Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
But she was desperate. Desperate enough to marry a man she despised.
All she had to do was get through the year married to a cocky alpha male who only thought of women as notches on his bedpost.
She had her reasons.
So did he.
They had to lie to their friends and families, try to survive a year with each other.
It was that simple.
Until it became clear she had to resist him.
Because Kip Goodman wasn’t who she thought he was.
And that was dangerous.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
one
The Proposal
“Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Not a question I thought I’d ever be asked again in my lifetime.
In fact, when I’d come to this country, I’d made very specific promises to myself about marriage, about belonging to a man in any way.
Namely that I’d never belong to a man again.
But the problem was I was fucking terrible at keeping promises to myself.
“I do,” I said through gritted teeth, not slurring my words, which in and of itself was pretty fucking impressive considering how drunk I was.
Not drunk enough, it seemed.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Ocean-blue eyes bored into mine. They were hard, angry, almost communicating that he was doing this, standing here, against his will.
Except he’d gone into this with his full faculties, and this whole thing was his idea.
“I do,” he ground out. The two words sounded like they were painful. Like someone was holding a gun to his head.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Fuck.
I’d known this part was coming. Which was, in part, why I was so close to being wasted. That and the whole being married thing.
We had to do it. The whole point of the wedding was to make it believable. I feared we hadn’t been doing so well up until this point. I’d stumbled down the aisle, Kip glowered the entire time, and both of us were standing as far away from each other as we could, like we were afraid the other was contagious.
We’d agreed ahead of time that the kiss had to happen. But now that it was right here, I couldn’t make myself move. The man across from me—my husband—looked like he was glued to the spot.
There was a tense moment.
Fuck.
It was going to be over before it started.
That was okay, wasn’t it? This was a ridiculous idea in the first place.
Could we still pull off the whole ‘being in love’ thing without the kiss? I could say I had a cold sore. Or that he didn’t like PDA.
But before I could blurt out something of the like, he kissed me. Grabbed me by the back of the neck and laid one on me.
This was not a chaste peck on the lips to satisfy our tiny audience. No. This was a kiss. With tongue.
A lot of it.
I was so shocked that I responded.
I went into auto-kiss mode. That had to be it.
There would be no other reason why I would essentially make out with the man I kind of hated who I’d just married.
And my body’s response? The heat in every inch of my skin, my thighs clenching together with need… yeah, that had to be the booze. And the fact that I hadn’t gotten laid in three months.
It couldn’t be because I was attracted to my new husband.
No.
How in the fuck did this happen again?
four years earlier
When I first met Kip Goodman, it wasn’t exactly hate at first sight, but it was close. When I first met Kip, he walked in with Rowan. Who was tall, muscled, dark haired and wore broody like it was embedded into his skin. He walked around with a grimace, like he had the world on his shoulders and would literally growl at someone if they looked at him wrong.
Kip sauntered in beside him with an easy smile, straight white teeth, tanned skin and dirty blond hair escaping from his baseball cap.
“Well, I know that this is going to be my new favorite bakery,” Kip said when he made it to the counter. He rested his elbows on the pink surface, his sinewy forearms on display with his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows.
His azure gaze went lazily up and down my body as he shamelessly checked me out.
“What’s your name, darlin’?” he asked when he finally made it to my eyes, which were narrowed at him.
“Well, it’s certainly not darlin’,” I responded, imitating his accent on the last word, my tone sharp and aggressive.
His eyes flared and his smile widened at my response, not put off in the slightest. “Ah, an accent, Australian, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve never had an Australian before.”
I scowled at him, at his words and the easy, confident way in which he delivered them.
“You certainly won’t be having this one,” I replied, voice tight and hackles up.
He thrummed the counter with his fingers. They were long, slender yet manly.
“I wouldn’t sound so sure,” he murmured. “I’m gonna grow on you.”
I tilted my head as I ran my eyes purposefully up and down his body in the same manner he had to me. He was tall, wearing faded jeans that were stained with paint, work boots and a tee underneath a red flannel. He was wearing a worn baseball cap. His angular jaw was covered in a light dusting of stubble only a shade darker than his dirty blond hair.