Pretend You're Mine: A Small Town Love Story

by Score, Lucy

  “You’re losing me.”

  “You’re such a man. Something wonderful happens to Harper and she has to leave town. Like she gets a part in a movie or she meets the man of her dreams.”

  “I’m supposed to be the man of her dreams.”

  “I’m just spit-balling here,” Sophie said with a sigh. “But, since you said it, why not ask her to stay?”

  “That’s not the plan, Soph. And it’s not fair to ask Harper to put her life on hold for six months to see if this might turn into a relationship.”

  “Okay, okay. Just throwing out options.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day, Luke and Aldo were needed on base for the standard pre-deployment medical exam and some briefings. Before he left, Luke kissed Harper good-bye and got carried away. By the time he pulled up in front of Aldo’s house, he was running twenty minutes late and his friend was waiting on the front porch.

  When Aldo chose the tidy craftsman cottage over one of the new townhouses on the edge of town, Luke hadn’t batted an eye. A family home over a bachelor-friendly condo? It wasn’t what he expected from his play-the-field buddy, but there was a lot of things they never discussed. They didn’t have to.

  “About time.” Aldo climbed into the passenger seat and belted in.

  “I’m not that late.”

  “No explanations needed. I can see from the stupid look on your face why you’re late.”

  “You’re full of shit.” He wasn’t. Luke knew he was walking around with a stupid look on his face these days. He’d just been hoping that no one else noticed it.

  “I’ve known you since I saved your ass from that beat-down in first grade. I know your stupid looks.”

  “I still maintain that I could have taken those guys on my own.” Luke pulled away from the curb.

  “There were three of them and they were in the fourth grade.”

  “Well if you did assist me in that situation, I saved your ass from drowning in the lake when we were twelve.”

  “I thought the ice would hold,” Aldo shrugged with a white-toothed grin.

  “We were grounded for all of January for that one.”

  “Our moms were so pissed. So what does Claire think of Harper?”

  Luke bit back a sigh. He knew his friend wouldn’t wait long to pry. Sometimes he had to remind himself not to shut everyone out. “She loves her. Thinks she’s just what I need.”

  “Is she?”

  “What I need is peace and quiet. Harper is anything but that.”

  Aldo laughed. “So why is she here?”

  Luke shrugged as he took the on ramp for the highway. “It started as a favor. The girl had no place to go and no way to get there.”

  “And then?”

  Luke cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve met her.”

  “I have. Think she’ll stay?”

  Luke shook his head. “Nah. She’s got things to do, places to go. Six months is a long time to ask someone you just met to wait.”

  “It’s a long time to ask anyone to wait. She would, you know.”

  “I don’t know if I’d want her to.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “Where do you think I learned it?”

  It was the truth. Despite the fact that Mrs. Moretta went to church every other Sunday, she had the mouth of a sailor who retired and started a new career trucking. She had never shied away from a healthy four-letter word when the situation called for it.

  “Speaking of women, Harper seems to think you have a thing for Gloria.”

  “She’s not wrong.”

  “You’ve had a thing for anything with a nice pair of legs and big brown eyes.”

  “Where do you think I got my type?”

  “So if you’ve been carrying this torch since high school, how is Glenn still alive?”

  “I ask myself that every day. The deployments made it easier to think about something else. Gave me something to focus on.”

  Luke knew exactly what Aldo meant.

  His friend shifted in his seat. “I gotta say. I’m thinking about retiring. This is number four and I want to make it my last.”

  “Really?”

  “We’ve been doing this since high school. That’s twelve years of packing up and moving out and hoping we get to come back after the job’s done. I’m ready to stay put. I want to put more time into some engineering projects. And then I want to make a nice girl the next Mrs. Moretta.”

  “Jesus, Aldo.” Just the thought of it made Luke start to sweat. “When the hell did you decide all this?

  “About ten seconds after I found out Gloria moved out. Don’t tell me you’re not ready to hang it up.”

  “It’s all I’ve got. The Guard and my business.”

  Aldo snorted. “You’ve got your family and you could have Harper, too, if you wanted. Come home to that sweet face every day and find out what trouble she got herself into? There’s something to look forward to.”

  “She is trouble. I’m concerned about releasing her into the wild.”

  “She needs you.”

  “She needs her fucking parents, but they’re dead. She’s got no family, just scars from all those years in foster care.”

  Aldo swore quietly. “And you’d do anything to make it better, but you just don’t know how to help.”

  “Exactly.” Luke sighed. Of course Aldo got it. “Fact is, I just don’t have room in my life for her.”

  “You’ve got the room, you’re just too chickenshit to make it.”

  Luke bristled. While Aldo, his family, and everyone else were more than happy to shove their noses into his business, none of them knew what it was like to have everything and then lose it all. He knew. And had barely survived. There were no second chances.

  ***

  The physicals were fine, the briefings tedious. But they made it home in decent time with a clearer picture of what they’d be doing in Afghanistan. Usually, Luke felt the buzz, a hum of excitement about the next mission, a new project. But this time he just felt off.

  He had things to do — around the house, at the office. But he was tired. He was used to running on little sleep and too much caffeine or pure adrenaline. But the late nights with Harper under him, over him, wrapped around him, had taken a toll.

  Luke wasn’t the napping type. Maybe he just needed to relax with the TV for an hour, and then he could get back to his paperwork and packing.

  He woke up an hour later with something warm and heavy in his lap.

  A large, gray dog rested its head and a beefy paw on Luke’s leg.

  “Harper!”

  She appeared in the doorway in seconds, which meant she had been hovering nearby.

  “Before you get mad —”

  “Harper, why is there a fucking dog in my lap?”

  “We don’t have to keep her. She just needs a nice place to stay.”

  “Harper, why is there a fucking dog in my lap?”

  The dog grumbled in its sleep and stretched.

  “What the hell kind of dog is this?”

  “She’s some kind of pit-bull-lab-something. She was a neglect case and just because she has this skin condition and needs heart meds, the shelter was going to put her down.”

  “That still doesn’t answer why there’s a dog. In my lap.” His voice was loud enough to wake the beast this time. A bloodshot eye opened lazily and stared at him.

  “I stopped at the grocery store and this woman was walking out of the pet store with her. Her name’s Lola, by the way.”

  “The woman?”

  “No! The dog.”

  Hearing her name, the dog turned her massive head towards Harper. Her tail thumped twice.

  “Anyway, the rescue in town took her, but they needed a place for her to stay until they can find a foster home — a week tops — and she looked at me with those big sappy eyes. And before I knew it, I was putting her in the car. And I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.
Or Lola.”

  The dog’s tail thumped again.

  “Harper, you can’t just bring a dog home.”

  “I know! I think she hypnotized me. I’m so sorry.”

  Lola swung her head back to Luke. “Why are her eyes funny?”

  “It’s just a little infection. We put drops in three times a day.”

  Lola’s tongue lolled out of her mouth. “Harper. She’s huge. She could swallow you whole.”

  “She’s a sweetheart. There’s not a mean bone in her body.” Harper was wringing her hands together.

  Lola rolled over on Luke’s lap, baring her belly.

  “A week?”

  “Tops.”

  ***

  Lola had them trained in a matter of days. She gently reminded them when it was meal time and potty time. Luke’s dog-free house soon included a large inventory of squeaky toys and bones that Lola perused hourly. And every night, she snored at the foot of the bed with her huge head resting on Harper’s feet.

  Harper did her best to make sure she took on the majority of dog care. Walks, meals, medicine, she even tackled the poor dog’s overgrown toenails.

  She tried to keep Luke’s inconvenience to a minimum, but still felt the sting of his sighs whenever Lola made her presence known.

  Every day, she reminded herself how generous Luke had been to open his home to her and now Lola. Guilt and gratitude had her stocking the refrigerator with all his favorites and bending over backwards around the house to be helpful.

  She tried to make it home before Luke in the evenings so she could let Lola out, but he was always there first. One night, she came home to find Luke and the boys trying to teach Lola to fetch. Lola wasn’t into it, but Henry was a good sport about chasing all the balls that Robbie threw.

  Later, when they walked the boys home, Lola didn’t even flinch when little Ava toddled over and sat on her. She just yawned and allowed herself to be squished and stroked by sticky fingers.

  For the first few mornings post-Lola, Luke asked Harper if she had heard from the rescue on a permanent foster home yet.

  When he stopped asking and Lola started disappearing downstairs with Luke in the mornings, Harper got suspicious.

  The next morning, she waited in bed until Luke headed downstairs with Lola. When she heard the front door close behind him, Harper threw the covers off and hurried down.

  There was food in her bowl, but no sign of Lola in the kitchen. Harper snooped through the rest of the first floor and checked the back yard. No Lola.

  She grabbed a cup of coffee and sat on the front porch to wait.

  Her patience was rewarded ten minutes later by the sight of Luke and Lola bounding around the corner side-by-side. Lola’s muscled legs ate up the sidewalk while her tongue lolled to the side. Luke’s mile-wide grin matched his running buddy’s. They were happiness in motion.

  She saw the slight stutter in his step the second he noticed her. He carefully rearranged his features to an impassive expression by the time they hit the walkway to the house.

  Harper tried to hide her grin behind her coffee. “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” Luke said, oozing nonchalance. He handed her Lola’s leash. “She, uh, had to go out so I took her.”

  “Around the block?” Harper asked innocently, petting Lola’s heaving sides. She was rewarded by a huge slurp from Lola’s tongue.

  “Uh, yeah. The block.”

  Lola sat next to Harper on the step and leaned into her arm.

  “You are such a liar!”

  Luke put his hands up. “Hey, we did go around the block. Kind of.”

  “You’ve been taking her on your runs, which is why she’s totally exhausted when I take her for a walk an hour later!”

  She could tell he was weighing his options behind his sunglasses.

  He threw up his arms. “For Christ’s sake, look at her! She’s huge. I was worried she’d drag you around the block and knock everyone over.”

  “So you took her out first to try her out?”

  “Well, yeah. And to tire her out, so if she was bad on a leash, she’d at least be less bad tired.”

  “That’s oddly sweet and thoughtful of you.”

  “Hard to be mad at me, isn’t it?” The dimple flickered back into existence.

  “Well it would be except for the fact that you’ve been making me feel so guilty for bringing her into your house when you clearly love having her around!”

  “I wouldn’t say love —”

  “Lucas Norbert Garrison!”

  “Charles, actually.”

  “You love her! Look her in those big dopey eyes and tell her you don’t.” Harper squished Lola’s face in her hands. “Look at Daddy. Make him feel like garbage for playing Mommy. You could have told me, you know. Should have told me.”

  “I am pleading the fifth. Now if you lovely ladies don’t mind, I’m going to finish my run because Lola can only hang for a mile and a half.” He leaned in and kissed Harper and moved to drop a peck on Lola’s head, but she squirmed free and stuck her tongue in his mouth.

  “At this second, I can honestly say I don’t love that,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

  “Serves you right, Norbert!”

  “Can we still have steak tonight?” he asked, backing down the walk.

  “You knew I was kissing up to you! You are such an —”

  “The neighbors don’t need you to finish that sentence,” he called as he turned onto the sidewalk.

  “Fine, but Lola gets half of yours!” Harper waited until he was out of sight before laughing.

  ***

  Luke avoided the office all day, communicating primarily by text and email, even after Harper called him a chicken.

  She beat him home and took Lola for a quick walk before starting dinner. Harper was busy prepping the steaks when she heard the front door. She headed down the hall to greet Luke with Lola ambling after her.

  “Look who decided to face the music,” Harper teased.

  Luke dropped his keys on the table by the door and shifted the strange bundle he was holding.

  The bundle barked.

  “Not a word. Not one word,” Luke muttered.

  He was carrying a scruffy terrier under his arm like a football.

  Harper bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  Luke put the dog down on the floor. It had three legs.

  “Wait a second. Shouldn’t we introduce them or something first?” Harper started towards Lola.

  “Fine. Lola, meet Max. Max, meet Lola.”

  Max scampered over to Lola and sniffed her. Lola blinked, turned around, and walked down the hall. Max pranced after her on her heels.

  “I just went to pick up Lola’s meds and there’s this damn dog. Some old lady is trying to surrender him and they didn’t have any foster homes available, and if they took him to the shelter he’d probably be put down.”

  “He has three legs.”

  “And they were going to hold that against him. He can’t help it.”

  Harper covered her mouth so he wouldn’t see her grin as he stalked down the hall towards the kitchen.

  “It’s just temporary,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re just fostering.”

  “It’s just temporary,” she whispered, even as she felt her heart stumble.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They found it was easier to get used to two dogs than the first one. Max scampered seamlessly into their home life. He followed Luke around like a shadow and barked like a dog three times his size. In the mornings, Luke ran with Lola while Harper took Max for a few laps around the block. At night, he slept curled in a tight ball against Lola.

  And every time Harper walked in the door, they both greeted her as if it had been decades since they last saw her last.

  Lola would charge down the hallway with her deep boof, while Max pranced and yipped around her. The second the front door opened, they lavished Harper — or Luke, or the mail lady — with exci
ted attention. It felt good to be welcomed home by adoring fans.

  Just a few weeks ago, she couldn’t have imagined her life changing so drastically. She had a man she adored, a comfortable home, great friends, and two dogs who thought she was better than bacon treats. Even though it was all temporary. She tried not to think about what would happen in a matter of days. Luke would be gone from her life, she would be gone from Benevolence, and it would be someone else opening Garrison Construction’s massive piles of mail.

  Harper opened the envelope with an efficient slash of the letter opener. Only Luke would let office mail go unopened for weeks. She had worked her way down to the bottom of the pile he had carelessly stashed on the shelf in his office. She found a handful of checks from clients buried in the pile. After a lecture from her on the importance of timely response, Luke agreed to let her handle all mail from now on.

  As soon as she was done with this stack, she was going to run to the bank and make a deposit.

  A check fluttered out of the opened envelope onto her desk. She picked it up and glanced at it. This was one made out directly to Luke in the amount of …

  A strangled gasp made its way past her lips. Harper’s knees buckled and she flopped down into her chair.

  She had never seen an amount that high on a check before and there were three more envelopes just like this one. She opened them all and lined up the checks.

  Pay to the order of Lucas Garrison.

  She knew she was gaping at the surface of her desk, but couldn’t help it. There was just over half a million dollars sitting on it. What was it for? Was it legal?

  Harper glanced into Luke’s office where he was on a conference call with a supplier. He was kicked back in his chair, work boots propped up on the desk. Not a care in the world. He wasn’t concerned that he had gone and forced her to fall hard for him, only to kick her in the teeth with the reminder that he couldn’t even be honest with her about anything.

  That withholding, sexy bastard was a millionaire.

  She thought of her guilt-laden reaction to his furniture shopping. He could have furnished a dozen houses with the checks in her hand. What the hell was his problem? Why did he expect her to open up about long buried secrets when he couldn’t even say, “by the way, I’m rich.”