t want to freak out Henri.”

I am going to hell.

In my own house.

Probably within the next five minutes.

Nonna folds her arms. “If you think claiming to be gay is going to stop me, look what happened to your cousin Tony when I put the Eye on him.”

Right. Happily married to Tom, his former neighbor-enemy, and adopting twin girls that were left between their apartment doors approximately six hours after The Eye happened.

“Henrietta,” I correct.

I can do this. I can tell Nonna that I’m dating Henri, and then she heard about The Eye, freaked, and ran away.

And then I can kick Henri out.

It’s brilliant.

Or possibly desperate.

“Yes, love?” Like a demon summoned from the Underworld, the woman herself pops into the kitchen.

She’s in a pink tank top without a bra—fuuuuuck me—and short shorts decorated with pandas above her skinny legs. Her hair’s a mess of short brown curls sticking up at all angles under a backwards baseball cap, her cheeks are rosy, and her breasts jiggle while she bounce-steps the seven paces into the kitchen to join me at the sink, where she wraps her arms around my waist while she goes up on tiptoe to lick the ziti off my shoulder. “Mm, breakfast.”