Pretend To Be Mine: A Steamy Small Town Ice Hockey Billionaire Romantic Comedy
Jenna Cole
Reese Calloway doesn't do charming men with money. She has a list of reasons — a good list, a sensible list, a list that has kept her heart intact through three of her mother's cautionary romances and one very firm promise to herself. What she does do is photograph weddings, protect her beloved small town rink, and absolutely, categorically refuse to be impressed by six-foot-three defensemen with aggressively geometric jawlines and too much net worth.
Cole Ashford didn't come to Maple Ridge, Vermont to fall for anyone. He came to sign off on a renovation budget, manage his grandmother's annual invasion, and get back to Boston before the small-town charm ate him alive. He did not plan to spend three hundred and forty dollars trying to win a stuffed moose at a carnival ring toss booth. He definitely did not plan for Reese.
The deal is simple: two weeks of fake dating through the Maple Ridge Winter Carnival, and Cole funds the full rink renovation — no strings, no naming rights, no premium event nonsense. Reese gets what the community needs. Cole gets Eleanor off his back.
Nobody planned for the coat closet.
But fake smiles don't explain why she can't stop photographing him when he's not performing. And a business arrangement doesn't explain why he went to three florists for wildflowers he left on her porch with no note, because he didn't know what it would say. Somewhere between the decapitated ice sculpture, the midnight rink sessions, and one extremely inconvenient seven-year-old with a stuffed moose and coaching opinions, the deal stopped being a deal — and neither of them has a strategy for that.
Reese has spent years building something real in a place she chose on purpose. Cole has spent fifteen years acquiring things he never had to choose. This is the part where one of them has to be unstrategic first.
Spoiler: it's going to be messy, it's going to be loud, and it's going to involve a microphone and twenty-two hundred witnesses.
Pretend To Be Mine is a laugh-out-loud, scorching-hot standalone romantic comedy packed with fake dating, forced proximity, and a small town that meddles with surgical precision and absolutely zero apology. Perfect for fans of Pippa Grant, Lili Valente, and Penny Reid.
If you love billionaires who get outwitted by grandmothers, heroines who refuse to be props, and hockey towns that treat Friday night games like a civic religion — this one's for you.
The rink is saved. The deal is over. The feelings are a whole other problem.
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