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) 📗

“True,” she said, seeming to feel better about it as we walked around.

I had to hand it to the designers: the inside of the tent was amazing, looking very much like a ballroom, though one with a translucent room with a view of the night sky. There were no chandeliers, for obvious reasons, but there were several well-placed candelabras.

Of course, there was a wooden floor lest her ladyship and her guests actually come into contact with filthy, brutish nature.

That wasn’t an attitude I particularly understood. I’d grown up in a city as well but I also had always gone out into the country at every given opportunity, driving every inch of the coastline to partake in the world’s finest supply of green rolling hills and breathtaking scenery. It made no sense to me why anyone would ever be afraid of nature.

Everyone in attendance was fancy, what we would have called a “toff” back home. No one was looking out of sorts or out of place. All looked completely at ease in the elegant surroundings.

Even so, several of the guests did a double take when they saw us coming, causing the the attention that had been on the happy couple to be momentarily broken. Maggie was simultaneously beaming and blushing, which only made her look all the more radiant.

All the men’s eyes took her in from head to toe. Part of me wanted to pound my chest with pride.

Everyone wanted her, and yet she was mine.

Raquel’s face soured, and she shot us several dirty looks as we whirled around the dance floor. She probably wasn’t expecting us to be so good at it.

My father may have been a useless lump of nothing, but my mother, God rest her soul, was a different story. She made sure we were polite, knew which knife and fork to use, and how to take the lead on the dancefloor. And, if the occasion called for it, we could Irish Dance better than Michael Flatley.

Maggie and I did so well with our attention-grabbing gambit that there were several occasions during breaks that Raquel tried to entice me to dance with her. I was always nice, never directly insulting her, but still making it clear that I wasn’t interested.

And it wasn’t just because I knew how evil she could be. The simple truth of the matter was that I only had eyes for Maggie.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Following her fifth attempt to cut in, Raquel stormed over and ranted at Kenny. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I knew it wasn’t good.

I didn’t think any more of it, though— that was, until Kenny went over to Maggie as soon as I had left her side. I was sure that he thought I couldn’t hear him, but he didn’t know that I had exceptionally good hearing— a MacBride family trait that had been passed through the generations.

“You can’t bullshit me,” he snapped. “No way a guy like that is really interested in a cow like you. He must have no money or self-respect at all because you clearly had to pay for him to come with you and pretend to be your fiancé. You can’t bear to see Raquel happy, so you’re doing your best to upstage her.”

“Hold my beer,” I said, passing my half-finished bottle of Guinness to a slender young socialite immediately to my right.

Like a superhero, I swooped in, taking Maggie into my arms like a knight of old and kissing her passionately. It was a bit of a risk, but I could tell by how she responded that the feeling was mutual.

“Sorry, darlin’, I just saw you over here and couldn’t help myself.” I pressed a chaste kiss against the tip of her nose and turned to face Kenny. “I should really thank you?”

He sneered, and his nostrils flared.

“For what?”

“For cheating on Maggie with her stepsister. If you hadn’t, she and I would never have met and fallen in love. Fate has a funny way of making things happen, doesn’t it?”

Kenny stormed off, clearly too pissed off not to believe the veracity of our love.

The thing was, it was actually beginning to feel real.

I didn’t know that I was quite ready to propose for real, but I was definitely falling deeply and madly in love with the shy, beautiful girl in the head-turning dress.

I wanted to go so much further with her than a kiss, passionate as it may have been.

I could feel that Maggie agreed, especially by the way she had kissed me back and was currently trembling in my arms— not from cold or out of fear but in pure, loving desire.

This night wasn’t turning out exactly as I thought it would.

But Maggie was in my arms and letting me kiss her with abandon, so that was all that mattered to me.

In that sense, this night was turning out just as well, or even better, than I could have possibly hoped or dreamed.

Chapter Nine – Maggie

I wanted Gavin so badly that I could taste it. He had done such a good job of playing my Prince Charming that I was pretty much in awe of him.

I knew somewhere in the more cynical part of my mind that it wasn’t real— not in the way that it appeared to all the guests at the party, of course— but there was something there.

Something like undeniable, underlying chemistry made me want to tear my clothes off and jump on him.

That was an urge I hadn’t had in a long while.

“You didn’t have to kiss me,” I told him. “Just to make a point, I mean.”’

He gave me a sheepish smile.

“It wasn’t to make a point. Not entirely, anyway.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad