Lucky This Isn't Real: MacBride Brothers Series St. Patrick's Day Fake Fiance Romance Read online

  Lucky This Isn’t Real

  Copyright © 2021 Jamie Knight Romance

  Jamie Knight –

  Your Dirty Little Secret Romance Author

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  Table of Contents

  Lucky Meeting You Here

  Prologue

  Chapter One – Gavin

  Chapter Two – Maggie

  Chapter Three – Maggie

  Chapter Four – Gavin

  Chapter Five – Maggie

  Chapter Six – Maggie

  Chapter Seven – Gavin

  Chapter Eight – Gavin

  Chapter Nine – Maggie

  Chapter Ten – Maggie

  Chapter Eleven – Gavin

  Chapter Twelve – Maggie

  Chapter Thirteen – Maggie

  Chapter Fourteen – Gavin

  Chapter Fifteen – Gavin

  Chapter Sixteen – Maggie

  Chapter Seventeen – Maggie

  Epilogue

  Lucky Running into You

  Chapter One - Darcy

  Chapter Two - Darcy

  Chapter Three - Sean

  Chapter Four - Darcy

  Chapter Five - Sean

  Chapter Six - Sean

  Chapter Seven - Sean

  Chapter Eight - Sean

  Chapter Nine - Sean

  Chapter Ten - Sean

  Chapter Eleven - Darcy

  Chapter Twelve - Sean

  Chapter Thirteen - Darcy

  Chapter Fourteen - Sean

  Chapter Fifteen - Darcy

  Chapter Sixteen - Sean

  Chapter Seventeen - Darcy

  Chapter Eighteen - Sean

  Chapter Nineteen - Darcy

  Chapter Twenty - Sean

  Chapter Twnety-One - Darcy

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Sean

  Chapter Twenty-Three - Darcy

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Sean

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Darcy

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Darcy

  Epilogue - Sean

  Sneak Peek of Under my Boss’s Authority

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  Lucky Meeting You Here

  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.

  As his older brother, I felt somewhat responsible for his well-being. Plus, I’d just wrapped a Viking show filmed in the Wicklow Mountains and was between jobs, so I had a few months to spare.

  Aunt Tricia, my mother’s sister, and I made sure that Eion was handling our mother’s loss as best as we could. Our other brothers had their own lives to live. Patrick was twenty and lived in Israel at a Kibbutz. Noel, three years younger than m
e, had moved into a flat with his friends in the city center, and Jim and Liam, my fraternal twenty-two-year-old twin brothers, had just graduated university and spent too much time partying to worry about Eoin.

  “What’s up, Eoin?” I asked him, figuring it must be something big for him to be barging in like this.

  “I got a phone call about Da. I know where he is.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, without enthusiasm.

  I should have known.

  Our dad would never be accused of being a good parent. Originally from Scotland, he seemed to have taken Alexander Trocchi’s novels as life guides, drinking, shooting up, and shagging anything he could find.

  It was a wonder he had lived as long as he had, leading me to the logical conclusion that the bugger was indestructible.

  “You’re not coming, are you?” Eoin asked, his face falling.

  “Don’t see a need. Da is old enough to look after himself. He’ll never learn to stand on his own two feet, stumbling as they may be, if we keep bailing him out. He’ll come home when he wants to. If he lives that long.”

  “But—”

  I could tell he was going to cry. Eoin had just turned eighteen, but he was still my little brother, and with the state our father had been in most of his life, I had been his legal guardian this whole time.

  I suspected he saw me as more of a dad than the man who actually fathered him.

  Our mother, who’d been through hell at the hands of our father, was a shell of herself by the time she’d had Eoin. Needless to say, she hadn’t had the energy to raise him.

  I rubbed my hands up and down my face.

  “You really want to go get him, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he said, nodding, the tears already beginning to flow.

  “Come on, then,” I said, grabbing my phone and car keys.

  My reluctance to go looking for our father was at least partly a matter of self-preservation. The Troubles – that period of constant conflict in Northern Ireland – were long over, at least in our neck of the woods, but, like all major cities, there were some areas where it wasn’t too clever to go wandering at night, and we just happened to occupy one.

  Andersonstown, or Andytown, as it was known locally, was a suburb in west Belfast that was located at the foot of the Black Mountain. It was largely a working-class area filled with good people, but it was also a bastion for junkies and petty criminals at night.

  Most local boys got their first scars by the time they were twelve. My brothers and I were no exception. Our aunt Tricia and our mother had tended to more than a few black eyes, busted lips, and stab wounds over the years.

  Our dad loved living here, though, not least because of the bargain prices on both rent and smack.

  “You stay in the car, understand?” I instructed Eion now, as we walked outside.

  “Aye.”

  “Even if shite goes down. I don’t need you being shanked for a second time, and neither does Aunt Tricia, savvy? I don’t want to have to smash someone’s skull in order to rescue you again.”

  “I already said ‘aye.’”

  “That’s not good enough, lad.” I cringed at the tone of my voice, knowing that it was more “trying too hard” than “big brother serious” like I had wanted it to sound. “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Swear to St. Brigid?”

  Eoin sighed. “I swear to St. Brigid.”

  The streetlights were pretty sporadic, but the moon was full, which helped. There were no other cars on the road except for those owned by mad buggers with the brass balls to street park overnight.

  “There he is. That’s his coat,” Eoin said, pointing emphatically out the window to a man slumped over on the side of the road.

  “He looks pretty rough,” I said.

  “He needs help.”

  “He might slug me again.”

  “Please?”

  I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel before saying, “Fine.”

  Easing the car over to the side of the road, I got out quickly, looking all around.

  There was no sign of anyone except for me and the smacked-out junkie in the gutter, who just happened to be our father. If one could even call him that, seeing how undeserving he was of the title.

  “Swing at me, and I’ll knock your teeth out,” I said, taking my good ole dad by the shoulders.

  “Feck off, ya wanker!” he rasped in reply.

  “Love you too, Da.”

  Bundling the mean old bugger into the back of my car, I drove back to the relative safety of our house, Eoin glancing over his shoulder as Da snored on in the backseat.

  “He’s still back there,” I said, after the tenth time. “And this is the last time I’m going to rescue him.”

  “I know,” Eoin said, sounding deflated. “This one last time. I understand.”

  I was glad he understood why I needed to be done rescuing our no-good father. I knew it was time to leave the house and the country I’d been chained to out of obligation.

  It had only ever been my concern for Eoin that kept me around, but now he was a man, according to the law, and Noel, next in line to me, said he would look out for the baby of the house if I wanted to pursue acting in L.A.

  Over the past few years, I’d built up my acting resume and had taken every part offered, but there was only so much I could do in Ireland. I knew I needed to be in Hollywood where all the action was.

  And now it was time to really go for it. Nothing was stopping me from finally following my dreams.

  Thanks to investing a good chunk of my early earnings on Bitcoin when it cost only a dollar, I had enough in the bank to rent a decent apartment, buy a car, and put food on the table when I got there. I had been planning this move for a long time, and now it was finally time to jump.

  I just hoped I could handle the hard landing I was pretty sure I’d experience. I’d never been out of Ireland. I’d never done anything scary in my life.

  Leaving for America was really fucking scary.

  But I was going to do it, no matter what.

  Taking another look at Eion’s worried face, I thought, I just hope it will turn out to be worth it.

  Chapter Two – Maggie

  I was used to the jokes about my line of work.

  It was really little more than an occupational hazard and part of being one of the chosen few creatives in a society of philistines and cultural vandals.

  My favorite line of bullshit was something along the lines of, “Oh, I too have been thinking about writing… when I retire.”

  Partly because I had come up with the perfect comeback by asking what the smart ass does for a living and then saying I planned to try that when I was rich and had the time.

  The look on their faces— the corporate lawyer’s, for example— was absolutely priceless and kept me warm during the lean times, which were becoming numerous. Then again, I was only twenty-one and had lots of time to learn and improve.

  The most important step of a story was the first draft. It formed the basis from which the rest of the story was crafted during editing.

  I’d heard that writing actually came out better when handwritten as opposed to typed, the neuron processes being vastly different, not in the least because the action of handwriting was a lot more conscious and deliberate, so the resulting words tended to be a lot more considered.

  Writing out whatever story I was working on could take a bit more time than straight typing, sure, but not that much more, and because no one else needed to see the first draft, it didn’t matter how crappy it was.

  Today, I was planning to head out to my favorite place to write, which was at the park under a giant Yew tree by the duck pond. I felt centered there and more able to focus and create to the best of my ability.

  It might have had something to do with the fact that my dad was a hippie. I had grown up in nature, and the park reminded me of him and his earthy, wood smoke-scented clothes.

  The weath
er had turned pretty nice, so I could wear shorts for the first time in a while. Deciding to be brave, I coupled it with my badass T-shirt that said Great Granddaughter of That Witch You Couldn’t Burn.

  Pretty much ready to leave the house, I searched for my bag, finally finding it under the couch.

  “Bye, sis,” I said, gently squeezing my stepsister Raquel’s nearly bare shoulder as I passed the kitchen table.

  The skimpy tank top she wore barely contained her massive boobs.

  “Bye,” she said bluntly, not looking up from her phone.

  She had gotten super grumpy recently. We had been close at one point, but that was after my mom had married her dad. Back then, we were young enough that it still felt like we were sisters. I was eleven, and she was eight, and we were both hurting from the death of a loved one.

  As she got into her later teens, though, she changed, going into full bitch mode. By the time she’d turned eighteen, which was only a couple of months ago, she became the more brutal type of nihilist. Not quite a member of the Black Pill crowd, but close enough to make me concerned.

  I decided not to rise to her negativity and to instead let it go. Dad had taught me how to go to what he called an ‘inner realm.’ Similar to a ‘happy place,’ it was a kind of visualization or daydreaming session, combined with meditation, where you built a location in your mind that seemed as real as any other.

  Mine was a field of flowers in a mountain valley on a clear, bright summer day.

  On my way out of the house, I called my boyfriend, Kenny, on my cell phone. We hadn’t talked in what felt like forever.

  Maybe we could go for coffee when I was done with work for the day. My mom would have likely disagreed with this characterization of writing as “work,” but the writing was what I got paid for. It didn’t pay very well— I would be the first to admit— but it was enough to get by, although just barely.

  The inheritance my dad had left me was helping out for now, anyway. I didn’t come from a lot of money, though, unlike Raquel, so it wasn’t going to last forever.

  As usual, Kenny didn’t pick up, so I turned off the phone and threw it back in my bag. I had been assigned a signature ring on his phone, so I knew he knew it was me. He was ignoring me more and more lately.