Friends Without Benefits

Elizabeth Finney has three defining traits: she knits, she is sarcastic to a fault, and the sarcasm gets worse when she is nervous. The person who makes her most nervous is Nico Manganiello.

Elizabeth holds firm opinions and rarely doubts them. Boy bands deserve more respect than society gives them. Casual arrangements with handsome, interchangeable men work best when no friendship is involved. And her one real chance at true love has already passed.

Then Nico, her old nemesis, derails her plan for benefits without friendship. He is charming, irritating and openly chauvinistic. Elizabeth tries to keep her guard up and keep him from getting under it, because the thing she most wants to avoid is falling for him.

This is the second book in the Knitting in the City series, which follows seven friends in a Chicago knitting group. It stands alone and runs about 110,000 words. The tone is a contemporary romantic comedy, built on banter and misadventure, and the question is whether Elizabeth's defences will hold.