Chapter One
IRINA
Irina Carmichael lovedlittle more than planning a good party. That one thing she adored more? Her nearly nonexistent, dehydrated excuse of an acting career. A soon-to-be rehydrated acting career, if the plan went well. A career she would nurture, cherish, and water like nobody’s business.
For now, she focused on her upcoming publicity stunt of a wedding. Super-fake in the love sense, but very real in the legal sense, and hopefully enough to give her career the jump-start it needed.
They were two days away from the big engagement news drop—a carefully positioned leak to the tabloids to spill the news. They’d thought about a big proposal. She’d even pitched it to the groom, because who wouldn’t want that? But in the end everyone worried it’d be too in-your-face and obvious.
“This is a lot of effort for an event that doesn’t really count,” Jeremy “Knox” Dillion—her friend and groom-to-be—said. He sat on the floor of the Denver, Colorado house they currently shared with her best friend Courtney and Courtney’s guy, Knox’s bandmate, and their baby. Currently they were babysitting little Harley so her mom and dad could catch a breather.
Baby Harley wasn’t even a year old yet as she hung out in her green giraffe bouncy seat. Knox strummed his guitar for her as Irina worked at the table with two planners, three kinds of scissors, stickers out the nose, and a stack of bridal magazines. Not to mention a Venti Vanilla Frappuccino.
“You’re barely paying attention.” It’s true, he was extremely uninvolved with the wedding planning, giving only cursory head nods and the occasional mm-hmm. Even when she’d been the one entertaining Ms. Harley with decisions about napkin color and lighting options.
“True.” He didn’t look up. “But I still notice, and I gotta say, you only need to put in about half the effort and you’ll still get the results.”
“Look,” Irina said. “I’m probably only going to have three or four weddings in my entire life.” She stapled a piece of cloth she intended for bridal gowns to her vision board. Well, it’d started to cover the entire wall, so it was more of a vision mural. But who was keeping track? “I want to make each one count.”
She used to harbor fantasies about happily-ever-after with the man of her dreams, but she’d fallen in love early and they’d ended up breaking each other’s hearts. Best not to get feelings involved, she discovered.
Knox harrumphed as a response and went back to strumming on his guitar. Saying something under his breath, and then grumbling about the strings before going back to his notes.
“If you didn’t have the tour coming up, then we wouldn’t be on such a tight schedule, hmm,” Irina sang the words, working them in with the few bars he’d been fighting with for the past hour.
Knox was tall—really tall—with blond hair he kept a touch too long, and a muscled body that made a girl want to touch it all over. He lived his life as a rock star. Specifically, keyboardist for the insanely popular Dimefront. Though he was officially on the keyboards, he also played guitar. And today he’d spent the entire afternoon drafting what he assured her was a new hit single. She believed him because she’d been listening—the song was excellent.
He even had Harley cooing.
Irina loved spending time with Harley and her mama. Her dad Bax wasn’t too bad, either. But Irina missed her life in Los Angeles. Not that she had tons of work there, which was why she needed an exposure boost to launch her career. Knox needed an image makeover since the paparazzi had branded him a big ol’ jerk of a player. This marriage of convenience between them was created with the hope it could fix both of their issues.
“Hey, are you going to write me a song for the wedding?” she asked, because a wedding song would be super kick-ass and a very nice addition to the soirée. She eyeballed a different shade of emerald green for the flower girl dresses—tone on tone might be perfection—as she spoke.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he mumbled with a pen clenched between his teeth. “You want one?”
“Uh-huh. Bax wrote Courtney a song. Lynx wrote Becca one, too.” These pairings were also genuine couples who had fallen in love. The home they stayed in was Bax and Courtney’s, across the street from Lynx and Becca. Up the way, at the end of the cul-de-sac, was Knox’s current renovation project. He’d bought the house from a couple who had a lot of cats that peed on the pink carpet regularly. The whole place did not smell good, and it wassuperpink. Not cute pink, either.
Once they got married and the renovations were through, Irina would stay there sometimes for the photo ops, but the true love thing? No. That’s not what Knox and Irina had. They were friends who got along well enough to get married, and he was wicked hot. Her goals did not align with a love match and neither did his, so it all worked out.
Who had time for love when there were future blockbusters to get callbacks on?
“Courtney had Bax’s baby.” Knox strummed a few chords, nodded, then wrote something on the lined music pad. “Becca puts out on the regular,” he continued. “That’s why they got songs. You wanna have my baby or put out for me?”
Hold up. She and Knox didn’t need to get carried away with things. She was neither going to put out or have his baby. But…
“I’ll putupwith you since I’m marrying you!” This was a big deal. Banks would link his credit to hers, she’d be legally responsible as his next of kin, and if he went to prison, she’d be the one who had to visit!
Again, an enormous deal.
“We arebothgetting what we want out of this.” He glanced up, grinning that wicked smile of his. That smile and those dimples were the kind of thing that got him in trouble. The abs and the talent didn’t hurt the total package situation either.
Knox took some serious heat in the tabloids for being the only original Dimefront band member still single and playing the field. It didn’t help that every time he turned around the tabloids were twisting something he said or did to make him look like he really was a player and a jerkface.
Sure, Dimefront had added two new guys to the stage. But they were still wet behind the ears—no one expected them to settle down and fall in love. Not when the groupies tossed themselves in their direction like confetti from a cannon.
But Knox? He was being branded as a player since he’d had his confetti days, and the world now wanted to seehislove match.
The branding him as a player thing? Totally hysterical, because he actually was not a player. Knox was a good guy with a heart so big sometimes she wondered how he wasn’t head over heels in love for real.
