A fake marriage requires a fake husband.
This is the one small problem preventing Shay Donovan from becoming the sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s fortune.
The money would help with the medical bills for her father’s illness, except that she has no husband, she isn’t engaged, and there is no boyfriend in sight.
But what better candidate to select than the man who saved her life?
Blake Kennedy, a local factory owner, has spoken to Shay Donovan on many occasions.
He’s not interested in romantic liaisons, but the cute, funny and bespectacled recruitment consultant is a good reason for him to attend the monthly business meetings.
But when Shay asks him to marry her, he can’t quite believe his luck.
And when she tells him she’s only looking for a fake husband, he jumps at the opportunity to help her.
But living together, faking marriage and trying to hide his feelings doesn’t come easily.
Especially when Shay has her eyes set on another man.
Can they fake it for the money, or will the pressure get too much?
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Eight legs. Shay couldn’t stop looking at the spider’s long, spindly legs, and the mean way he was looking at her. She jumped back. Was it really possible that something so small could cause her so much fear? She didn’t like his beady little eyes.
Her heart thumped wildly, because the danger was real.
She reached for her insect catcher, which was always conveniently placed nearby. With the long-handled contraption in her hand, she crawled along the floor, shivering with horror as she tried to trap it in the little compartment. This was the tricky part. The spider crawled away, and she tried again until she finally managed to trap it. She flinched as she stared at it, even trapped, it still felt to her as if it was crawling along her bare skin. “Eww,” she winced, rising slowly from the floor, then pointed the bug-catcher out of the window, and released the unwanted intruder.
At times like this she missed having Jenna around. Jenna had no fear of these things. Maybe she was better prepared for them because of her cleaning jobs.
Not that Jenna would ever resort to any more cleaning jobs.
Not now that she was happily dating Reed Knight, one of Starling Bay’s wealthiest men.
It reminded her that she still needed to catch up with Jenna because her friend wanted to tell her all about her visit to Montana, a few weeks ago when she went along with Reed to the ranch where his parents lived.
They had been trying to meet up but with both of them busy at work, and Jenna obviously spending a lot of her spare time with Reed, setting a date had so far proved impossible. Plus, with Shay’s father recovering from his recent lung cancer surgery, she’d had no free time to herself, and spent the weekends at her parents’ place.
At least she’d get to see Jenna tonight with the monthly business owner’s social at the town hall. Jenna now worked for Hyacinth Fitzsimmons, Starling Bay’s self-proclaimed busybody, and she was responsible for the admin side of tonight’s meeting, namely the attendee list and the refreshment table.
These monthly meetings enabled all the business owners to mingle and network. Everyone was welcome, but it was mainly comprised of professional people, most of whom owned their own businesses. Shay and Francine attended every month because it was an opportunity to network and bring in more business for the recruitment company which Francine owned, and for which Shay worked.
She set the bug-catcher down, then brushed the dust off her skirt then noticed she had a stain on it.
Darn it.
She was already running late and Francine was a stickler for her Monday morning meetings. Rushing into her bedroom, Shay pulled out another skirt from her closet, then shimmied out of the one she was wearing when the phone went off. She answered quickly, pulling the new skirt on. “Hello,” she said, doing up the zipper as she balanced the phone on her shoulder and tilted her head.
“Is this Miss Donovan?”
It was a voice she didn’t recognize. “Yes.” She tugged at her blouse from under her skirt so that her blouse was smooth.
“Miss Shay Donovan?”
“Yes.” Irritation crept into her voice. “Who is this?”
“I’m calling from Dubois, Barclay and Kleinmeister.”
Who? This was different to the usual prank calls she received. She rolled her eyes because this was sucking up time she didn’t have, and she was already late for work. “Sorry, I’m not interested in whatever you have to sell.” And she hung up.
When the phone rang a second time, she cut it off, then grabbed her handbag and her cell phone, cast her eye over the apartment one more time, her eyes lasering in on the lookout for more creepy crawlies. Finding nothing, she breathed a sigh of relief then closed the door behind her.