Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(36)

I want to lick his smile and claim it as my own and live in the glow of it for the next seventy years.

Oh, hell…I’m doing it again.

I’m falling for a guy because he smiled.

I poke him in the ribs, then immediately wish I hadn’t touched him, because gah, his skin is smooth and hot and wet, and now I want to lick that too.

The peeing stops, and his mother gives one of those relieved sighs as he shoots me a raised-eyebrow, silent what?

I mouth quit being attractive to him, but his brows and cheeks do that I can’t understand you twitch.

His gaze dips.

And the man’s not looking at my shoulder.

I squeak and turn my back on him, but I can feel him looking at me. At my neck. My backbone. My hips. My lackluster butt. My skinny legs.

Oh, crap. Have I shaved recently? And why didn’t I think about that last night before I put my shorts on?

Oh my god.

Oh my god, I met all of his baseball friends and Mackenzie with hairy bigfoot legs on top of everything else.

“God, is there anything better than a good piss first thing in the morning?” his mom asks.

“Showering with my girlfriend without having to listen to my mother take a piss two feet away comes to mind.”

“Then you should’ve bought a house with more than one toilet.”

“You could’ve peed in the yard. I have a shovel out there behind the tree too.”

“I agree with your mother, Luca Antonio, and you know I hate to do that,” Nonna yells. “There’s buying a fixer-upper, and then there’s being an idiot. You’re being an idiot. Henrietta, you have your work cut out for you with this one. If you’re woman enough to follow through with the job.”

“Quit baiting my girlfriend, Nonna,” Luca hollers back.

Dogzilla adds half a meow and gingerly steps down into the tub.

The sink turns on, and I make a mental note to not shake hands with his mother because she does not wash for twenty seconds. A moment later, the door closes.

I suck in a deep breath, grateful that the water’s finally hot in here. “May I please have the shampoo?” I whisper.

It appears over my left shoulder.

And it’s Kangapoo.

Of course.

I’m going to smell like Luca Rossi for the rest of the day.

“Need help?” he murmurs entirely too close to my ear.

“No! I need you to back up,” I whisper back.

“We have to make sex noises.”

“We—what?”

“They think we’re in here trying to have a good time. We need to sound like it.”

“Are you trying to make me uncomfortable?”

“No, that’s merely a bonus side effect.” He raises his voice. “Here, babe. Get my back?”

“Only if you get my front,” I reply.

My back is still to him, which means I’m going to have to rinse this shampoo out face-first, and talking about washing him is making my entire body flush.

“Oh, god, yeah, that’s good,” he says.

I look back.

He’s staring up at the ceiling.

And there’s absolutely no movement below his waist.

Am I that unattractive that I don’t even get a quarter of a woody? Not that we’re having sex.

We are so not having sex.

But I’m standing here with every cell in my body getting turned on by his earthy male scent and the hard planes of his body and that damn smile, whereas he can’t even fake a teeny tiny bit of attraction in his primitive parts.

Life sucks sometimes.

Especially when this is pain I need to endure to grow and learn and not repeat all of my past errors.

“Oh, god, Luca, you know I love it when you do that,” I say in a breathy voice loud enough to carry over the water.

He makes a choking noise.

“Get a room,” Nonna yells.

“Quieter,” I hiss loudly to Luca, still in my sex kitten voice, which might be having an effect on his penis?

Maybe?

He growls and turns away so I can’t see. “I can’t be quieter, Henrietta,” he replies, equally loudly-but-pretending-to-be-trying-to-be-quiet. “You know what your body does to me.”

“Good lord, he wasn’t this enthusiastic over the supermodel he took to Evan’s wedding last year,” his mother says.

“No meat, no good lovin’,” Nonna yells back. “Not that she has the right kind of meat either…”

I suck in a breath, because I’m not entirely certain exactly what they’re saying, but I get the gist of it.

I’m not Luca’s type.

Also, when I suck in that breath, I get a nose full of water since I jerk my head up at the same time. As I’m coughing it out, Dogzilla lets out a panicked meow!, a cold draft makes the shower curtain waft toward me, and I realize Luca’s gone.

There’s frantic whispering outside the bathroom. I stick my head under the hard spray so I don’t have to hear it.

I know I’m not all that pretty. I know I have a weird personality.

You can’t have five failed engagements and not have something wrong with you. You can’t.

But I don’t need Luca’s family rubbing it in my face.

Coming here was a bad idea.

He’s right. I should’ve tried therapy again.