Q

What’s the actual last thing you’d ever want your celebrity crush to see you doing when you finally come face-to-excruciatingly-handsome-face with him? Singing and dancing around by yourself to “Dreams” by The Cranberries while drinking straight from a bottle of champagne? While you’re wearing some wedding gown you just found in a closet? Yeah. Me too. And yet, here we are. At a mountain cabin I was sent to by the awfully pretty actress/pretty awful human I work for to get things ready for her romantic New Year’s Eve getaway with him.

Dominic Hardy might be an award-winning architectural engineer with fancy degrees and considerable accolades, but he doesn’t know a thing about baking. He doesn’t even like sugar. So when my late stepfather’s will states that Dominic Hardy is set to inherit the Pacific Coast Resort he’d painstakingly designed, as long as my bakery can be plopped in the middle of it, it’s no surprise he balks.

I’ve been quiet long enough. I’m nothing like my brothers. I’ve devoted my life to my work, and I don’t care about God or family. I live alone, and I like it that way. Soon, I’ll have the job of my dreams far away from this place, and that’s all that matters. Everything is going perfectly. That is until Sadie Green walks into my class. She is brilliant and funny and infuriating, and she’s ruining everything I have planned for my life. When she gets the news that she’s pregnant, and the baby’s father isn't going to help her, I step in. She needs guidance, control, and discipline.

I had a plan to escape the friend zone. Step one: sneak into Reed’s room. Step two: sleep with him. But when the lights turned on, it wasn’t familiar blue eyes I saw. These were dark, angry, and full of demons. And they belonged to Reed’s much-older brother. Four years later, Nash Prescott is no longer the help’s angry son. I’m no longer the town’s prized princess. At 22, I’m broke, in need of a job. At 32, he’s a billionaire, in need of revenge.

He proposed . . . and I said yes. Normally a jovial occasion for a couple in love, but this proposal has a very different feel. Because the man that I'll be calling my husband blew into town with one thing on his mind . . . to make my life a living nightmare. So why did I say yes? Well, because we both need something from each other. Namely, I want the farm land he currently owns, and he needs a wife in order to inherit his family cabin in his grandfather’s will. So as he so eloquently put it, my hand, for his land.

Everyone warned me that the CFO of McCord Media was a nightmare to work for. I knew it going in, but I figured I could keep my head down and stay under Cole McCord’s radar. I figured wrong. Because a month before I started as his assistant, Mr. Ruthless and I spent one scorching hot night together in bed.

Clark Griswold was onto something...at least with his annual holiday meltdown. And since the last three weeks of my life have been riddled with humbug—another breakup, a broken toe, an office promotion I deserved and didn’t get—I’m not at all in the mood to celebrate nor have the happ, happ, happiest Christmas EVER.

When you’re an artist, everything has to be perfect. Or so I thought, until my professor told me my perfection was boring and unoriginal. Studying abroad in Florence has taught me one thing: I know nothing when it comes to what makes art truly beautiful. So, with my professor's words in my ear, I step outside one evening and decide to say yes to any and everything I’m faced with until the sun rises.

Sex comes with a price tag. One I’m quite willing to pay. In fact, I prefer it. It’s easier that way, and in my life, I prefer ease. Prefer for most things to be transactional.

Word to the wise, never become roommates with a girl you’ve been pining over for the better part of a year. You're probably wondering why I would do such a thing? Well, I didn’t. It was my teammates. The moment they found out Blakely White was single, they took it upon themselves to play cupid and instruct me on how I should win her over. Don't wear a shirt around her. Make her dinner. Lightly touch her shoulder when you say goodbye. I'm so flustered, so overwhelmed, so madly in love with this woman who barely notices me.