Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 147415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 737(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 491(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 737(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 491(@300wpm)
Trust me, I'm not falling for a human porcupine.
I don't do older men with baggage a mile long.
Billionaires? Nope, I'm Miss Independence, thank you very much.
And when a man with the emotional intelligence of a cucumber decides to boss me around?
Hoo boy.
Shepherd Foster and I are utterly incompatible.
He still can't get over the day we met when I questioned Mr. High and Mighty's judgment.
He's also holding the key—and the moolah—to my animal rescue dreams.
I'm only putting up with this torture for the cute otters, I swear.
And we're only camping together so I can prove him deliciously wrong.
My ideas will outshine Seattle's grumpiest egomaniac.
If only Shepherd's scowls and barbed words weren't attached to a body crafted for sin.
I still don't know how it happened.
Don't ask me why I let his cruel mouth kiss me into a smoldering wreck.
Don't remind me that messy nights in Eden with my boss carry a brutal price.
I'm worried I'm feeling... things for a man I desperately need to keep hating.
Because there's one way this ends if Shepherd damn Foster gets his hooks in my heart.
Disaster.
An enemies-to-lovers epic standalone! Huge heart, slow-burn steam, banter galore, plus a damaged grump who falls hilariously hard for the otter-loving brant who blows his life to kingdom come.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Trust me, I'm not falling for a human porcupine.
I don't do older men with baggage a mile long.
Billionaires? Nope, I'm Miss Independence, thank you very much.
And when a man with the emotional intelligence of a cucumber decides to boss me around?
Hoo boy.
Shepherd Foster and I are utterly incompatible.
He still can't get over the day we met when I questioned Mr. High and Mighty's judgment.
He's also holding the key—and the moolah—to my animal rescue dreams.
I'm only putting up with this torture for the cute otters, I swear.
And we're only camping together so I can prove him deliciously wrong.
My ideas will outshine Seattle's grumpiest egomaniac.
If only Shepherd's scowls and barbed words weren't attached to a body crafted for sin.
I still don't know how it happened.
Don't ask me why I let his cruel mouth kiss me into a smoldering wreck.
Don't remind me that messy nights in Eden with my boss carry a brutal price.
I'm worried I'm feeling... things for a man I desperately need to keep hating.
Because there's one way this ends if Shepherd damn Foster gets his hooks in my heart.
Disaster.
1
A Little Misunderstanding (Shepherd)
Some people just don’t know how to keep things simple.
I lean back with a scowl that’s melting my face, the executive leather chair creaking under me as I watch the latest sludge interview on my tablet.
My blood pressure is already surging to levels that will make my doctor yell at me.
Some people do not know how to keep things fucking simple.
We were business associates. Professionals.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Vanessa Dumas promised me from day one of this stupid arrangement that she was unfussy. Uncomplicated. Oh so easy to work with.
She was, to the best of my knowledge, a smart woman with an eye for strategy who understood our mutual potential to lend each other a hand.
Yeah.
Everything I thought I knew was dead wrong.
She doesn’t know the meaning of the word professional.
On the screen, it’s the typical gaudy crap. The interview room is plush with a red sofa and white walls and a hostess with a giddy smile like she’s just walked onto the set after three shots of vodka.
The blonde hostess—Martha Rubina—is clearly doing her damnedest to prevent age from stampeding all over her face with plumped lips and an artificially tight forehead.
Opposite her, Vanessa has made a special effort for this spectacle. Curling her hair, wearing too much stoplight-red lipstick.
She licks her lips as her gaze flicks at the camera and then away nervously.
Fake nervously.
“So, can you tell us how it all started with Shepherd Foster?” Martha asks, leaning forward like Vanessa’s answer is the most interesting thing since Al Gore invented the internet.
It’ll be a lie, of course.
I’ve read the headlines.
Not that good old Martha will mind.
She wants a story, viral links, and water cooler talk for the next week, and Vanessa knows how to deliver.
“Oh,” Vanessa says breathily. A voice she never bothered using with me when she knew that airy, giggly shit wasn’t my thing.
Hell, she knew she wasn’t my thing.
Our 'relationship' was a casual forgery from day one—I made that clear from the outset.
I needed a plus-one to shut up the press and fend off swarms of real single women.
She needed a lifeline with my connections, and the networking at the various events I’m obliged to attend were perfect. Preferably without a thousand nasty rumors swirling in my wake.
I thought I had a woman on my arm who would dissuade the real gold diggers and shit-rakers from the tabloids, and she had her chance to send her career into the stratosphere.
Win-win—or so I thought.
I even covered all the damn expenses. Couture designer gowns, ego slaying shoes, glittery handbags big enough to swallow an elephant, the works.
The entire steaming enchilada.
No, she wasn’t getting me, but I was never on the table. Dating is the last fucking thing on my list of experiences, right next to eating fried wombat and a nice bout of hantavirus.
When I laid my cards out, I made that perfectly clear.
Vanessa knew precisely what she was getting into. With me, it’s always strictly business.
Absolutely no romance.
I have a reputation for not getting involved, and I gave her zero indication it would be different with her pretty smile.
I knew better. I’m too smart to fall into the fake-love-turned-real trap that claims so many other billionaires in this town.
When I needed a fake girlfriend, I intended to keep her fake and at a safe distance.
But I watch the way she smiles so innocently, my lip curling with disgust.
How did I miss it?
For all the arranging and agreeing we’d done, I never saw it coming.
I never once imagined she’d ambush me in the back of my limo.
She was the one who threw her leg over my lap and thrust her tits in my face like Thanksgiving dinner.
The memory makes my teeth grind.
We’d been at a movie premiere—some indie flick gone big—and the only reason I was there at all was because the producer, Dane Jacobs, also headed Homes for Seattle, one of the charities my company supports.