Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(14)

“You work from home?” his nonna asks me.

I start to nod, but Luca leaps up from beneath the sink like he has the lightning-fast reflexes of a vampire, grabs me by the elbow, and drags me out of the room. “We’ll get your room ready, Nonna,” he calls. “Can’t wait for that ziti.”

“Good job turning off the water, honey!” I say loudly, then add in a whisper, “Is ziti for breakfast normal?”

“Stop talking. For thirty seconds, please stop talking.”

He marches me up the stairs and into the guest bedroom, where he rears back as soon as he enters. “Christ on a meatball.”

I peer around, but other than a few clothes on the bed and Dogzilla’s raccoon costume that I’m airing out after it got too close to a shampoo bottle that leaked in my luggage, I don’t see anything—oh.

Wait.

Right.

My hero from my most popular series is taped to the window.

I forget other people think it’s unusual that I had an eighteen-inch cardboard cutout made of him. I call him my muse, and he goes everywhere with me.

“Oh. Er…sorry about Confucius.”

Luca shuts the door—very gently, for the record, though I suppose you could call it very controlled—and pinches his lips together while he stares at the ceiling like he’s looking for divine intervention.

“The fangs are because he’s a vampire, but his sworn enemy cursed him, so instead of being able to shift into a bat, he turns into a turtlecorn. He’s hoping I’ll get back to work on his series soon so that he can get uncursed.”

More heavy breathing.

Is he meditating?

He might be meditating.

“So, your grandma’s putting The Eye on you if you don’t get a girlfriend?”

I’ve been writing romance novels since third grade, when I wrote my first book about a panda who fell in love with an eagle after my parents got divorced. I know a grandma who wants her grandson to settle down and get married when I see one, and TikTok Nonna definitely wants Luca settled.

He’s still counting the spiderwebs on the ceiling. With his eyes closed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re terrifying?”

“That was why my first fiancé left me.”

“I’m not going to marry you, so if you’re thinking about falling in love with me, you can leave.”

“Um, yeah, duh. I’m going to pretend to be your girlfriend to get your grandmother off your back, apparently until the end of the season since I heard enough to know that it’s what you’re most worried about, and you’re going to teach me how to not fall in love. Preferably with your clothes on, because you’re hot, and not because your air conditioner doesn’t work. Also, I’m off sex. It complicates the love thing.”

His eyes drift open as he lowers his head to look at me, but his eyes aren’t drifting all the way open, which is a problem, because when his lids are at half-mast like that, it gives me ideas about him having ideas, and we are not doing that.

“Are you never going to have sex again?”

Gah, the sex voice. He’s using a sex voice.

I blow out a short breath and shake out my hands. I can do this. It’s like he’s already giving me my first lesson. “I didn’t say that.”

“So you want me to teach you how to not fall in love—which I can’t do, by the way, but I can tell you a few reasons love sucks—but you think you—you—can train yourself on how to not fall in love without learning how to have casual sex.”

“Y-yes.”

“Have you ever had casual sex?”

I need to not answer that, because while my official record of being jilted stands at five, my college boyfriend—the one I lost my virginity to—technically counts as the prequel, since I started planning my wedding to him basically the minute he fell asleep after we did the deed the first time.

Luca’s lips curve into a grin.

It’s a wicked, wicked grin.

He leans back against the wall, which makes his wet golden muscles stand out starkly in all their solid glory, like they’re yelling adore me! I’m beautiful! You want to touch me!

“You haven’t,” he says.

“One problem at a time, and the first problem is that your grandmother’s sneaking up the stairs to listen in on us.” She’s not, so far as I can tell, but I need to get control of this conversation before I lose my brain and ask Luca to marry me. “Also, is this a one-bathroom house? Why do you live in a one-bathroom house? And is she going to stay here? Or is she only threatening to so she can make sure that we’re dating?”

He leaps to work, throwing all of my clothes into my suitcase, and when he touches my panties, the pair I’m wearing gets wet.

And now all of me is officially soaked.

I breathe through it, because this is okay.

He’s right.

I should learn how to have casual sex.

Maybe that can be a lesson for after I break up with him. That’s how it has to go to satisfy his grandmother, right?

This can’t be his fault.

It can’t be even remotely close to his fault, which means not only do I have to break up with him, I have to have the reason above all reasons to break up with him.

I’m going to have to tell TikTok Nonna that I’ve discovered I’m supposed to become a nun.