Almost Pretend Read Online Nicole Snow

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary Tags Authors: Nicole Snow Advertisement1

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Opposites attract in this sizzling, feel-good, grumpy sunshine romance about a lively illustrator and the brooding billionaire she literally falls for. Eleanor Lark is an upbeat illustrator plagued by headaches and unruly strawberry-blond hair. After a grueling cross-country flight, she blacks out cold. The brooding stranger who sat next to her grumping his way through the flight catches Elle as she falls. Neither expects the sweet chaos that happens next. August Marshall is stonehearted, insanely rich, and a master of corporate cleanups with major baggage of his own. The last man alive who needs a media frenzy after his airport heroics steal headlines. But August has a plan—ask Elle to marry him so their trouble disappears. Elle almost faints again. They just met! But it’s hard to say no when August tells her she might be the key to saving a children’s book series she adores. And it’s even harder to remember it’s only pretend as sparks fly, hearts fall, and two perfect strangers try to remember life before make-believe…

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

I

HELLO, MR. BRIGHT SIDE

(ELLE)

I’m going to be brutally honest.

I have a track record of making bad decisions.

Usually, I don’t mind it. There’s always something right side up in upside down.

One door opens, another closes.

You know how it goes.

Like when I was five, and I decided to make a net trap out of sticks, yarn, and cheese to catch the raccoon in our yard. Sure, I wound up with two spitting-mad raccoons, my mother shrieking, and my dad lecturing me for an hour about rabies while he freed the little beasts from a safe distance with a rake.

But I learned that I loved being a little spontaneous—pretty important for a lifelong love affair with the arts.

Or maybe when I was twelve and I asked a classmate, Kenny Purdue, to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He laughed, called me a zombie vampire bitch, and threw mud on my dress.

He also taught me how to tell which boys suck real fast.

Plus, the fact that splattered earth tones look pretty cool on fabric.

Oh, and my gothy phase in high school?

I’m a master at pairing contrasts. I had to do something with the anemia and pale skin. Fashion forward, always.

I think I’m still looking for the bright side in the fact that I chose to go to art school and graduated just in time to be replaced by an AI algorithm that can whip up a masterpiece in a fraction of the time it would take any human. Luckily, it hasn’t totally stopped me from finding freelance work as a children’s illustrator with my uniquely human imperfections—so it can’t be all bad, right?

Right?

Like I said, I can find the good in any situation.

Even the tattooed stoner rock star wannabe I dated in college because I forgot how to tell which boys suck, a guy who cheated on me with two of my friends, taught me a valuable lesson. I don’t need a boyfriend, or friends with grabby hands.

That was also the first time I tried painting angry.

It landed me an exhibit in a New York art gallery. The perfect dot on my résumé to keep the freelance work rolling in for the last few years.

So, sure.

I’ve made gallons of lemonade out of my weight in lemons.

Right now, though, I’m having a hard time finding the good in a cross-country flight when we’re not even done boarding and my eyes are aching with the spangly white flashers again.

That’s what I call them before the headache from hell hits.

This time, it started in the terminal at JFK before my red-eye flight.

So much noise and motion, all of it bouncing off high ceilings. Just a dull throbbing behind my eyes, but it’s the only warning I get that I need to hydrate and lie down in a cool, dark place to head things off before the pain turns volcanic.

But I didn’t have that option today.

Not when I had to slog through security, check in, and run to my gate just in time for the boarding call. By the time I got on the plane, my head was spinning.

Now, as I wedge through the aisle and try not to gag, and the sounds of someone’s upset, teething baby pierce my skull like an ice pick, I wonder why I didn’t just book a train.

A nice, leisurely Amtrak ride from NYC to Seattle. It would take almost a week. No sudden takeoff, no noisy crowds, no screaming anything.

But noooo. I had to be Efficiency Girl and book a flight, forgetting that in her off time the fantabulous Efficiency Girl moonlights as Mistress Migraine.

So I grit my teeth, squint, and force my eyes to focus so I can count down the steps to my seat without vomiting.

At least I booked a window seat.

Sometimes watching the clouds helps ease the earthquake in my head, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll still have a nice corner to hide in.

When I get to my row, though, the aisle seat is already occupied by my seatmate.

It takes me a second to process the big, stiff man perched in the seat when there are sparks popping across my vision like the Fourth of July.

But when I finally see him—

Holy hell.

Did I say there was no bright side to this flight?

I was very, very wrong.

For a split second, I forget I’m battling the mother of all migraines.

My seatmate looks to be around his late thirties.

He’s tall. So tall that his knees press against the back of the seat in front of him, even with the extra legroom in business class.

He’s got a face cut from granite, stern and so handsome and intimidating he could be peeled right off the pages of a fashion magazine—especially with his perfectly tailored clothing.

A dark three-piece suit with a gorgeous dark-blue silk tie brings out the cutting, icy tints of blue in eyes brighter than the summer ocean. The suit is all angles, but it fits him in a way that says he’s nothing but solid muscle underneath.


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