Probably one about a vampire lord who’s been thrown out from his kingdom after succumbing to a sleeping spell cast by a troublesome fairy who ends up being the love of his life.
I seriously love love.
“You know you’re terrifying when you smile like that?” Luca breathes in my ear as I join him at the top step.
“Do your teammates know you’re terrified of anything happy?”
“I’m not terrified of happiness. I’m terrified of you. And no, they don’t know that, and they won’t, or else I’ll propose to you. Got it?”
I suck in a breath at his threat and follow him to peek into the guest room.
Nonna’s snoring.
Dammit.
So much for that lingering hope that she would’ve left so I wouldn’t have to share a bedroom with Luca.
His sigh suggests he’s feeling the same.
We creep down the short hallway past the lone bathroom in the house—seriously, it doesn’t even have a powder room on the first floor, and I’d honestly like to know how you’re supposed to have friends over when there’s not a spare toilet, except not having guests is probably exactly his plan—and before I know it, Luca’s shutting the door to his bedroom.
With just him and me inside.
In the total darkness.
He hits the light switch, and a woman sits up in bed and screams.
I’m not one to hear a random unexpected scream and not join in, so I scream too.
Dogzilla leaps out of my arms with a yowl and lands in the middle of Luca’s back, where she digs in with her claws, and now he’s screaming too.
“Get it off!”
“Intruder!” I shriek.
“Pastrami on rye!” the intruder yells.
“Mother?”
I stop screaming.
Dogzilla gives up the fight and falls off Luca’s back.
And his mother pulls the threadbare sheet up to cover—gah.
Look away, Henri.
Look.
Away.
The door flies open, smacking me in the shoulder and sending me tumbling into Luca, who smells like a fresh spring rain shower in paradise.
The man can’t smell like a simple spring rain shower. That would be too easy.
Nonna charges in, rainbow hair flowing behind her and leaving no doubt where Luca got his hair genes, her arm raised and ready to throw the rusty tea kettle she’s armed with. “Who? What? When? Why? How? Where?”
I can agree with some of those questions, because was she sleeping with a rusty tea kettle?
It’s a good thing Luca’s teaching me how to not fall in love, because his family is adorable.
Mostly.
When they’re not dating my ex or being terrifying with their Eye.
So maybe adorable isn’t the right word here.
“Put the damn kettle down, Irene,” Luca’s mom snaps.
I glance at her, see the outline of her nipples behind the sheet again, and whip my head back up to the ceiling.
There’s only so much a woman can take, and seeing the breasts that I now know Jerry fantasizes about, sleeping in my fake boyfriend’s bed where I was supposed to sleep, is one of those things that makes me wish I could drink.
It’s not that I dislike her.
It’s that the sight of her makes me sad, because if I wasn’t what Jerry wanted, why didn’t he go for what he wanted in the first place instead of spending so many months building me up as being the one person who would finally make his life complete?
I know.
I know.
It’s me.
You don’t get left by five fiancés without figuring out it’s me.
“I told you to leave,” Nonna growls.
“And I told you I was staying right here until I got to talk to my son,” Luca’s mom snaps back.
I can’t stop picturing Jerry kissing her in that coat closet, and it’s making me sad.
So sad.
I hate being sad.
“What are you doing here?” Luca asks his mother.
Dogzilla echoes the question with a lazy half-meow from where she’s settled almost under the ancient dresser in the corner.
“You weren’t answering my calls.”
“He probably didn’t want to talk to you. Completely understandable.” Nonna’s still waving the tea kettle, and I get the impression she’s only holding back on throwing it because she doesn’t want to see Luca’s mom naked either.
“Oh, and he wants to talk to you? You’re probably threatening to put The Eye on him so he’ll do something stupid like—”
She looks at me and freezes, and I fill in the blanks.
He’ll do something stupid like start dating Henri Bacon, the loser who’s addicted to love but can’t actually find it.
I don’t wait for her to regroup her thoughts and stammer something else, because while I like to think I’m a happy, positive, always-see-the-bright-side person, I’m not an idiot, and I have my limits.
And right now, my limits are ordering me to grab my cat, which I do, and march out of this house and go find a hotel, because I’m the freaky weirdo in panda slippers and mismatched pajamas and a bath towel wrapped around my crazy hair that I chopped off when my fifth fiancé left me before we got to the aisle, and of course Luca’s mother doesn’t want him to do something like date a woman like me.
Let’s be honest.
His grandmother doesn’t either.
When she Eyed him, she was thinking he’d get involved with someone cute and perky and put together.
She probably even had a candidate ready to roll in right behind her.
Not with someone like me.
What am I even doing here?
Do I really think Luca can teach me to not fall in love?
He’s as messed up as I am, in his own way.
I hit the bottom step, which groans and sags beneath my angry weight, and I lose my balance and go flying.
Poor Dogzilla goes flying too.
Again.
The top of my towel hits the wall and slides off my hair, and a large philodendron that was not there this morning catches my fall.
I end up with a mouthful of leaves that I’m spitting out as someone thunders down the stairs behind me. “Christ on a parmesan sandwich,” Luca mutters as he lifts me out of the plant, fully dislodging the rest of the towel from my head. “Are you okay?”
I pick a few more leaves off my chin and hold one up. “I probably wouldn’t serve it on a salad, especially since they’re poisonous, but I’ve eaten worse.”
He gapes at me while I look around, verify that Dogzilla is fine—which she is, since she’s sitting in the middle of the floor licking her butt, which probably means she’s irritated with me, but at least she’s not hurt—and then I remember I’m mad, and I switch my almost-smile to a scowl. “I’m fine. Thank you very much for removing me from the woman-eating plant. I don’t think this house is big enough for all the baggage, let alone the four different sides heading straight into war, so I’m going to go get a hotel room, and maybe you can call me after your away games this week.”
“I’m kicking them out. You can stay.”
“I’m not sleeping on sheets that have been against your mother’s naked body.”
He shudders. “I’m not sleeping on sheets that have been against my mother’s naked body either.”