Blurb:
Carey Duncan has worked for home remodelling and design gurus Melissa and Rusty Tripp for nearly a decade and has helped them build an empire. The Tripps are on the verge of superstardom. There’s only one problem: America’s favourite couple can’t stand each other. James McCann was originally hured as a structural engineer, but now, both he and Carey must go on a book tour with the Tripps to keep the wheels from falling off the proverbial bus. Carey and James vow to work together to keep their bosses’ secrets hidden, and their own jobs secure. But if they stop playing along – and start playing for keeps – they may have the chance to build something beautiful together.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Contemporary Romance and Fiction
- Highly recommend for 14 years and above
- TW: cheating, explicit language
- Romance Tropes: enemies to lovers, fake marriage, workplace romance
Book Quotes:
- “I want to make her life better by being the best thing in it.”
- “Relationships are a lot like houses: without a good foundation, they’ll crumble. When a light bulb goes out, you don’t buy a new house, you change the bulb. When the faucet drips, you don’t start mopping the floor before you fix the leak. In other words, no matter how much digging it takes, it’s important to get to the root of a problem.”
- “Probably that women are always being told to behave in a way that makes everything more harmonious, productive, accessible. They’re told how to do everything from how to dress to how to smile. Men are never told to make things easier for people, but maybe they should be.”
- “Of course happy couples fight! Two strong minds coming together are never going to agree on everything, and it’s healthy to express those feelings. But what we had to learn was that it was the way we were expressing our feelings that wasn’t healthy. Shouting doesn’t make anyone feel better. Storming off doesn’t fix any problems.”
- “Another important piece of taking care of a sexual relationship in marriage is to keep it private.”
- From this close, it’s impossible to miss that he has really pretty eyes. But, like many men, he ruins the effect by speaking.
- Her body is so tiny, honed from years with a trainer and a steady diet of cotton balls and water. I’m just kidding—she also stores my tears in a jar. It keeps her hair blond and her crow’s-feet at bay.
- I know she doesn’t need me here to help, but in her expression I see that she likes that I’m with her right now, and it makes me feel godlike.
- Only a tiny beat passes—the time it takes for the words to travel across the room, for his brain to interpret them—and then James grins, crossing to me in a few short steps.
- But this James also has hungry hands.
- We’re both alone, and for so long I insisted that wasn’t the same thing as being lonely. Now I’m not so sure.
- The sky still feels like a secret—deep blue-black but illuminated, like a light shining through fabric. Under the covers it’s warm, and my entire body has that heavy, weighted feeling where I can get lost in the sensation of being completely still.
- On a scale of fine to nonverbal for the rest of the tour, how weird is it going to be between us now that we’ve had sex?
- I’ve never really let myself want someone this way. Never let them know the parts of me that I spend so much time hating or trying to hide. It’s nice to just be me.
- Is this what love feels like? Like your chest is a hot air balloon, and you have to just hold on and go where it takes you?
- “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say sharply, “is my newfound self-preservation making you uncomfortable?”
- “James McCann: assistant, engineer, and infatuated boyfriend, at your service.”