Not Pretending Anymore

A woman needs a roommate and has run a classified ad to find one. Her hopes are fading when Declan Tate turns up at her door. She had asked for a gorgeous man, though never as a tenant, and she is uneasy about living with a man at all.

She turns him down after the interview, since his humor and charm do not settle that worry. Then a batch of cupcakes he baked arrives at her door. Declan keeps up the pressure, and with no other candidate, she gives in and lets him move in.

Neither of them expects romance. She has a crush on one man, and Declan is interested in another woman. Living together, they become close friends and trade advice on how to get those crushes to notice them.

Then Declan proposes a plan: they will act like a couple to make their love interests jealous. She hesitates, then agrees. To her surprise, it works, and she ends up dating the man she had longed for while Declan gets the woman he wanted.

The trouble is that she cannot stop thinking about Declan. The feelings the two of them set out to fake have turned real for her, and the book turns on what she does about that. It is a friends-to-lovers romance with a light, comic tone, told in her first-person voice.