Cover

About the Book

It might be a fake date, but what if he’s not faking it?

Loner Cole North has always been the odd guy out. His IQ is sky-high, but he’s not so bright when it comes to people or relationships. Years ago, he spurned expectations, shunned his family’s business, and embraced a career in construction instead. Now he values his job above everything, in part because of his secret feelings for his boss, Sierra. While he could never be right for her personally, he endeavors to be exactly what she needs professionally.

Remodeler Sierra Lowell might be creative, hardworking, and a color-outside-the-lines thinker in her job, but there’s one line she’s never crossed. It’s tough enough to be a woman in a man’s job without adding sex or emotions to the mix. Smart, sexy Cole is without question her right-hand man, but the lines get blurred when Sierra's life is complicated with a wedding date crisis and the television opportunity of a lifetime.

Cole impulsively steps up to be her go-to guy for both. When their fake date is interrupted by a family emergency, having Sierra at his side makes him realize there’s a fine line between alone and lonely and that maybe he’s ready for less of both. Can he find a way to go from being a right-hand man to the right man for her?

Chapter One

Getting dumped sucked, even when you weren’t that wild about the guy to start with.

Getting dumped two days before your sister’s wedding, being left dateless… That was an altogether different level of suck.

Sierra Lowell shut the back door of her business harder than she meant to and let out a quiet but heartfelt stream of swear words.

“Everything okay?”

She turned from the door to see Cole North, her foreman, sticking his head into the room.

“Fine,” she said, brushing off the irritation from her personal life and slipping back into business mode. It probably revealed a lot about her relationship—former relationship—that she so easily got her mind back on the subject of her meeting with Cole. “Sorry about the interruption.”

“You sure?” he asked as she approached him from across the kitchen of the century-old Cape Cod house that served as the headquarters of Dunn & Lowell Remodeling. They’d been about to start a two-person evening meeting when Kevin, her ex, had interrupted.

“Yep,” she said, not having to fake the optimism in her tone. “What I want to discuss is important.”

She led Cole back into her office, originally one of the two cozy bedrooms of the house, and retook her place at the round table in the center of the room.