Blurb

Zeb Evans doesn’t do messy.

The product of a disorganised and chaotic childhood, Zeb likes order and control, and as the boss of his own employment agency he can give that to himself. Life runs along strict lines and he never mixes business with pleasure. Everything in his life lives in neat, alphabetized boxes. Until Jesse.

Jesse Reed is Zeb’s complete opposite. He’s chaos personified. A whirling cyclone of disorder. He’s also charming and funny and a very unwanted distraction.

Which is why it comes as a complete surprise to Zeb to find himself asking Jesse to pose as his boyfriend for a few days in the country at a wedding.

Zeb doesn’t do impulsive, but as the time away progresses, he finds himself increasingly drawn to the merry and irreverent Jesse. But can he bring himself to break the hard-won lessons he’s learnt in life? And even if he can, how could Jesse be attracted to him anyway? He’s so much older than Jesse, not to mention being his boss.

From the bestselling author of the Mixed Messages and Finding Home series comes a warm and funny romance about one man’s fight for control and another man’s determination to circumvent it.

This is the first book in the Close Proximity series, but it can be read as a standalone.

Dedication

For Hailey

A wonderful friend

Epigraph

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Oscar Wilde

Prologue

Three Years Ago

Jesse

I settle back into my chair and try to find a comfortable resting spot. However, the hard plastic makes that as unlikely a possibility as Keanu Reeves descending to Covent Garden and declaring his undying love for me.

I’ve just drifted off to a lovely dream of licking his beard when the office’s inner door slams open and a young man comes marching out with high spots of colour glowing over his cheekbones. I look at him with interest. It’s a marked change from when he went in all high head and confident dazzling smile.

Not that it’s a surprise. All six previous interviewees have gone in the same way and left just as quickly. I settle back and watch as he exits the office in a cloud of angst and Hugo Boss aftershave, letting in the faint twang of petrol fumes from outside and a whiff of bread from the bakery next door.

Several of the other people dotted around the room stir and look at each other while the man at the desk, obviously well used to this, carries on scratching away with his pen on a piece of paper.