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Parker Elliott (aka Recovering Dweeb Desperately Seeking a Fake Fiancée)

I used to think rock bottom was that moment when I convinced a seedy-looking middle-aged couple at the bus stop just over the state border to pretend to be my parents and sign off on my marriage license to Randy Pickle on our senior skip day in high school. You can’t get much lower than eloping to Connecticut a week before graduation with the guy voted most likely to pick his nose while debating with himself over whether Star Wars or Star Trek was the better franchise.

At seventeen, after four years of being the pimpled, brace-faced, bespeckled dweeboid of Julian Oakland High, I figured marrying Randy was as good as I’d ever get. And he probably thought the same of me.

He was sweet enough, but totally clueless when it came to women. During our brief marriage, his nose got more action than I did. Not that I knew any better. And judging by the way he recoiled in panic when I took my clothes off, I can say with absolute certainty that seeing me naked scarred him for life.

Which kinda scarred me for life too.

And which I also didn’t know wasn’t normal.

Still, given the state of my life upon high school graduation, I figured the only place I could go was up.

Right?

Wrong.

Up would be confidently strolling into my high school reunion next month in a killer dress and heels, alone, unashamed, and fabulous. Dropping little tidbits about my enviable fabulous life.

Why, yes, I am a vice president at the country’s fastest-growing organic grocery store chain.

My delicious Latin lover couldn’t make it because he was called in to do emergency neurosurgery on—oh, I’m sorry, in the interest of national security, I’m not authorized to say who.

Of course they’re real.

Reality, though, is not on my side. My boobs are real, but D’s on a 36-inch underband look more like lemons than grapefruits. Also, it’s possible my problem is less in my breasts and more in my tendency to compare them to sour fruit. What guy wants to fondle a lemon?

Correction: What normal, healthy, attractive man wants to fondle a lemon?

Definitely not my usual type.

My last lover was Latin, but only if you consider a lover to be someone who makes more passes at his clam chowder than he does at his date, which, no, is not a euphemism. And the closest I have to a killer dress is the outfit I was wearing when this guy in line in front of me at the coffee shop dropped dead of a heart attack last year.

And yes, the firefighter who shoved me out of line to start CPR was utterly charming and adorable, but timing, people. Timing. A man was dead.

Now, my reunion is three weeks away, the stars have not aligned, and I need some serious arm candy.

Which is why I’m loitering in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Friday night, an hour after being outbid on Tarzan at the superhero-themed bachelor auction, waiting for him to leave so I can proposition him.

This isn’t desperation.

It’s a tactical strategy to get me through Hell: Revisited, which I would bail on in an instant if my boss hadn’t asked me to go and schmooze one specific former classmate who just happens to now own the nation’s largest experimental indoor hops farm.

Fucking Randy Pickle and his fucking Pickle Hops.

Okay, fine.

This is desperation. But organic beer—and my continued employment—is a good cause. So is literacy. And since I caught my boss having sex with his girlfriend in his office, you’re damn right I blackmailed him for money to buy myself a hot date for my reunion.

Wait, that didn’t come out right. I’m not usually a blackmailer. And my boss doesn’t always bang his—okay, yes, actually, he does, but that’s not the point.

The point is, if I’d known some redheaded bombshell shoehorned into a rockin’ tinfoil dress was going to show up with a hundred thousand freaking dollars to steal the best superhero of the night, I would’ve asked for a bigger budget.

Crap.

Still not helping my self-respect here.

But I don’t care anymore because there’s Tarzan, strolling out of the elevator banks.

I perk up, my nipples perk up, and my determination goes into hyperdrive.

He’s ditched the loincloth—dammit—in favor of butter-soft denim gift-wrapping his long, muscular legs and that package that was barely contained in his stage clothes. No more glimpses of his eight-pack either. It’s covered by a casual green T-shirt that hugs his pecs and is probably restricting blood flow to his biceps.

I get a hint of that tattoo on his upper arm and shoulder though.

Unfortunately, the Tarzan-stealer is stepping out of the elevator with him.

Shit.

I suck in a breath.

No matter. Unless she’s actually his girlfriend, planted in the audience to disrupt the bidding on him at the last minute, I might still have a shot.

And if not, I’ll never see either one of them again, so what’s a little pride lost?

My heart’s peaking near heart-attack zones, my legs feel buzzy and heavy, and I’m having a little trouble swallowing, but I’m going to do this.

I lift a shaky arm as Tarzan and the tinfoil woman approach the door. Dammit, she’s pretty, and that shiny silver minidress is doing ah-mazing things for her well-proportioned curves. I’m sporting my trusty old LBD, but next to her, it might as well be a garbage sack.

“Tarzan? Ah, sorry—Mr. Romance? Do you have a minute?” My voice squeaks and does a weird throaty thing like I’m channeling Kermit the Frog. They both stop and glance at me.

“Hi,” I say.

The redhead tilts her head at me curiously. She has green eyes, just like Tarzan, but hers are more on the grassy end of the spectrum while his are a lovely shade of olive with gold flecks adding depth. He should have some flaws close up, but he’s even more deadly handsome in person than he was on a stage.

Especially when recognition flares in his expression, and a warm smile spreads over his lips. “Hey. Table seventeen, right?”

Hot, literate, and friendly.

Why the hell didn’t I demand half a million to get me a man tonight?

Oh, right. Because the highest a man’s ever gone for at this particular auction was around fifteen grand. I thought I was already in overkill territory.

“I…yeah.” I look at the woman who doubled my out-of-this-stratosphere bid and go for a smile that says sorry and you bitch and I’m going to try really hard not to throw up because this is way outside my comfort zone but my high school reunion will be even worse, so just bear with me a minute, okay? And I think all I manage to convey is I. Am. Such. A. Dork. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She smiles too, and holds out her hand, and I feel like she’s thanking me for taking the bidding so high rather than thanking me for congratulating her on winning. Is this what rich people do? Politely thank each other for helping show off how wealthy they are? “Lila Valentine. And you are…?”

Definitely not willing to confess my name. “You can call me Miss P.”

Tarzan coughs. I realize I’ve just asked him to call me something that sounds like a bodily fluid, and my face flares so hot I’m afraid lava might shoot out my nose.

And I need to stop thinking of him as Tarzan. He’s Knox M., librarian by day, romance novel enthusiast and author of the popular Mr. Romance blog by night. He’s also a studmuffin and, by far, the best candidate for my job.

“I need a hot date to my high school reunion,” I blurt. “If I still donate that fifty grand for charity, can you be free in three weeks and pretend to be my fiancé? I can also offer a marketing consultation on your blog. It’s great, but I think with some tweaks, you could really turn it into something with some power…”

I trail off, because now they’re both staring at me, speechless.

Possibly like I’ve sprouted dancing penises out my ears.

Or possibly I’ve broken some cardinal bachelor auction rule.

“I was a big dweeb,” I whisper, and oh, god, I’m going to cry. No way. This is my sales pitch, and while I know the tears would sell it, they’re too real, and I refuse to expose myself that raw. “The biggest. And I wouldn’t go at all, except I need to connect with…an ex…for business reasons, and I just got a promotion at work and I have to prove myself and my last date thought offering to share his eggplant at dinner was foreplay, and I just thought…”

And I just thought complete strangers would care that my love life is dead and I still haven’t gotten over the trauma of high school. I’m the vice president of marketing at the fastest-growing organic grocery store chain in the nation, and here I am, babbling to two of the world’s most beautiful people about my teenage trauma.

They’re both watching me, letting me ramble on and on while they stand there, ridiculously attractive and sophisticated and probably thinking about how they’re going to bang each other like monkeys all night, then bang like rabbits all morning, and like drums all day, then feast on caviar and foie gras and champagne dusted with ground fairy wings.

Because that’s what gorgeous, sexy, single grownups do, whereas I’m suddenly confessing to that day in biology class when I felt something aching in my ear and I reached a finger in to rub it and exploded a massive pimple that wouldn’t stop bleeding and I had to go to the nurse’s office and I spent the rest of the year being called Pimple Popper Parker by all the jockholes on the football team.

And it’s official.

I’d be far better off taking a solo trip across the country to Netflix and chill in some remote cabin all by myself rather than show up at my reunion with anyone.

I might fake my own death while I’m out there so I don’t have to explain to my mother why she’s never getting grandchildren out of me. Or explain to my boss why he’s going to have to find someone else to schmooze my ex-husband.

“Parker, is it?” Knox interrupts gently, and I know what’s coming.

A big, fat no.

Before he can utter it, I shove my program at him. “My number’s in there. Just…think about it, and call me. Please.”

I don’t wait around for the big N-word to drop, because silence is a much kinder rejection, and despite my usual luck with men, I’m hoping the lure of another fifty grand for literacy will appeal to his librarian heart.

Also, this isn’t yet as mortifying as marrying Randy Pickle in the first place, and there’s no way I’m waiting around for it to get there.