Lucky This Isn't Real

Prologue

I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

Gavin MacBride, the sexiest man alive, had his head buried between my legs.

“Mmmm,” I moaned as the tip of his tongue circled and flicked my swollen clit.

How in the world did I even end up here?

There was nothing more embarrassing than meeting a hot guy while you were waiting to see a therapist.

Except for when your cheating douche bag of an ex and your stepsister—who were the very reason you needed a therapist in the first place—walked in.

And then announced that they were there for pre-marital counseling because they were engaged.

Luckily, to save me from further embarrassment, a handsome stranger stepped in and rescued me by pretending to be my gorgeous, to-die-for fiancé.

“Right there,” I cried out now, enjoying the very real pleasure he was giving me.

He slid his fingers inside my grasping channel and sucked until I thrashed against the mattress. My nails dug into his broad, muscular back, and my moans begged him to keep going, harder and faster.

“You like that, darlin’?”

He reached up to play with one of my nipples while I groaned out my answer.

“Yes. Please. Keep doing it.”

Forever.

But that wasn’t possible, right?

Because he was only my fake fiancé.

And this was only a very temporary arrangement.

Sure, sometimes it felt like something different.

But I couldn’t let myself get carried away with those fleeting thoughts.

There was no way this amazingly attractive, charming, talented man with the enthralling Irish accent and eyes bluer than a July sky could actually be in love with me for real, right?

“I’ll do it to you as long as you want, my love.”

A second later, I climaxed all over his hand and mouth.

And all I could think was: Maybe he really does want to be with me as much as I want to be with him.

So then why did it feel like he was hiding something from me?

Chapter One – Gavin

Looking for something good to watch, I ran my fingertips along the spines of my five hundred or so DVDs. Most people these days streamed movies and TV shows, legally or not. Not me. I still had a thing for physical media.

I didn’t go back as far as VHS tapes, although I had a few of those gathering dust in the attic. For videos, my media of preference were good old DVDs. For albums, it was definitely vinyl.

Impressive as my music collection was, my DVD collection surpassed it by leaps and bounds. I had bought most of them for a steal out of bargain bins and at going-out-of-business sales. Everything from The Quiet Man to Brooklyn lined the shelves in my bedroom from end to end and from floor to ceiling.

The only concession to modern tech I made was watching them on a laptop with an internal DVD player. It was the same one I’d had since I was fourteen. Sixteen years later, it still worked just fine, through the miracle of self-maintenance.

That was one of the main reasons I’d gotten a laptop with a hard drive to begin with. A screwdriver was all it took to put new brains in the old case.

I had a reason to justify the number of DVDs I had. At least to myself. I was an actor and often used a bit of advice I had once heard Liam Neeson give. He said it helped to practice lines by watching movies and paying attention to what was being said.

Mr. Neeson was an acting legend. He was best in historical pieces like Michael Collins (my second favorite) and Gangs of New York (my favorite). He was from Ballymena, a small city near Belfast, and had a noticeably different accent, softer than most other Irish actors, but it was still nice to hear an authentic and local voice.

I preferred watching movies that used Irish actors for Irish parts. Most Americans and Brits couldn’t pull off the accent. Though, to be fair, Brad Pitt did an admirable job with the notorious accent he used in Snatch.

Besides, growing up, movies were my escape from the real world. I was raised in Belfast and came from a family of six boys. Testosterone filled the house. The fights weren’t for the fainthearted.

I was wondering whether I should settle for a DVD I hadn’t yet watched, or give in to my addiction to Gangs of New York and watch it for the millionth time now that it was on my mind again, when my bedroom door suddenly flew open.

“Gav. We gotta go!”

Usually, I would have yelled at Eoin, my eighteen-year-old brother, and the youngest MacBride, for busting in like that, possibly throwing in a ‘gobshite’ or two, but he was in such a state that I was worried.

A few months ago, after our mother passed, I’d moved back into the family home to make sure Eoin was okay. It wasn’t as if our father was reliable enough to do that for him.