A secret romance writer discovers that the hottest story of summer might just be the one happening between her and the Prime Minister’s bodyguard, from the international bestselling author of Andi Zeigler lives a double life. By day, she’s the no-nonsense, steadfast personal assistant to the Prime Minister of Canada’s wife. By night, she slips out of her heels and writes romance novels under a top-secret pen name. But when her steamiest book, Enter Nolan Crosby, the PM’s new close protection officer (aka bodyguard) – and Andi’s failed one-night stand from three years ago. Nolan’s in town very temporarily to care for his mother, who’s battling early-onset Alzheimer’s. But when the scandal erupts, Andi ropes him into a fake-dating plan. As loyal employees, they’ll pretend to date for the summer, just long enough to put the scandal to bed and save their boss’s reputation. In an unexpected plot twist, Andi and Nolan discover that keeping their romance strictly fictional might be easier said than done.

Autorentext
Amy Lea is the international bestselling author of romantic comedies for adults and teens, including Mindy Kaling’s Book Studio selection Woke Up Like This. Her acclaimed works have been featured in USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and ELLE Canada, and has been long listed as a CBC Canada Reads finalist. They have also been optioned for film and sold to over a dozen foreign territories.

When Amy is not writing, she can be found fangirling over other romance books on Instagram (@amyleabooks), eating potato chips with reckless abandon, and snuggling with her husband and two goldendoodles in Ottawa, Canada.

Leseprobe
chapter 1

Andi

three years ago

There's something liberating about sitting in a crowded bar, elbow to elbow with drunken strangers, casually writing a piping hot love scene.

Until tonight, I've avoided writing in public, mainly because I'm an easily distracted individual, an unintentional eavesdropper. When the women next to you are having a "serious sit-down" with a third friend who is "almost certainly" being catfished by a bald man in a trailer park in Manitoba, one can't just tune it out. Then there's Taylor Swift's newest single about her big breakup with Joe blaring over the speakers, her poetic, lyrical genius filling me with life and withering imposter syndrome simultaneously. Or the man in a toque joking that I'm "hard at work on the next bestseller," a well-meaning quip that's both depressing and as likely as a short, mild Ottawa winter (hint: highly improbable, practically statistically negligible). Even the piece of lint on the sleeve of my sweater can induce a brain fart.

Then there's the ever-present risk of someone glancing at my tablet, seeing my latest penis euphemism, and being so scandalized, they choke to death on a mouthful of bar nuts. A touch dramatic? Maybe. But one has to consider these things. Ottawa is a reserved, buttoned-up city.

To be fair, the patrons at this bar are too busy drinking and socializing to care about the stone-faced woman sitting in the corner, wrapped in her emotional support cardigan, lost in her quest to make fictional people fall in love. That, or they can't decipher my tiny size 8 font.

Distractions aside, being in public offers a wealth of inspiration, like the women secretly playing footsie under the table next to mine while on dates with unsuspecting men. The petite lady who can barely keep her hands off her man as he twirls her around on the strobe-lit dance floor.

I'm not sure why I haven't done this sooner. With the intensity of my new day job, getting words down in the privacy of my apartment is becoming a rarity. That's why I'm taking advantage of the time until my best friend, Laine, shows up.

The crowd melts around me as my fingers dance across the keyboard, barely keeping pace with my brain. With each keystroke, I slip deeper into my starry daydream of a fictional world. It's an enchanting place where men aren't trash and there are gentle, sugary forehead kisses aplenty. Where every touch is laced with a tenderness that makes you feel weightless. In my little world, love doesn't fizzle, it endures. It scoops you up and holds you tight in its warm embrace, making good on its promise to never let go. It makes you feel like everything will be okay, even if it won't. I'm so lost in my own head, I barely register when someone tugs my hand.

"I should have known I'd find you hiding in the corner," Laine shouts over the pulse of the music, eyeing my tablet screen with her heavily lined hawk eyes before I can slam it shut. "What are you doing?"

"My to-do list for work," I say quickly, cheeks aflame with the heat of my blatant lie as she hands me a gin and tonic. Here's the straight-up truth: I haven't told anyone about my writing since I started a couple months ago. Not even my best friend, who knows everything about me, down to my monthly cycle. Maybe it's superstitious and silly, but if I tell people, it's no longer mine. It's no longer a magical, sacred project I can escape into, tend to in my quiet moments. It feels too new, too raw. Sharing it with people, particularly Laine, who will demand to read it, opens it up to scrutiny and critique that I don't have the mental fortitude for-yet. In fact, I'd rather hurl myself into the rapids of the Ottawa River than live with the knowledge that, somewhere out there, a human being has read my words and may have thoughts (good or bad).

While I love Laine, I already know she would judge me. Hard. Anytime I pick up a romance novel around her, she rolls her eyes and suggests something with a gold Pulitzer Prize stamp on the cover. If you looked on her bookshelves, you'd only find classics, war and terror academia books, and poetry.

So, for now, I write for me.

"Come dance!" Laine barely waits for me to shove my tablet in my bag before dragging me onto the congested dance floor. "Love the one-piece. Very Audrey Hepburn meets Catwoman," she decides, twirling me around. It's a far cry from skintight, high-gloss pleather, but Laine has a tendency to give aggressively ego-boosting compliments. The jumpsuit in question is black chiffon with a flirty keyhole back, not that it's visible under my cardigan. But as a woman working in politics, nothing feels better than abandoning the tyranny of tummy-control pantyhose.

I close my eyes, drink, and let the lights blur around me in a red haze. For the first time in a long time since my breakup three months ago, I'm feeling playful, rebellious, and, dare I say, a smidge sexy-until I have to use the bathroom. In a one-piece.

Comfort aside, I hadn't considered the logistics of peeing in a one-piece. So here I am, vulnerable, outfit around my ankles, boobs out, praying whoever just walked in can't see me in all my nude glory through the alarmingly wide crack in the stall door.

And then the worst happens. Because of course it does.

While I'm mid-pee, the door flings open to a pair of startlingly blue eyes. I've never seen eyes this striking-like the artificially colored blue raspberry Kool-Aid my little sister and I used to chug straight from the plastic jug on those swelteringly humid summer days in our top-floor apartment with no AC. The kind that stains your tongue and teeth for a week.

The eyes in question belong to a very startled man.

At least, I'm pretty sure it's a dude. The bathrooms in this bar are unisex, individual stalls.

We let out simultaneous screams, though mine is more like a piercing wail. I flail about on the toilet like an injured flamingo, endeavoring to cover my ugliest bra-thick straps, "not-tonight" beige, probably three years too old to deserve any place in my drawer. It's so bad, I forget to hide my lower half, which is covered by sweet nothing. This exact…