Maybe It's Real Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Maybe It's Real

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  About the author

  Artfully Yours

  Technically Mine

  His Ever After

  Lost In His Kiss

  MAYBE IT’S REAL

  by

  Isabel North

  MAYBE IT’S REAL

  (Love, Emerson #5)

  Chloe Abbott’s back in the dating game—and she picked a great guy to help reboot her love life.

  Or maybe not so great. Detective Owen Vance might make her heart beat faster but he’s also grumpy, irritable, and seriously stressed out. After a terrible first date, Chloe slams the door on their pulse-pounding connection, and deletes his number.

  Widowed cop Owen isn’t interested in love. Doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it. He had love once, and lost it. But when his partner calls his bluff, Owen finds himself committed to a date with cute and curvy physical therapist Chloe. The night is a disaster, and what’s worse, Owen’s friends and family think it’s the beginning of a beautiful romance.

  When fate brings them back together, Owen somehow ends up fake-dating a woman he wants for real…but is he willing to risk his heart for the chance to turn their fake relationship into forever?

  Maybe It’s Real is a standalone fake-relationship romantic comedy in the Love, Emerson series.

  Copyright © Isabel North 2018

  First edition

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, organizations, business and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “C’mon,” Jim said. “It’ll be fun. Kick back. Have a beer, decompress. It’s the end of the work week, Owen. Fun is mandatory.”

  Owen Vance leaned back in his chair, arms braced behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling of the squad room. He’d been staring at it for over an hour now, when he wasn’t busy glaring at his computer or tapping his pen on his legal pad. Thus far, it hadn’t offered him any answers.

  “Fine,” he said, and rocked upright. “Let’s go.”

  Jim bounced to his feet, beaming. He punched the air. “Beer!”

  “Guess you really like beer.”

  “I really do. But this—” he slow-motion punched the air again, “—is because you said yes.”

  Owen eyed his partner.

  “You never say yes,” Jim said.

  “I just said it, Jim. Three seconds ago.”

  “You almost never say yes. It’s important to celebrate every win. Big or small. Key to a happy life, my friend.”

  Owen wasn’t sure that spending an hour or two with his grumpy ass at the end of a grueling week during which they’d already spent almost every waking minute together was any kind of win, but who was he to argue?

  “We going or not?” Jim tapped his wrist where, presumably, he wore an imaginary watch. “C’mon. We’re burning daylight here.”

  “You got a curfew I don’t know about?” Owen stretched, wincing when his spine cracked. He rolled his aching shoulders.

  Apart from a five a.m. call-out to a drug bust, he’d been stuck at his desk for most of the day, typing reports, making calls, typing reports, taking calls. Typing reports.

  “Nope. But my wife will be home in one hour and fifty-three minutes, leaving the kids at her mother’s for the weekend. So if I want to take my partner out and force him to chillax before my Friday night really gets started, then we have to move. Now. Move it.”

  Owen snagged his jacket and swiped his car keys from among the clutter on his desk. “I can drink beer on my own, you know.”

  “Yeah. But you’ll do it sitting on your couch in your underwear. That’s not healthy. And it’s sad.”

  Owen ignored him and headed for the door. “God, I miss Fletcher,” he muttered.

  “Bullshit.” Jim trotted after him. “It was the best day of your life when Fletcher put in for early retirement and you got me as a partner instead, and you know it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Owen slid on his sunglasses as they exited the building and were slapped with the bright cheer of a spring San Francisco evening.

  Jim wasn’t all wrong. Fletcher was an asshole.

  The man hadn’t been able to keep a partner for more than a few months in a row, according to the captain. Something to do with his attitude, which was overbearing at the best of times, and vicious at the worst. He was also lazy, happy to leave the bulk of the legwork, paperwork, and any other kind of work to Owen.

  Owen hadn’t cared. After the abrupt transfer from the station he’d been at since he made detective five years ago, all he wanted was to keep his head down and get the job done. He wasn’t interested in making friends. He hadn’t given a shit about Fletcher’s attitude one way or the other.

  No, that was a lie. If anything, he’d liked having Fletcher as a partner.

  It had been the next best thing to working alone.

  Now he was partnered with Jim Cortez, who was one hell of a detective, never met a stranger, and—despite Owen’s best attempts to hold himself aloof—was determined to be buddies.

  Going to Roscoe’s wouldn’t help Owen’s plan to keep their relationship distant and professional, but it was Friday night. He could do with a beer.

  Twenty minutes later they were settled at a table at the back of the downtown bar. “Okay, I admit it,” Owen said. “This was a good idea.”

  Jim made a triumphant noise and gave him a companionable smack to the bicep.

  Owen’s bottle clinked against a front tooth. He glared at Jim.

  Jim didn’t notice. He was looking around Roscoe’s like a meerkat on sentry duty.

  Owen contemplated him for a moment. “You expecting someone?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s with the perimeter check?”

  “I’m a trained law enforcement officer. Vigilant at all times.”

  Owen raised a brow.

  “I’m investigating the lady situation,” Jim said. He shot Owen a smile, then did a double take at the disgusted expression Owen knew had frozen on his face. “For you,” Jim said. “So cut that out. I am happy in my marriage. We are solid. You know this. I talk about Karin and the kids all the time. Like, an obnoxious amount. You need a visual to make it stick? Here.” He grabbed his cell phone from the tacky tabletop, poked at it, then held it out an inch from Owen’s nose. “Behold my goddess.”

  Owen focused on the photo Jim had pulled up. It was a selfie of Jim and his wife, and yep, Karin was a goddess all right.

  Their faces were smooshed together. Even though the white-blonde Valkyrie had crossed her fjord-blue eyes at the camera, she had the kind of strong-boned, careless beauty that glowed with health and made men lose their minds. Which was obvious by the way Jim was grinning like a fool and had draped a long lock of her shining hair over his near-bald head like a wig.

  Owen couldn’t suppress a smile at the picture.
“Make a good Christmas card,” he said.

  “I know. Except my spawn aren’t in it.” Jim heaved a sigh. “People want to see the spawn on family Christmas cards.”

  They did? Owen wouldn’t know. He’d certainly never made it onto a Christmas card as a child.

  The affection between Owen and his mother, a professor of Russian literature whom he called dutifully every two weeks but saw maybe twice a year, was based on a solid foundation of warm mutual respect rather than sentiment.

  Jim set his phone back on the table and resumed his scan of the bar.

  Owen drained his beer. “You can stop that anytime. I’m not interested.”

  Jim flapped a hand at him.

  “Jim. I’m serious. I came here for a beer. And to make you stop begging. Don’t make me regret it.”

  “Okay, okay. I was just trying to do you a solid. Be your wingman.”

  “I don’t need a wingman.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Then maybe you need to think about taking up yoga or meditation or something else to relax if you’re not looking to get laid. Maybe get a massage. You’re wound so tight, you’ll be next to take early retirement. And I don’t want you to. I like working with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jim waited with a hopeful smile, which faded to a rueful twist of his lips as Owen took too long to respond.

  Was that a compliment? Was he supposed to have returned it?

  Owen liked working with Jim, he admitted it. To himself. With great reluctance. He wasn’t about to get into a mutual ego stroke, though.

  Instead, he said, “Get you another beer?”

  “It’s not a bro hug. But I’ll take it.”

  Owen rolled his eyes and headed to the bar as Jim burst out laughing.

  * * * *

  Chloe had said no. No chance. Not after the day she’d had.

  Anna, being Anna, had ignored her, as Chloe had known she would, and was waiting outside the clinic when Chloe left work.

  Having spent the last hour pummeling the stress from the back and shoulders of a programmer who was on track for some serious spinal issues if he didn’t do as he was told and invest his money in a decent chair rather than buying stock in the latest startup, Chloe was wiped out. She was thirty-two years old.

  She felt at least seventy-two.

  As soon as she spotted Anna’s willowy form leaning against the building, positioned with care in the shade, she used the final dregs of energy remaining in her body to totter over.

  Anna tipped her sunglasses down and examined Chloe’s face, which was by now devoid of makeup and bright red with the lingering aftereffects of exertion. “Honey,” Anna said.

  “That bad?” Chloe dropped her yoga mat, her heavy-as-shit tote and her gym bag, and propped her shoulders against the wall.

  “Don’t get too comfortable.” Anna shoved a plastic cup of iced coffee at her. “When I said we’re hanging out tonight, I didn’t mean on the street corner by your work. And ‘that bad’? What are you talking about? You are radiant as always. But we are going to swing by your apartment before we hit the bar because, you know. Too much radiance, you could overwhelm someone.”

  “I’m in no mood to overwhelm, underwhelm, or even plain old whelm anyone. I could, however, go for a shower.” Chloe drained her coffee, grabbed her bags, and gestured at Anna’s unfinished cup.

  “You don’t want to drink that,” Anna said. “It’s melted ice and spit.”

  Blech. “I’m taking it home to recycle. Where are you parked?”

  On days that she was working with private clients, Chloe used her car. On days like this when she was working at the clinic, Chloe left her car at home and used public transport. As she settled back into the comfy seats of Anna’s cherry-red and screamingly unsubtle (also third-hand, but don’t say anything to Anna about it) Mercedes convertible, she turned and said to Anna, “Bless you for ignoring me as always and coming to pick me up.”

  “No problem.”

  Traffic was, of course, a nightmare all the way out to Chloe’s tiny apartment. She kept the shower quick. After, she slipped into an ankle-length skirt, flat sandals and a tank that she tucked into the skirt, and loosely braided her damp hair.

  By the time they were at Roscoe’s, her energy levels were on the upswing.

  Anna had gone back to the bar to order more drinks, and Chloe was trying to get her attention to change her order from an indulgent second cosmo to water.

  With the bar this crowded, Chloe wasn’t stupid enough to leave the table they’d claimed and risk having it swiped from under them. Perched on the high stool, she leaned from one side to the other in an attempt to catch Anna’s eye. She added a wave. When that failed, she tried a bigger wave, and tossed in a psst.

  Anna remained oblivious.

  The man standing next to her didn’t.

  Twisting at the waist, he pinned Chloe with a hot dark glare, one brow lifted.

  Chloe felt his annoyed regard like a snap of static electricity, dancing over her skin. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Not you. So not hissing at you.”

  The man gave Chloe a lightning-fast full-body scan, then he lowered the brow and turned away to hand over some cash to the smiling redhead tending bar.

  Should she try again to get Anna’s attention? Yes, she should. Chloe straightened her shoulders. She wasn’t going to be quelled by some random stranger scorching her with disapproval. She got as far as ps— before he swung around again.

  Chloe cut it off and sat there guiltily. She pointed at Anna. “Her. Seriously. I’m trying to talk to her.”

  He frowned and mouthed something that looked like, “What?”

  She could barely hear him, which must be why Anna couldn’t hear her. How he’d even heard the psst in the first place was beyond Chloe.

  Aaand now he was right in front of her.

  Chloe’s head tipped back. She gazed up into irritated chestnut eyes.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just stood there with one brow lifted, a couple of beers hanging from his hand, and waited. “You need something?” he said eventually in a deep baritone.

  Chloe blanked. “Um. Hello.”

  “Hi. You need something from me?”

  “Nope. No, thanks. I’m good.”

  His eyes narrowed, then he grunted and strode off.

  Chloe plopped her elbows on the table and her face in her hands.

  “What’s up?” Anna sat opposite her and slid a glass over the scarred wooden table.

  Chloe looked at the cosmo, then grabbed it by the stem and took a healthy swallow. “Nothing much. Embarrassing myself in front of hot guys, the usual.”

  “Hot guy, huh? Where?”

  “Nowhere. Also, I take it back, he wasn’t hot. He could be hot, if you like that sort of thing, but it was kinda ruined by the grumpy. I’m talking ‘get off my lawn’ grumpy, not sexy ‘all I need is your soft kiss to heal my wounded spirit’ grumpy.”

  “Struck out, did you?”

  “I didn’t strike out! I wasn’t hissing at him, I was hissing at you, but you didn’t hear me.”

  “You hissed at him? Classy.”

  “I hissed at— You know what, never mind. Forget it. I’m glad you didn’t hear me because I want this drink now. I was switching to water but screw it.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Am I supposed to divine the meaning of that ‘hmm’ all by myself?” Chloe asked when Anna didn’t expand on it.

  “I’m surprised, is all.”

  “About?”

  “That you’re back to registering hot guys. Surprised and delighted. It’s been long enough.”

  Long enough since Stephen, she meant.

  Anna continued, “A year and change is long enough to pine.”

  Chloe sat bolt upright. “I am not pining. How dare you!”

  “Kinda pining.”

  “No, I am not. He was a grade A asshole. A woman of sense, su
ch as myself, does not waste her time or her energy pining over a grade A asshole. Any grade of asshole.”

  “So it’s fear, then?”

  “I fear nothing.”

  “Laziness?”

  “Anna—”

  “Go find your hot guy and ask him out.”

  Chloe had known this was where Anna was heading the moment she’d brought up Stephen. “No,” she said, and winced when she heard the wobble in her voice.

  “Why not?”

  “God, you’re pushy.”

  “I am an interior designer who has to excavate and understand a client’s deepest desires in order to design their optimal environment. Once I’ve achieved that, I have to shove them toward a sensible and achievable decision that will come in under budget and then, ta-da! I make their dreams come true. I do this on a daily basis. I am pushy as hell.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not a client, I’m a friend. And you’re talking about a man, not a couch.”

  “Which makes me even more determined to shove you. Listen. Tell me you don’t need the encouragement and I swear I will back off. I shove. I don’t bully. But Chloe, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you happy. I want to see you having fun with your life.”

  “He didn’t break my heart,” Chloe said. No. Stephen had just bruised her. Mostly her ego. But Chloe wasn’t the sort of person to hold back emotionally, so her feelings had been hurt. “That’s not why I haven’t been dating.”

  Anna shrugged. “I know. You get burned, the last thing you want is to let your marshmallows anywhere near the fire. But I’m not talking about just dating and romance. What really bothers me is that Stephen took something from you, Chloe. I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t encourage you to take it back.”

  Chloe smiled at Anna. “You are not a shitty friend.” She took a deep breath, then waved a gracious hand. “Permission to shove and encourage.” Without Anna on her case, Chloe was so busy with work at the clinic, her private clients, and her brother, Fraser, coming home from rehab in a couple of weeks, that pajamas and pizza were always going to win over effort.