Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(22)

“Your text didn’t say that,” I tell Luca.

He pinches his nose, takes a deep breath, and then gingerly lifts Dogzilla so he can take the front seat.

She hangs limply in his hand, then settles like a pile of goo in his lap after he pulls the door shut. “Mackenzie needs to meet you.”

“Is that a guy’s last name, or is this a woman? I don’t remember a Mackenzie playing on your team.”

“She’s Elliott’s fiancée.”

“Who’s Elliott?”

“Henri, I’m about to be a dick, and I’ve been working very hard all day to not be a dick, but I need you to sit there and listen and not be you for the next two hours, okay?”

“Is this a lesson in not falling in love?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that. Drive. Left at the end of the road, then a quick right at the first stoplight. Do you have other clothes in here?”

“Nope. I emptied them all into your closet. I told your nonna that our relationship is relatively new, though I was vague enough that we have wiggle room in our story, and that I finally went through my first batch of clothes so I had to bring in my second. She probably thinks I’m homeless, which I guess I technically am, but not because I couldn’t afford a house. And oh my gosh, I was listening to the game while I was working on teasers for How To Train Your Vampire tonight—it’s my new book coming out in a few weeks—and you leapt into the stands to help an old lady up the stairs. That was so adorable. If I’d been not afraid of your nonna, I totally would’ve gone and shown her and been all, that’s my boyfriend.”

I follow his directions as I talk, heading to the end of the road and turning left.

“Left!” he yells. “Your other left!”

“I’m a writer, not a truck driver!” I yell back as I wrench the wheel the other way, cut off a bus, and floor the gas pedal so that we survive.

My heart’s in my throat. My thighs are buzzing like they’re made of bees. The bus is bearing down on us with its headlights lit up like they’re made of demon energy.

“Right!” Luca yells.

“Which one’s right?” I holler back.

“Toward me! Turn toward me!”

I almost take out a street sign as I jump the curb at seventy-million miles an hour, but I make that right turn, dammit, and I get the bus off our back, and I don’t even wet myself.

But I do pull into a driveway with my brakes screeching.

“Jesus, Henri, don’t stop here!”

A car honks, followed by another, and dammit, this isn’t a driveway.

It’s a freaking parking garage exit.

And I don’t care. I slam my car in park and fling open the door. “If you don’t like how I’m driving, then you can fucking drive yourself.”

Oof.

Whoa.

I just said fuck.

It’s not that I’m opposed to the word. It’s more that I try to use it sparingly, and I very much doubt Luca has any appreciation for the fact that I f-bombed him.

The cars keep honking.

Luca keeps sitting there, holding Dogzilla, who hasn’t so much as meowed through this whole ordeal, because she’s the easiest-going cat on the entire planet.

Except in very rare instances where she has to not be.

Cars and trucks are spewing the car-version of profanities at me as I march around the SUV to my passenger seat. I smile and wave at the first people in the line, mouth sorry, even though I feel like collapsing in a vat of non-alcoholic margaritas instead, and wrench open the passenger door.

Luca’s face is twitching again as he deposits Dogzilla in my arms, makes a more gallant and handsome I’m sorry gesture to the cars, which makes the honking stop, and then jogs around to climb into the driver’s seat, where he grunts and grimaces when his knees get stuck against the wheel.

“There’s a button—”

“I know there’s a fucking button.”

“Yes, but do you know exactly where it is, or do you need me to point it out?”

“I need you to stop talking.”

“We’ve been awake and in the same airspace for all of forty-five minutes today and you’ve said that to me seven times.”

“You fucking talk a lot.”

He locates the power seat button, and the gears whine as they slowly start to move his seat backward.

Mold grows faster than his seat is moving.

Dogzilla peers a chill eye up at me. “Mee…”

She doesn’t finish the ow. Let’s be real here. The fact that she even started to meow is sign enough. “Don’t say fuck. It stresses my cat.”

“How did you get yourself engaged five times? Are you always like this?”

I glare at him, because of course I’m not always like this. “You apparently bring out the worst in me.”

“Great. Then there’s lesson number one in not falling in love. Date people who bring out the worst in you, and they’ll never ask you to marry them.” He grabs the wheel with one hand, the gear shift with the other, and we roll out of the way of the garage traffic and into the street again.

Dogzilla lets out a sigh and melts deeper into my lap.

Poor thing’s going to need extra kitty treats to recover from this.

Luca’s breathing through his nose, and he looks every bit the angry, anti-love asshole he was after my wedding when he pinned me to the ground and told me that love sucks.