Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
“Front and center in at least three,” he says sheepishly. “You’re feeding me cake. I’m licking frosting off your ring finger. It’s a whole thing.”
“But no one knew our real names.”
Maverick laughs. “Babe. We won the Super Bowl last year.”
We won the Super Bowl last year . . .
“Anyway,” he continues. “My agent called.”
His agent called. Of course he has an agent—duh. And probably a publicist. And a manager. And . . . and . . .
I stand and pace the deck. “Okay. So your agent knows. Does he hate me?”
“It’s a she, and no. No one hates you. Yet.”
“Yet?” My eyes bug out of my skull.
“I’m kidding!” he says. “She wants to chat. Said something about ‘narrative control’ and ‘capitalizing on momentum’ and ‘Instagram strategy’—I tuned out.”
“Capitalizing?” My voice cracks. “Like—this is good for your career?”
“Could be,” he says with a shrug. “Depends how we spin it.”
Spin it?
Spin It?
I whip around toward him. “We’re not spinning anything! I’m a small-town wedding planner who accidentally fake married a professional athlete, who banged him on the beach in the middle of the night and has photos of myself getting licked!”
Maverick barks out a laugh. “You have to put that on a business card.”
“Oh my God—are you enjoying this?”
“Obviously.” He laughs again. “The world knows, Annabelle. We might as well make the most of it.”
“Make the most of it? How?” I’m stunned for various reasons, the main one being: This man wants to stay fake married. To Me?
Little me from the middle of nowhere?
“Come to Arizona with me,” he goes on. “Thirty days. You can work remotely and do video appointments. And after those thirty days we either never speak to each other again or we make it official.”
Official.
I stare at him, doing my best to keep my jaw from dropping open.
He wants to pretend we’re actually married? Because the media caught wind of it?
I can hardly wrap my brain around that, to begin with. Me, Annabelle Franklin, all over the sports news. Like—what? What planet am I living on?
As if Maverick senses my hesitation, he continues. “We’ll go to your apartment tomorrow, pack enough of your things for a few weeks and get you situated. Then you can come to Arizona.”
“Get me situated?”
Maverick shrugs, like he didn’t just suggest uprooting my entire life—not that there’s a ton to uproot. “You’ll need your laptop, chargers, favorite pillow—whatever you can’t live without for a month.”
“My sanity feels like a top contender . . .”
He grins, undeterred. “Bring that too.”
I cross my arms. “You’re being serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“And you think this is normal?”
“Babe. What’s normal anymore?”
True. He has a point . . .
That’s how we end up at my apartment.
Maverick stands in the middle of my tiny living room like a yeti trying not to knock over furniture. He’s way too big for this space. His head almost brushes the ceiling fan, and his duffel bag looks comically out of place next to my floral area rug and mason jar vase full of fake peonies.
“This is . . . cozy,” he says diplomatically, eyeing the bookshelf, which has paperbacks stacked on it, the basket of laundry I did not fold, and the bar cart I had to have but never use.
“Thanks.” I start gathering the essentials—laptop, chargers, toiletries, a handful of comfy clothes, and my favorite throw blanket.
He crouches by the bookshelf, picking up a well-worn paperback and flipping it over. “You’ve got, like, five books with shirtless dudes on the cover.”
“Correction, most of them have shirtless dudes on the cover.”
He grins, thumbing through one. I toss a pair of sweatpants into my duffel and snatch the book out of his hands.
Maverick lifts a brow as his eyes skim the page. “I just made a mental note to growl more often.”
“Please don’t.”
Too late—he growls. Full-on, deep and exaggerated, like a bear. Then he clears his throat and adopts the Scottish accent again. “I’ll be readin’ this one by candlelight, lass.”
This perks me up. Is it possible he’s a romantic? “Oh, you’re a candlelight kind of guy?”
“Aye.” He leans against the bookshelf. “Me and”—he looks at the cover again to see the title—“Highlander’s Forbidden Desire, alone under the stars.”
I snort. “You’d be so lucky.”
Before he can fire back, my phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I pull it out to see Lucy’s name lighting up the screen with her contact photo: a blurry selfie of the two of us mid-laugh, our faces smushed together. Ahh, good times, good times . . .
I swipe to answer. “Hey, hang on—”
I wave a hand toward Maverick as I back out of the room to take the call in the safety of my bedroom.
It’s Lucy, I mouth, pointing to the phone.
He nods, already ignoring me, lost in whatever steamy part of the book he’s found.
Lucky him.
I shut the door behind me and press the phone to my ear. “What’s up?”