Lucky This Isn't Real: MacBride Brothers Series St. Patrick's Day Fake Fiance Romance by Jamie Knight (digital e reader .TXT) 📕

much any day and at pretty much any time, let alone a Tuesday morning. They Might Be Giants spun in the CD player of my car. Old tech for an old band seemed fitting, really, as did the music.

“Birdhouse in Your Soul” was playing. The song was a mind-blindingly weird one that needed to be heard to be believed. It always cheered me up. Pushing past my sadness and inhibitions, I started singing along with the music.

I wouldn’t have gone to a therapist under most circumstances. I just needed to find out why I was still so depressed.

Granted, my life had gone to shit since I found out about Kenny and Raquel. I could only afford a small shoebox apartment, which I shared with my amazing and supportive new friend, Darcy.

We both worked together now, but we had first met when we were both looking for a new place. After bumping into each other at several viewings and losing them all, we decided it would be easier to share a two-bedroomed place rather than compete for a one-bedroom studio.

She’d helped me get an assistant’s job at the place where she worked, mostly by telling some well-placed and believable lies about my experience.

Meeting her was a silver lining in an otherwise dark and meaningless existence in which all of my creative inspiration had vanished.

I tried to write, particularly the story I had been working on the day I had found out about Kenny and Raquel, but none of it came out right. Blood from a stone was the expression that came to mind when I thought about it.

Everything I tried to write was just boring and angry. With my inheritance money dwindling and everything in L.A. being crazy expensive, I had to start get serious about it again and get some good, inspired words down on the page soon.

I still had the freelance writing gigs I did online, but that wasn’t the same. My spark was gone, snuffed under the dark cloud of hurt and betrayal.

I knew I should just get over it. For crying out loud, it had been six months, but I was no better off. I couldn’t climb over the hump, and I needed some professional help, no matter how embarrassed it made the self-sufficient part of me feel.

I’d spent way too much time worrying about Raquel and Kenny. Their duplicity made me afraid to trust anyone again.

I knew it was foolish to let one bad (okay… horrible) experience turn me off to love in general and that it couldn’t happen every time– it was statistically impossible, and I tried to tell myself that my odds for being cheated on had already been cashed in– but it hadn’t been the first time I had been burned, and I was starting to become really wary of people in general.

I must have been experiencing some kind of deep depression, and I just wanted, needed, to get out of this funk before the dark abyss pulled me in any deeper.

The professional building that my new therapist’s office was in had a common waiting area, with halls going off to the various offices, which housed those ranging from therapists to dentists to lawyers.

I wondered if there were ever any mix-ups. The thought of someone leaning back in a dentist’s chair, pouring their heart out about their problems, made me smile.

One of the professionals appearing on the listing, Dr. Anderson, was a couples’ therapist. I sure could have used his help with Kenny, I thought. Maybe then he wouldn’t have fucked my little sister.

The idea still made me feel icky. Not only the betrayal, but also the fact that Kenny had been older than me, nearly thirty-five, and that had felt like a barely acceptable age gap. Granted, Raquel was only a couple years younger than me, but he was old enough to be her dad— if he had had kids when he was seventeen.

Gross! That meant he was seventeen when she was born.

“Maggie Sanders,” I announced to the receptionist when I arrived at the check-in desk.

“You’re a bit early, but we will call you when the therapist is ready for you,” she said. “It’ll be a couple minutes.”

I was glad to hear that, as it gave me time to run to the bathroom beforehand. On my way back out, I all but ran into the hottest guy I’d ever seen.

He was walking away from having just checked in at the reception desk, though I couldn’t imagine what he might need help with. It looked from where I stood as if life had been pretty damn good to him, starting with the genes he had inherited at conception.

He had dirty blond hair with a copper tint and blue eyes that almost knocked me down when they turned my way. His physique was broad and tall, and his muscular arms hinted that he liked lifting weights.

He took a seat, and then it quickly turned into a not-staring-contest as we both tried to hide the fact that we were looking at each other. Although I wasn’t quite sure what he saw in me. I had big boobs and people always complimented my curves, but I was pretty overweight by Hollywood standards and was hardly the city’s prettiest girl. A 7 at most, in a town known for being full of 10s.

I guessed if I didn’t live in LaLa Land, I might be considered cute and curvaceous. But here, some considered me to be plain and fat.

Suddenly, a flurry of bright pink clothing being worn by someone charging in through the front door caught my eye.

My stomach fell to my toes.

Hell to the no.

As the damned fates would have it, Raquel now stood a few feet away from me.

As did Kenny, who had been trailing along behind her.

What the fuck are they doing here?

I