Lucky This Isn't Real: MacBride Brothers Series St. Patrick's Day Fake Fiance Romance by Jamie Knight (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

Suddenly I felt grossly underdressed.

“You like it?” she asked, doing a spin, setting the skirt whirling about her and giving me a tantalizing glimpse of her bare legs.

All I could do was nod in stunned, mute appreciation of her unspeakable beauty. To try and pay tribute with mere words would be to sully the very endeavor.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek before heading to my car.

Her flowery perfume wrapped around me, leaving me even more stunned.

Momentarily, I stood stupefied, hand over the cheek she had kissed before sharply slapping the other to make damn sure that I was indeed awake. Giving my head a good hard shake, I followed Maggie to the car, my eyes fixated on the gentle, hypnotic sway of her hips.

I didn’t know how I would get through the next few hours without ripping her clothes off.

As I drove us the short distance to the party, I tried to keep my eyes on the road, even though I wanted to keep them glued to Maggie’s hot body and beautiful eyes.

She commented favorably on my music, which was a big plus, and we sang the lyrics together as if we had known each other since high school— which would have been impossible because we grew up in different countries, not to mention the fact I was older than her.

Still, it seemed we had known each other for longer than we had, somehow.

I decided to ask her about something while it was on my mind.

Turning the music down, I ventured, “Does it bother you that your fake fiancé is quite a bit older than you?”

“Oh, come on. It’s not like you’re ancient. I’m guessing you’re not much older than thirty,” she said, smiling and– dare I presume– blushing.

“Good guess. I turned the big 3–0 on my last birthday.”

“Nine years isn’t a huge difference. I like the thought of everyone thinking that I’m marrying someone so much more mature and… more experienced than I am.”

Her cheeks were definitely turning an even darker shade of red when she said “experienced”– there was no wondering as to what exactly it was that she was thinking about. And my cock jerked at my own thought of showing her just how experienced I was. But I told myself to keep it under control because we were almost at the party.

I had been a bit worried about asking that particular question, but now I was glad I had. Not only had I found out that the age difference between us didn’t bother Maggie– hypothetically, of course, as a fake fiancé, at least– but I had also gotten her to admit that she even liked the idea.

She turned to face me.

“Tell me more about you. Tell me about your life in Ireland.”

“Oh, let’s see. When I wasn’t acting, I worked in construction to pay the bills. I was in Game of Thrones. Winterfell was filmed at Castle Ward. Not too far from where I grew up. Then there was The Vikings. I was also in The Fall with Jamie Dornan.”

Her hand flew to her mouth.

“Shut up. I love him.”

I chuckled.

“Everyone does. Great fella. Salt of the earth, as they say. I was also in a show called Dublin Murders, and I had a twenty-episode arc in a soap opera called Fair City.”

“Wow. Nice. What made you decide to move here?”

I shrugged.

“It was now or never. I figured I had nothing to lose.” I glanced in her direction. “And so far, it’s turning out to have been a great decision. One of the best ones I’ve ever made.”

***

Once we arrived at the party, I saw that it was just as fancy as Raquel had implied. The mansion was huge and ornate.

“Valet parking, seriously?” Maggie remarked as we came to the end of the mile-long driveway. “Her dad obviously spared no expense for his princess.”

Uniformed valets and tuxedoed security guards were moving back and forth in front of us.

“Names?” asked a woman in a black pantsuit after she had walked up to the window of the car.

“Maggie Sanders, plus one,” Maggie said, leaning over me.

“Oh, here you are,” the door matron said, after flipping through some pages on her clipboard.

She followed that up by speaking into her gamer-style headset.

“We’ve got another one coming through.”

At her order, we drove into a makeshift parking lot. When we stepped out of the car, a valet jumped into the driver’s seat like a carjacker, barely taking time to retrieve my keys and give me a token that would let me pick up the Prius when we were done.

“Shall we?” I asked Maggie, crooking my elbow in a chivalrous way.

“Let’s.”

“She’s done well for herself,” I said, trying to be charitable as we walked up the literal red carpet toward the tent erected in the garden.

“Her dad paid for it. He’s richer than God and dumber than a sack of hammers. I never really knew what my mom saw in him. She’s not a gold digger, but maybe she saw him as a kind of security blanket. Thank God she finally saw sense and divorced him. Moving to Florida and away from him was the best thing she ever did.”

“Eventually, we all wake up and realize the mistakes we’ve made,” I told her. “Well, if we have any level of self-awareness, that is.”

“Yeah.” Maggie sighed. “Kenny was my mistake. But I least I woke up. If I hadn’t discovered him with Raquel, I’d still be asleep at the wheel and may never have realized how awful was capable of being.”

“Definitely don’t beat yourself up over that,” I said, squeezing her hand and liking the way she squeezed mine back. “You had no reason to think he was capable of