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“Hey,” I said, “I need you to take me to pick up my car so Benny and I can get Miss Claudia her groceries. We’ll meet you at the library at four.”

He turned around, folding his truly bulging arms over his intimidatingly massive chest to glare at me, yet I found myself so not intimidated.

“What?” I asked.

Reece raised his eyebrows at me.

“ What ?” I asked again, exasperated.

“We can go in my truck.”

“Excuse me, we ?”

“Did you or did you not agree to our arrangement?”

“Well… yes, but?—”

“Get your boy. We’ll get her to the store.”

“I need his car seat.”

“Right. New plan. You and me head to Kohl’s to grab a car seat and then we come back here to get Miss Claudia and Benny.”

I cocked my head at the man still in total confusion or disbelief. Maybe a bit of both. “You shop at Kohl’s?” I asked.

“Listen, babe. I might be a better goalie than most men, and we both know I’ve got a bigger dick and way more skills when using it, but I put my pants on one leg at a time just like those other men.

I grew up going to Kohl’s and when my mom comes to visit, if she wants to grab something, we go to Kohl’s. ”

How could I refute that logic?

“Why would you want to buy a car seat? Just take me to my car and then we can all go in mine.”

“First. I’m driving. I don’t ride bitch. Second. I don’t fucking fit in that little death trap of yours.”

“It’s not a death trap.”

“It’s tiny.”

“Fine, it might be tiny, but it has a good safety rating for a compact car.”

“If we’re dating and you have a boy, and I do the driving, then I’m going to need a car seat to transport your boy when we go places.”

That made sense. “Why do you do the driving? I’m a great driver.”

“I’m sure you are. Listen, it’s not a chick thing.

I always drive. When I was seventeen, I was in a pretty bad car crash.

My buddy was driving. I saw the other car coming, but my buddy didn’t have the reflexes to move us out of the way fast enough.

The car hit on his side.” Pain etched lines in his forehead and around his eyes. “He didn’t make it.”

I gasped.

“ Reece .” I whispered his name, lifting my hand to rub his arm.

He’d been incredibly honest with me for it being a fake relationship.

He didn’t owe me his explanation, and I had so many more questions.

Was he injured? Could it have been a career ender?

But if he didn’t offer, then it wasn’t for me to know.

Still, I felt for the man and relented. “Let’s go get a car seat. ”

With his arm dropped to the small of my back, he ushered me out of the kitchen. “Miss Claudia, can you keep an eye on Benny? Reece drove me home last night, so I don’t have my car and he doesn’t have a car seat.” Then pointedly looking at Reece I finished, “Then we’re going to run and grab my car.”

“Not a problem. Benny and I will wait right here for you.”

After hugs for my boy and Miss Claudia, my new fake boyfriend led me out of the apartment down to his truck. He opened the door for me like a gentleman and helped me up inside.

“I worry that this’ll be too high for Miss Claudia to climb into.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help her out. Always do for my mom.”

This man kept upping his surprise game.

How? Well, we had the helping his mom into his mammoth truck thing, but then he knew exactly how to get to Kohl’s from my apartment, never tapping the GPS on his phone. Not even once. I’d been living here for three years and still used the GPS to find new places.

Reece found a parking spot and when I hopped out of the truck, he rounded it to drop his hand to the small of my back, ushering us toward the doors. Several men wrenched their necks in comical double takes once they discerned that yes, Baker Reece was entering their local Kohl’s.

He stopped to snap selfies with everyone who asked. I liked getting to see this side of Reece. Given our interaction back at Sumpter, I never would’ve guessed that this man existed. He cared about his fans. He’d been incredibly sweet to Miss Claudia and to Benny today. The man rattled my brain.

As I held the last guy’s phone trying to get the perfect shot, a group of women wandered up to him, giggling and flipping hair or batting eyelashes. Ugh—please . They walked right into the shot.

“Let me finish this first,” he said to the women. Only then did they back out of the camera view.

The guy thanked him profusely and mumbled under his breath, “My wife will be sorry she stayed home.” And I had to laugh because, yeah, I bet she would.

The women swarmed Reece.

“Can you take our picture, too?” the blondest blonde asked and I tipped my chin graciously, stepping up to take her phone, but when she posed with her hand on his chest, dropping the other to his back low, too close to his derriere for my liking, I felt like I owed it to him to defend his personal body space or something like that.

“Excuse me…” I found myself speaking up. “How would you feel if a man put his hands on you like that? He’s a human being.”

She jerked her head back then glared at me. “Who are you to tell me anything, skank? ”

“Okay, no photo,” Reece snapped. The woman looked at him like he had spikes sprouting out of his head.

“Excuse me?” she asked him, all haughty and affronted. “You’re gonna side with the skank?”

“She’s my girlfriend, not a skank, and she was kind enough to take a photo for you, until you decided to get rude. I get it, you’re embarrassed because she called you out, but you had no right to put your hands on me without my consent.”

Blondie flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Yeah, well… Antonov is hotter.” She stormed off in a huff.

Good God, if this was the dating pool now, no wonder he came to me for help. Puck bunnies were the worst.

When I stepped up to Reece to say something supportive, he stopped me. “Thank you”—he gestured with his chin— “for that. When you’re a public figure, people think that they own your time and your body. It’s a job hazard.” He grabbed my hand to get us walking again.

His honesty once again surprised me.

We made it to the shopping carts before I leaned in to tell him, “Antonov is not hotter, by the way.”

Reece threw his head back laughing. “I’ll let him know you said that.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“You like me, you know it.” He winked at me, showing off that adorable dimple that made me want to simultaneously screw his brains out and punch him in the gut.

“Let’s just get the car seat.”

“You can’t say it, can you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He lifted his hand to my chin, using his thumb to tug down on the skin below my lip to make it look as if my mouth was moving, but instead, doing the talking for me in a high-pitched voice, “I like Baker Reece. He’s so sexy. He has the best dick in the world. ”

Okay, so this time I did punch him in the gut, but I did it laughing. “I will neither confirm nor deny the veracity of your statements.”

“Oh, you are so hot for me. It’s written all over your face.”

I took off walking back toward the car seats rather than respond. The man already had a big enough ego. He certainly didn’t need me fueling it by admitting that he absolutely rocked my world in the bedroom. And okay, I guess it was fair to say I liked him now on a more personable level.

Reaching the aisle I wanted, I walked over to the model seat Benny already had.

“This the one you want?” Reece asked.

“It’s the same one he has now. I think it’ll make him more comfortable to have something familiar.”

“Done,” he said, hefting the large box onto one shoulder while taking my hand with the other, walking us up to the self-checkout. He scanned the barcode and pulled his wallet from his front pocket to retrieve his card, tapping it to pay for his purchase.

“This is really cool of you,” I said as we left the store, making our way back to his truck.

He shrugged as he held the car door open for me. “If we’re going to make this work, I’ll be carting you and Benny around a lot.”

“If you take me to the bar, I’ll follow you home.”

“What every man wants to hear.” He winked again. This man with his smiles and his winks. How did a woman fight the power of the wink?

When I had him in the truck, I thought about what things a real girlfriend would know, I mean, to make it believable. But also, I just wanted to know. “If you hadn’t ended up in the NHL, what would you have done?”

The man kept his eyes on the road as he answered, “Nothing.”

“Nothing? ”

He shook his head. “Hockey is all I ever wanted. Failure wasn’t an option.”

“Okay, what if you decide to retire because of injury?”

Whoa. He gripped the wheel, jerking his head to look at me. Eyes wide. “You jinxing me? Don’t say that shit to an athlete.”

“Reece, when people say words have power, that’s not how they mean it.”

“You’ve got your beliefs and I have mine. Don’t hate on what you don’t know.”

“Is the big, bad Copperheads goalie superstitious?” I teased.

“You bet your fine ass. I got a brand-new pair of socks before our first championship. The last time we didn’t win, I couldn’t find them. New cleaning lady put them in a different drawer. She knows to never make that mistake again.”

“Will I get to see these winning socks?”

Reece glanced over at me out of the corner of his eye. “You want to see my socks?”

“Well, your dick is impressive, but been there, done that. Gimme fresh, new, to keep this relationship alive.”

The laugh from that man when he threw his head back roaring—I had no words, although I joined the hilarity alongside him. We were a couple of idiots.

As he settled, he said, “I’ll show you my socks when I have you at my place.”

“It seems like the kind of thing a girlfriend would know about.”

Yeah, he agreed with a head nod.

The conversation eased a bit. Comfortably, not awkward at all. We spent a few more minutes listening to the radio until we turned into the parking lot of the bar and he rolled to a stop in front of my car. “Meet you back at the apartment,” I said as I hopped out.