Chapter 5
Luke came out of the house looking pained, and worry seized Sabrina's heart. She straightened away from the motorcycle, once more afraid she'd damaged it in some way, and asked a nervous, "Is everything okay?" as Luke approached.
He had a handful of shirts and a pair of jeans, and looked at them as if they, not she, had done something wrong. "No, I'm good, I just, uh. Emmy just set me up."
Sabrina blinked, then laughed. "Worse than finagling you into going to Las Vegas with a total stranger as her fake boyfriend?"
"No and yes?" Luke wrinkled his face apologetically. "She just suggested I text her what I need to pack and she'd do it for me so I don't risk running into Mom and Dad and having to explain that I've acquired a temporary fake girlfriend."
"Sounds legit, honestly." Sabrina glanced toward the house, then, unable to stop herself, said, "Does your entire family just, like, live together?"
Luke looked over his shoulder, then back at her with heat starting to color his cheekbones again. "Oh. No. Yeah, I know, I'm old to be living at home."
"No! I mean…yes, but in this economy? But mostly it's just, Emmy's there all the time, your brother Aaron's here all the time, I…
well, okay, the other ones aren't, but…it's nice, actually, is what I'm trying to say.
You all seem to have really close relationships, and I'm trying to imagine what that's like. "
"Mostly great. Sometimes very annoying. Like when my sister sets me up."
"Right. What'd she do…?"
"She said she'd pack up my stuff and bring it over to your place."
"Oh, well, that seems—" Luke's problem with the situation caught up with Sabrina and she felt herself starting to blush.
"Oh. I. Oh. Yes. Right. She thinks you should stay with me.
Oh. Oh, she did set you up, didn't she. Set us up.
And it's not a bad idea, it's just…your sister's kind of a stinker, Luke. "
"I'd noticed," he assured her, and then added, in a doomful tone, "I'm assuming there's only one bed?"
Sabrina's blushing uncertainty turned into giggles. "That's true. It's a one bedroom apartment. There's a couch, though. Which I'll sleep on—no," she said firmly as he began the obvious protest. "I'm five foot two. You're six foot seventy. I'll fit on the couch. You won't."
"Five," he said, faintly indignant. "I'm six five."
Out loud, Sabrina said, "From down here it might as well be six-seventy," with a smile. Inside, where she was swooning dizzily, she thought that six five sounded like a very exciting height to be lifted to. Not that her fake boyfriend was going to pick her up, but never mind that.
"I don't want to kick you out of your bed, Sabrina!"
"The alternative is sharing it, which we'll probably have to do in Vegas because my girls are nosy, but I don't want to make things any more awkward for you than they have to be.
The couch is fine. Trust me. It's cozy. And I don't sleep well the night before traveling anyway, so you don't want me tossing and turning and sweating next to you all night when we have to be out the door at six. "
Luke looked like he wanted to protest again, but instead took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. If you're sure. For now, should we go do some more pictures? Is your apartment walking distance, or do you want to take…?" He gestured at the motorcycle.
Sabrina's heart bumped hard in her chest. "It is walking distance, but…a short trip on the motorcycle sounds fun?" Clinging to Luke Jones's big strong self sounded fun, more accurately, but Sabrina didn't think she should say that.
He flashed an absolutely devastating smile. "Yeah, it does. You gotta wear a helmet, though." He stuffed his clothes into a saddlebag she hadn't even noticed and went into the garage to come back with two helmets.
Sabrina eyed the well-padded inside of the one he handed to her, and cautiously tried to slip it on. Then, with more effort, she shoved it on, and, feeling like a chipmunk, said, "My cheeks are squished."
"Yup. They should be, just a little. If you shake your head it shouldn't move around." He put his own helmet on as Sabrina gave her head an experimental shake, then nodded.
"Feels okay, I think?"
"Good. I apologize in advance for messing up your hair, though."
To be fair, Sabrina could think of a lot of ways he could mess up her hair that she would like better than wearing a motorcycle helmet, but she also liked her brains where they were, so she only laughed and said, "Pretty sure it's okay. This braid is pretty sturdy."
"Good. It looks cute," Luke assured her as he swung onto his motorcycle and twisted to pat the seat behind him. "Saddle up?"
"I don't think my legs are long enough to do that even if you weren't already on it," Sabrina said hesitantly. "Are there, like…stirrups?"
"Runner boards." Luke kicked his heel against one, then offered his hand to help her balance as she stepped up on it. "Go on, be as awkward as you need to be, I can't really see you anyway."
Sabrina gave a startled giggle. "That was way more reassuring than you probably meant it to be." She climbed on very awkwardly indeed, and then, although she'd had a very vivid fantasy about wrapping her arms around his midriff, she suddenly didn't know what to with her hands.
She could, however, almost hear his grin as he reached for one of them and wrapped it around himself. "You want to hang on tight. Thighs practically under mine. After all," he said, still grinning, "I'm your boyfriend."
"Hah! Okay, boyfriend." Sabrina snugged herself up tight against Luke's back, extremely aware of his body heat and warm summery scent, even above the faint smell of gasoline and whatever the helmet was made of.
Then he kicked the big bike on, its engine roaring, and she bit back a shriek at the noise.
He pulled out of the yard slowly, and she fought down giggles at the vibrations and the warm air cooling on her legs as they picked up just a little speed.
Belatedly, she yelled her address at him, and he gave a thumbs-up before dropping his hand back to the handlebar.
It only took a few minutes to get to her apartment complex, but it was long enough for Sabrina to gain an all-new appreciation for his physical strength.
Not that she'd known him long enough to have dismissed it in the first place, but it was a big bike, and she was absolutely certain she wouldn't have been able to keep it under control.
Her thighs were quivering as she climbed off, and she laughed as Luke put the kickstand down and swung off it himself. "My legs are jelly!"
"Do I need to carry you across the threshold?" Luke asked lightly.
Sabrina's knees abruptly went so weak she had to lock them to keep from falling, which was ridiculous.
He was joking. She was not to take things that sounded like marriage proposals seriously in this fake relationship.
She put extra effort into taking her helmet off so she had a moment to recover, and managed a flushed smile at the big man once she had it under her arm.
"We've only been fake dating a couple of hours. Maybe we should save that for day two."
"Right, of course." Luke made a show of taking notes. "I had no idea there was so much to keep track of when fake dating."
Sabrina couldn't help laughing. "Me either. This is completely insane, isn't it?"
"Maybe a little. At the very least I've got to know why you need a fake boyfriend, both in the sense of why you don't have a real one and why it's important."
"Right. I did promise I'd tell you that.
Let me change clothes and grab some stuff and we'll go out to the fair for some pictures and you can hear the whole sordid story.
Which isn't actually sordid, but whatever.
" Sabrina ran inside to put on another dress, a dark blue one with big sunshiny flowers, and pulled her hair into a soft ponytail before grabbing a couple more outfits and hurrying back outside.
"I do have a car," she offered. "Maybe better than the bike, for today? "
"Much easier to talk," Luke agreed easily.
He did have to sort of fold himself into a smallish pretzel to fit into Sabrina's Mini, which was built on a scale for somebody her size, not his.
Once he was in, he laughed. "I should've borrowed Emmy's car after all.
Or a large, masculine truck. I may never unbend. "
Several ways to get him to unbend leaped right to Sabrina's mind.
Not a single one of them was appropriate to say to a man she'd just met, even if he was being her fake boyfriend.
Instead, trying not to blush at her own thoughts, she said, "I'll get you a business class ticket to Vegas to make up for it.
Sorry. I didn't expect to accommodate a six foot seventy boyfriend. "
He flashed a smile at her. "How were you going to explain the boyfriend not coming with you?"
She groaned as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the fairgrounds. "I don't know. An emergency business trip, I guess. I don't know what I was thinking, saying I had one!"
"I bet you do," Luke said in an oddly gentle tone.
Sabrina glanced at him and sighed. "Yeah.
I was thinking I'm tired of hearing about how awful it must be to be so wedded to my job and how I probably never get laid and that I'm letting my best years go to waste and just all of that crap.
I just wanted…I don't know. A weekend without hearing that.
And you'd think I'd get that by going to somebody's wedding, but no, the wedding makes it all the more reason to remind me how much it must suck to be single. "
"Does it?" Luke sounded genuinely interested, and Sabrina glanced at him again.
"No. I mean, yeah, I'd like to have somebody in my life, but not enough to compromise my entire life for somebody."
"And what is your life? What do you do?"