The thought of Ezra was enough to bring him to his senses. “Let’s put your brother’s mind at ease,” Drake said, pulling his phone back out and sidling up next to Mackenzie for a selfie. “Smile pretty. He’s got his tighty-whiteys in a bunch, thinking I’ll let you down.”

“It’s always fun to prove my brother wrong.”

Drake clicked, and without inspecting the photo, he reopened the app they used to text internationally and sent it on its way. Ignoring, the whole while, the hint of Mackenzie’s feminine floral scent that affected him on an elemental level.

Mackenzie had done her homework.

Well, as well as she could. It wasn’t easy to get the lowdown on a guy who didn’t do much on social media. He had accounts—she’d found Drake on three different platforms—but he didn’t post much. The content on his accounts consisted mostly of photos he was tagged in by other people. Females. Always females. Pretty, happy females draping themselves all over the youngest North brother.

Mackenzie couldn’t blame them.

Drake was drape-worthy. He always had been.

He reached over and took the handle of the rolling bag from her and pulled it behind him. “Do you have another bag?” he asked as they walked in the general direction of the baggage claim area.

She laughed. “I had to check three.” And paid for extra weight on two of them. Still the cheapest way to get the things she needed most immediately to Nashville.

“It might be tough to fit those on my bike.”

Mackenzie halted in her tracks and peered over at him, narrowing her eyes, assessing if he could possibly be serious.

On the one hand, the thought of this mouthwatering man on a motorcycle—she assumed he wasn’t talking about a Schwinn—was all kinds of distracting. On the other, surely he couldn’t be that dense, could he?

No. The Drake she remembered was not stupid.

“You’re bullshitting,” she said as she resumed their path toward the escalator.

With an irresistible boyish grin, he said, “Got me. I switched it out for the Jeep just for you.”

Between those arresting sky-blue eyes with their spark of mischief, the just-right amount of toffee-brown scruff on his jaw, and that sexy tone in his voice that made the words sound more intimate than they were, it was evident he still oozed charm the way most guys oozed sweat during a pickup game of basketball on a ninety-degree afternoon.

She could fully, privately admit to a raging crush on him back in the day, when—she could acknowledge it now—she was too young for him. Drake North had plunged her right into puberty, though he hadn’t been aware of his role in her immature fantasies. Thank God.