Page 9 of Luca (Big Hot Alphas 3)

“Right,” I say, glancing over at Quinn, who’s sitting beside me on the couch. “So, uh…I did this modeling job last week…”

“Hold up. What?Modeling?” my brother, Titus, says. “Since when are you a model?”

“It was a one-time thing,” I say.

“What did you model, Uncle Luca?” asks Mason, tugging on my leg.

“Pajama pants.”

Mason looks at me like I’m crazy. “Pajamapants?”

“Among other things,” I say.

“That’sweird, Uncle Luca,” Mason says.

Everyone laughs—myself included.

“I know, bud,” I say. I look up at everyone again. “Anyway. Quinn’s the art director for the company. So that’s how we met.”

“Uh, yeah, I still feel like I’m missing something,” says Titus. “How the heck didyouend up in front of the camera, bro?”

This time, Quinn pipes up. “We wanted to go in a different direction than usual with this latest campaign,” she explains. “And none of our usual models had the right look. We had a recruiter go over to the college campus to scout out potential guys, and she found Luca. He asked me out after the shoot.”

“Aw,” says Madison, grinning. “I love that.” She looks over at my mom. “Isn’t that sweet, Sylvia?”

“Very,” my mom says, smiling across the living room at Quinn and me. She glances over at my dad. “It’s certainly a much better story than how the two ofusmet.”

My dad chuckles. “Any story is better than that.”

“Okay, now you’vegotto tell it,” says Quinn, grinning as she leans forward on the couch.

“Michael?” my mom says, raising her eyebrows at my dad.

My dad clears his throat. “I was working at a recycling center. Sylvia was there trying to get rid of an old mattress. We argued about it for a while, then I asked her out on a date.”

Quinn laughs. “And you two have been married for how long?”

“Thirty-five years,” says my dad.

“Thirty-fivewonderfulyears,” my mom corrects him.

“Right,” says my dad, laughing as he reaches out and squeezes her hand. “Sorry, sweetheart. That’s what I meant.”

Chapter Four

Quinn

“Your family is amazing, Luca,” I say. We’ve just left his parents’ place and are walking out to his truck.

“Yeah, they aren’t half bad, huh?” he says, grinning as he opens up the passenger door for me.

Luca may have felt confident that today would go well, but I was admittedly nervous about the whole thing. I mean, I was meeting hisparents, for God’s sake. I had braced myself for having to explain why I was interested in a guy so much younger than me, or why I hadn’t found somebody already at my age.

Instead, I was met with nothing but open arms.

Maybe this really can work after all.

As Luca drives me back to my place, he tells me stories from his childhood—like the time he and Titus built “the jankiest treehouse in existence,” the time they were home alone and accidentally knocked a hole in the wall, and the time his parents showed up at a school dance to pick him up and ended up slow-dancing themselves.

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