She shrugs.
“Like I said,” I tell Nonna, unsure if I’m supposed to be grateful or terrified that Henri’s riding out this lie with me. “It’s awkward.”
Henri tilts her head against my chest. She smells like imitation coconut and sweat, and it’s warm enough in the kitchen that her cheek is now stuck to my bare skin, and that’s gonna make a noise when we separate.
“Hm.” Nonna’s gaze flits between us while she picks up the family heirloom casserole dish and carries it to my oven. “Good thing you have a guest room then.”
My blood runs cold. “For…?”
“For me to move into. Henri, dear, you’re going to need all the help you can get with this one. He’s stubborn as a mule.”
“Nonna—”
“Oh my gosh, that’s so sweet of you!” Henri peels herself off me—and yeah, there’s some stretching skin, because I don’t have a working air conditioner, and the oven’s heating up now, which means we’ll all be roasted like a chicken dinner within about ten minutes—and she launches herself at Nonna. “I’ll have to clear my things out. Luca’s been so kind, letting me use his guest bedroom as my office. I mean, I guess I can work in the living room…?”
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
She’s in love with me.
She thinks this is real.
Is she the kind of woman who’ll buy her own wedding ring and plan the whole wedding and then expect me to show up?
Better question—will it cost me my endorsement deals when the world buys into the crazy and believes that I’m the sixth guy who’s jilted her?
Is this gonna cost me an endorsement deal?
I need to call my agent.
And maybe my lawyer.
And probably the cops.
Or maybe a few teammates. Maybe she can fall in love with Robinson instead. Maybe it’s not too late.
“Luca? Honey, do you need to sit down?”
I grab a glass, turn to the sink, wrench on the faucet, and a stream of water explodes out of the handle, spraying all of us.
Including the ziti.
And now I’m wondering if it’s my grandmother or the ziti that gives The Eye, but I don’t have to wonder for long.
Because no matter what, I’m fucked.
6
Henri
It’s a good thing I’m off love, because water all over Luca Rossi’s tight muscles and golden skin, with him in nothing but black boxer-briefs first thing in the morning is enough to give a girl some ideas.
Lust.
I can totally be in lust.
Who wouldn’t be in lust with that backside?
He’s bent over under the sink to turn off the water, which feels dang good soaking my clothes and face and hair—and yes, my cat totally agrees. She’s lying on the floor, on her back, letting the water rain all over her while I try to angle in to ask Luca if I can help.
With anything.
Not only is his sink exploding, but either the air conditioner is broken, or Luca’s the devil and likes it really, really hot.
Lust is making me forgive a lot right now. Not that I have any right to be the forgiver—I did invade his home—but this morning, it appears I might have something he needs too.
“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.