Let's Pretend (Romantic Comedy, Contemporary, Second Chance, Sensual) (3 page)

“Hey, Delaney.” Mac, a fellow firefighter slapped him on the back as he walked by. “Congrats on that promotion.”

“Thanks.”

“So, does this mean we have to be nice to you?” Sam, the crew’s driver worked the combination lock on his locker and swung open the door. “Because I have to tell you, I don’t think I can do it.”

Luc’s phone jingled in his locker and he reached for it. “I’m just glad I don’t have to listen to your girly feelings all day long.”

“Hey, I was sharing. You can’t appreciate new love ’cause you’re an old married man. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to woo.”

The locker room erupted with raucous male laughter. Luc couldn’t even force a smile. Something acerbic settled in the pit of his stomach. Married did not describe his current status. After five years of marriage, Belle had quietly informed him over dinner that she was leaving. Apparently, they had grown apart. News to him since only the previous night they’d pulled an all-nighter and it wasn’t to stay up and watch TV. Although in hindsight, he’d noticed something was off with Belle for weeks and she wouldn’t talk to him about it. He’d thought everything was great between them until her bombshell a year ago and he hadn’t seen his wife in six months.

By mutual agreement, they’d decided to keep their failed marriage to themselves for the time being. Why Belle wanted it that way was beyond him. As for Luc, his pride wouldn’t let him broadcast the fact that his wife had left him.

“
Woo
?” Luc glanced at the LCD screen on his mobile. Mia.
Damn
. “Who says woo?” He flicked his gaze back to Sam. “See?
Girly
.” He dodged a playful left hook to the shoulder.

“Women like that sensitive stuff.” Sam’s right came at him with another playful jab.
 

Luc dodged and chuckled as he headed out of the locker room to take his sister-in-law’s call.

“Hi, Mia, what’s up?”

“Hey, Luc, I know I only saw you a few days ago but I didn’t get around to asking you if you were coming to Gran’s in a couple of weeks for the family get-together.”

He’d had drinks with Mia last week. His marriage to Belle might be over but her sister would always mean a lot to him. Which was why he felt like a total heel for deceiving her.

“Belle said you can’t make it,” Mia continued. The sound of pouring liquid filtered down the line. “I don’t suppose you’d be able to get away from your training early enough to make at least part of the weekend, could you?”

He had no clue what she was talking about, but her tone said he did, so he played along.

“I doubt it.” He wasn’t scheduled to attend any training for a few weeks.

Chances were Belle and Mia’s grandmother had called a family gathering, as she tended to do at least once a year. And since no one dared to disappoint Gran, the family living in the UK usually dropped whatever they were doing and hopped the first flight over the pond. If he and Belle were married, he’d know about the trip and he would be travelling with her. Belle must’ve given the excuse as an explanation for why he wouldn’t be there.
    
  
 
 

“I know Gran is looking forward to seeing you and Belle.” She paused to gulp a sip of something. Probably whatever she just poured. “She was disappointed when you were both tied up with work last time.”

Luc leaned against the cool wall at his back. Was this some sort of psychology whammy Mia was pulling on him? It was the only explanation for why he suddenly felt so guilty. Sure, he adored Belle’s grandmother but as far as he was concerned when Belle and he split, she took her family with her. He certainly never expected her to accompany him at his family dos, why would he feel obligated to attend hers?

A cool breeze from the opened window opposite brushed over him.

Belle hadn’t asked him, Mia had.

He shoved the fingertips of one hand into his jeans pocket and blew out a breath. Belle hadn’t asked because she didn’t want him there. And in so doing she placed him in the unhappy position of having to lie to her sister. Or at least, fob her off. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s all I ask.” Her heels click-clacking across hard floor echoed through the phone. “Gotta go. Try to make it, Luc, it’s imperative you be there. Love to you and Belle.”

“Wait, Mia, I’m not making any prom—”

She made a kiss-kiss sound and cut him off.

3

“L
ook who I found!”

Belle turned to the sound of her younger sister’s excited voice and stopped breathing. Mia stood at the kitchen’s opened back door, a happy grin on her young-for-her-age face, her hand wrapped around the muscular arm of the one man Belle didn’t expect to turn up at her grandmother’s house in Madison, Connecticut. Especially since last she knew, he was in the UK.

She stared in bewilderment at Luc. It’d been months since she had last seen him, and it’d taken all of two seconds for her body to remind her how much she missed him. Her heart pounded, the pulse in her throat echoed the beats.

And all the while she was very aware that with just one word, Luc could ruin this weekend.

Tommy, Belle’s cousin—founding member and leader of the
Hate Lucas Delaney Club
—gave a low-pitch snarl and nudged her in the side. “I thought you said the leprechaun was away on some firefighters’ training course?”

“Didn’t he break your nose once before for calling him that?”

Tommy looked down the crooked appendage at her, his face red with anger and a little too much alcohol. “I’m not a skinny runt anymore—I can take him.”

Belle’s gaze slid to the beer bottle in her cousin’s hand, then to his beer belly. He may have piled on the weight in the last few years, but looking at Luc’s fit, hard-muscled body, she doubted Tommy would stand a chance of winning a fight against Lucas.

“You may outweigh him, Tom, but unless you’ve also added four inches to your height, he still has an advantage.”

Her gaze swung toward the backdoor. Mia tugged on Luc’s arm, urging him into the kitchen where several of Belle’s family members gathered around the table and leaned against countertops as they chatted, pondering the reason Gran had called an unscheduled family get-together in the middle of September.

Mia threw a glance at Luc. “He was wandering around outside, looking as if he’d forgotten his way,” she continued, dragging him behind her as she headed straight for Belle. “I told you she’d be in the kitchen heading up the worry party, Lucas.”

None of Belle’s relatives knew she and Luc had quit on their marriage, so Belle had to do some fast acting. How would she have reacted before the divorce? For starters, she wouldn’t have left Lucas in England while she visited her family. But even if he’d been away on Fire Brigade training as she’d told her relatives, she would have launched herself on Luc the second she saw him. All eyes turned to her, waiting for Belle to greet her husband as Luc sauntered over to her with that long-legged, uninhibited stride of his. Everyone knew the two of them couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

He stopped in front of her, his green-gold gaze running over her upturned face with reservation. “Hello, Belle, you look w—”

“
Luc!
” She threw herself into his arms, plastering her mouth to his in an enthusiastic kiss that shocked her as much as it did Luc. No way could she allow his formal greeting. It would draw questions she didn’t want to answer. Not now, when she suspected her
gran
was about to announce a terminal illness. The last thing Gran needed was the horrible news that her granddaughter and her favourite grandson-in-law had filed for divorce.

Luc nipped her bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth in the way that always drove her wild. The breath stalled in her constricted lungs, strangling her heart to an uneven beat. Clearly, he was making the most of her charade.

When his hand slid from Belle’s waist to cup her bottom and squeeze the cheek, shock electrified a yelp out of her. She jumped backward out of his arms, only to ricochet off the kitchen counter and land against him. His rumbling chuckle vibrated through her, as he lost no time in covering her lips with his once more.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” someone called out. “Get a room.” And followed it up by hurling an empty kitchen roll tube at them.

Luc released her. His suggestive grin tugged at her lower abdomen as his hazel eyes turned to olive with mischief. The same shade as when he was aroused.

“I have
missed
you.” The deep drawl with a hint of Irish inflection went straight to her knees.

Belle gave a frazzled laugh. Her insides shook so much from nerves that she started to shiver despite the afternoon’s heat. She had to get Luc alone so she could ask him to keep their divorce a secret.

She grabbed his hand. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” Turning on her heels, she hurried him out of the kitchen while the other occupants laughed and made kissy sounds.

“What are you doing
here
?” Belle asked on a frantic whisper as she picked up her pace through the house.

“Mia phoned me to say your
gran
called a family meeting, and it was ‘imperative’ for me to be here this weekend. She suggested I try to dodge training and get here for at least some of the weekend. Since, to the best of my recollection, I wasn’t on training, I figured I’d come and visit with my favourite Gran.”

“I had to make up an excuse to explain why you weren’t with me.” His knowing smile made her clench her teeth. “Besides, Gran called a family meeting, and you’re no longer family.”

A shadow crossed his face. “Just because you want to end our marriage doesn’t mean I feel the same way, Belle.”

“Keep your voice down. Gran might hear you.”

He stopped her at the foot of the stairs, his fingers searing her arm even with the light touch. “Don’t get me wrong, sweetheart. I loved the welcome, but what’s going on?”

Belle pulled her arm away with ease. “Will you just shut up for a second?” She resumed her mission to get to her bedroom. “I’ll explain when we get some privacy.”

He followed. “I’m confused. One minute you’re throwing me out of our house, and the next you’re kissing me like everything is back to normal. You haven’t told your family yet?”

Belle glanced over her shoulder as she ran up the second flight of stairs. Luc kept pace with her, his efforts less exhaustive than hers, as he took the steps two at a time with a lithe velocity that highlighted his fitness. Fifteen years as a firefighter kept him agile.

“Have
you
told your parents?” The thought that he might have brought a strange ache to her heart.

Luc’s gaze flicked from hers to the galleried wall of framed family photographs that stretched along the entire landing to Belle’s room at the far end.

“I came close last week.”

So he was having as hard a time breaking the news to his parents as she was. Why did that knowledge lift her spirits? She pushed open the door to the bedroom she was using, stepped ahead of Luc into the bright, airy room, and left him to close the door. “You’re right, I haven’t told my family yet.”

Lucas slid his hands into his black trouser pockets. “It didn’t take me long to figure that out. What I can’t decipher is why?”

“I think Gran has called this family meeting to tell us she’s seriously ill.”

Astonishment drew Luc’s brows together. “What makes you think that?”

“She’s very evasive.”
 
Belle sat on the end of the bed, crossed her legs, and clasped her hands on her lap. “When I asked her why she’d called the family together she said something terrible has happened, but she refuses to elaborate until everyone has arrived.”