By now this should be routine. But this time is different. For the first time, I want to break all my rules.
The gig is familiar, at least. Hired to become the girl of his dreams and pretend to date him. I’ve done this with a dozen clients or more, but Harrison is different. He doesn’t just want a pretty girl on his arm to impress. What he wants is something more.
He asked for me to be real. He wants to get to know me. But the closer I get the less it feels like pretending to me.
I can’t shake the feeling that something is off here. He’s not asking any of the right questions and he’s not pushing my limits. Harrison has been nothing but a perfect gentlemen, so why does it feel so different this time around?
I’m not playing a part anymore. I’m her, the closest to honesty I’ve ever been. I’m the girl of his dreams, and I’m terrified that he might be the man of mine.
I have rules to keep me sane and rules to keep me detached. Rules around distance and rules around touch. Rules that I’ve never broken once in all the years I’ve been doing this. Rules I’m thinking about casting aside.
Harrison makes me feel like it’s all so easy when I’m in his arms. He makes even me, the cynic, believe in love at first sight. He makes me think that there might be something beyond lies, some vulnerability that I could even love.
I want to love him, but I’m terrified that I’m missing something. I want to trust him, but I can’t pretend that he’s not hiding something from me.
I want to give in, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m giving in to a lie.
Girl For Hire is a sweet, steamy, and romantic full-length novel about a person hired to play the part of a woman in love, who discovers they may not need to act after all.
Excerpt
I can’t help but watch a movie like the one we just finished and think of myself as the girl in it. I’ve been swept off to stunning vistas and exotic locations too many times to count and sure, I’ve never gotten my happily ever after like you see in the films but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had my moments and it doesn’t mean that I’m not familiar with the finer things in life.
A life like that. A life of luxury. A life where, with a snap of his fingers, my date could make anything happen, no matter the expense.
But you know what none of those dates have ever done for me?
Harrison acts without speaking, smoothly pulling the blanket from off the back of the couch and draping it over me. Recognizing the chill in me and acting decisively to solve it, such a simple need but one that is all the more impressive for it.
Precisely because it’s not showy, not flashy. Simply because Harrison is grounded, unlike every man who has ever taken me out before.
He’s close to me when I turn to him. Closer than he ought to be. Close enough that if this was a movie like the one that we just finished, this would be the point where he reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and my lips would pout and we would both pause, knowing we shouldn’t, but thinking that we can’t help ourselves.
But it’s not a romance. It’s business and I know it. It’s not that kind of story and I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not naive and innocent, I’m jaded and set in my ways. I’m not going to fall for him, it’s just not going to happen that way.
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try because this is the way it always goes.
Whether it’s a billionaire on the balcony of a windswept mountain cabin or some ordinary guy sitting on a couch in his average apartment, every single one of them always tries. Every single one of them hears rule number one and views it as a challenge. They hear that sex is off the table and it’s like that’s the only thing in the whole damn world that they want anymore.
So when Harrison starts to lean in for a kiss, it is hardly surprising. It makes me sad, a little, because the whole evening had been so nice that it is a real shame it had to end on a sour note. With him tricking me into thinking that he’s a gentleman and then him pressing his luck, leaning into me and pursing his lips as my eyes fix on his and… and…
For one blinding moment I can’t stop looking at his eyes. Brown with flecks of emerald and they flicker this way and that, reading my face for any sign of anything. Reading me and watching me as he dips into me and Harrison is a gentleman or he was a gentleman but that doesn’t mean that he’s immune. But still I can’t look away from his eyes and I can’t stop thinking about the fact that it would be interesting to know how he kisses.
Even if it leant entirely the wrong impression, the man is a curiosity and a mystery to me. I don’t in the least comprehend the how and why of him. I don’t understand him at all.
I don’t know what it would be like to kiss him.
Kissing him would answer at least one question for me.
Kissing him wouldn’t be that bad, right?