Degrees of Engagement

by Jennifer Hennessy

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

'Full of sweet heat, banter, and a beautiful, long-anticipated connection, DEGREES OF ENGAGEMENT is an ode to the many paths life can take-and what happens when you let the right person go on the journey with you' GRACE REILLY

'A swoony, horny heartache that Ali Hazelwood fans will be clamouring for. I loved it!' LIZZIE HUXLEY-JONES

A celebration of non-traditional milestones and a book for anyone who's been patiently waiting for their own achievements to be noticed, Degrees of Engagement is the hot new romantic comedy perfect for fans of The Love Hypothesis.

Bianca Dimitriou has attended countless bridal showers, bachelorette weekends and destination weddings for her friends and family. But when they all fail to show up to celebrate her PhD, she realises it just isn't a milestone they value.

Angry, sad and yes, a little drunk, Bianca decides a fake engagement to brooding classmate Xavier Byrne is the perfect revenge. It's only supposed to last long enough to prove her point. But when her loved ones' reaction to her 'engagement' is everything Bianca was afraid of, she's tempted to let it go on just a bit longer. . .

The tension that's always simmered unspoken between them morphs into a very real attraction, but with Xavier's work about to take him halfway around the globe, Bianca can't forget that it's temporary. When the time comes to give up their charade, will they be able to give up their feelings just as easily?

Release date: March 14, 2024

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

Bianca Dimitriou doesn’t cry.

Not unless she’s really, really angry. She can’t even remember the last time something brought her to tears, but holy shit is she furious right now. Furious and disappointed. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt this way before. She’s pretty sure she hasn’t. Usually she can treat disappointment like an opportunity, something to chip away at and work through until she ultimately gets what she wants.

Oh. Right.

That’s why the tears are coming.

She’s disappointed and there’s nothing she can do about it. No problem to solve or question to dig into.

And even that’s annoying right now – that she’s this upset, this frustrated – and her mind refuses to shut off its logical thought process long enough to revel in her tears, to really feel the hurt and betrayal.

Because she’s not just Bianca Dimitriou anymore.

She’s Dr Bianca Dimitriou, PhD.

And her friends and family didn’t give enough of a shit to show up and celebrate with her.

Now that she knows that, it’s impossible to un-know it.

Bianca sniffs and shakes her head, trying to snap herself out of it, but all that does is make the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes blur her vision, catch against her eyelashes, and then fall to her cheeks.

“Fuck,” she mutters, wiping at them impatiently, knowing her makeup is probably a streaky mess.

“Whoa,” a deep male voice says from just over her shoulder and it takes everything in her not to groan in despair.

She knows that voice, knows the man it’s attached to and knows her night just went from bad to worse.

Crying in public was a low point.

Crying in front of Xavier Byrne is absolute rock bottom.

“Are you okay?” he asks, holding a cocktail napkin out toward her.

“I’m fine, it’s just been a long day,” she manages to say, even though she’s positive he can tell she’s lying. “What are you doing here?”

This bar isn’t really his scene. Not that she knows what his scene is. She just knows that in the five years they’ve been toiling away at their degrees in the same program, she’s never once run into him at Lorraine’s. Then again, he kind of fits in here. He’s handsome in a way that goes with the dive bar aesthetic, with his perpetual five o’clock shadow and a t-shirt that hugs his shoulders, broad and defined, leading to a trim waist in a ratio normally only seen in those superhero movies that she definitely needs to catch up on now that her thesis is finished.

His brows shoot up, green eyes wide with surprise. “I’m not sure whether or not I should be offended.”

Bianca shakes her head in confusion and a few more tears drop, so she takes the cocktail napkin he’s still offering and dabs under her eyes, only to come away with black smudges of her eyeliner.

Oh God, she probably looks like hell and of course it’s in front of him.

Not that it . . . not that it should matter what she looks like in front of him.

It’s not like they’re friends. Or at least they aren’t close, not anymore. But there’s more than a little professional respect there and maybe . . . more than a little bit of a lingering crush, at least on her part, that never quite burned out, despite it being a very, very bad idea.

Call it a generalization, but it’s not every day a super hot guy walks into your class when you’re doing a PhD in Information Science. A male librarian who sometimes doubles as an Indiana Jones type, with his undergrad and master’s in Archaeology, except he’s all about returning the artifacts instead of stealing them.

Extremely fucking hot.

But it just never happened.

Not that she expected it to.

They are . . . were . . . classmates, colleagues, friends of a sort, friendly colleagues? Too busy working for anything besides a casual hookup.

And hooking up within your very tiny degree program where there’s no escape if things go bad?

Not smart.

And they’re both smart.

Very smart.

Maybe too smart sometimes.

So they never did and then a few months ago he pulled away, big time. Their weekly study sessions routinely cancelled until they were never scheduled in the first place, semi-regular coffee meetups becoming nonexistent. She can’t even remember the last time she saw him outside of class.

He was busy.

They both were.

And now, they’re done.

She defended her thesis today.

His defense is early next week.

And that’s that.

He’ll move on to whatever adventure awaits him in whatever country that needs his help getting their native artifacts back.

And as for her?

She interviewed for her dream job a few weeks ago and has a second interview in a couple of days. But even if it doesn’t work out, she knows what kind of career she wants, knows where her skills are most needed. She’s not sure if anyone is going to let her actually do it.

How do you convince an entire system, all of academia, that they need to change and change quickly or they’re going to lose another generation to misinformation?

It’s too big a problem for any one person to solve, she knows that, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t going to try.

At least, she will once she stops these fucking tears from falling.

“Offended? What? Why?” she asks, to try and distract herself.

“You invited me.”

“I did? When?”

“At the beginning of the semester? You told me that you were scheduling a post-defense party because you were going to manifest passing your defense months in advance.”

She remembers now. She’d been a nervous wreck as they approached the final semester of her academic career and she had been doing everything she could think of to trick herself into calming the hell down.

“Oh, that’s right. Sorry, I . . .”

“Do you . . . do you want me to go?” he asks. “I know we haven’t seen a lot of each other in the past couple of months but, yeah, I’ll just – go.”

He’s letting out a huff of what’s probably self-deprecating laughter and already shifting around her and starting for the door.

“No, wait,” Bianca says, reaching out for him; just a tap of her fingers against his forearm is enough to stop his retreat. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been a mess and my brain is complete mush, but obviously I want you to stay.”

“Obviously?”

Bianca rolls her eyes, tears gone now, at least for the moment. “Yes, obviously.”

“So,” Xavier says with a smile, “are we just going to stand here or am I finally going to meet your friends?”

“My friends?”

Fuck.

Her friends.

Her friends who decided not to come.

“Yeah, those people that you’re always disappearing for, running off to who knows where for another wedding or bachelorette thing or whatever.”

“I’m not always running off,” she protests weakly, in a tone she loathes because she knows her voice only sounds like that, high-pitched and uneven, when he’s right and she’s wrong.

He scoffs. “You have been in more weddings in the last few years than people I actually know, let alone would go to their wedding and write them a check for money I can’t really afford to give them.”

“That’s not . . . It’s not that bad. It was only,” she counts in her head quickly, Lexi, Erik, Isobel and Frankie, “four weddings.”

“Plus all the other shit that goes with them,” he insists.

And he’s not right exactly, but he’s not entirely wrong either. Because weddings aren’t just weddings anymore, an excuse to put on a nice dress and hit an open bar. Weddings are a yearlong, sometimes more, countdown, with engagement celebrations and bridal showers and bachelorette weekends and bridesmaid fittings and it all always seems to add up to a couple of thousand dollars even while the bride insists she’s keeping things simple.

It’s what you do, though, for your friends. You celebrate their milestones and you’re there for them in the biggest moments of their lives. That’s the reality of being in your late twenties into your thirties – everyone is getting married, having babies, living life.

Except her.

Though, no. A doctorate isn’t not living. It’s just focusing on her career. Doing exactly what she wanted since she was a little girl and first watched The Mummy with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. As soon as Evie declared herself as a librarian, Bianca knew her answer to that question adults always seemed to ask: what do you want to be when you grow up?

And maybe baby Bianca didn’t realize it would be more research and writing than adventuring through the desert and hooking up with a hot rogue with a heart of gold, but still, her dreams are finally coming true.

“It’s not my fault that people want me to be there on the most important day of their lives. People love me!”

Xavier opens his mouth to respond, but her phone buzzes in her bag, probably one more person in her life bailing on tonight. She darts her hand inside of it, grabs the damn thing and slams it onto the bar face down.

The tears are back.

Fuck.

“Shit, you’re not okay.”

“I am, I’m fine, I just need a drink.”

“Okay, we’ll get you a drink. What’s your poison?”

She snorts and it feels wet and snotty and so fucking unattractive, but again it doesn’t matter. She raises her nearly empty glass at him and tilts it back and forth. “Dirty Shirley.”

He raises a slightly judgmental eyebrow, but she glares at him.

“I like grenadine.”

“Then one Dirty Shirley for Dr Dimitriou coming up,” he says with a casual salute, two fingers to his forehead.

The judgment disappears when she smiles at him, and as shitty as she feels right now, hearing doctor in front of her name sounds so good, and even better when he says it. He matches her smile with one of his own and then turns away, raising a hand to get the bartender’s attention.

“And once we get you a drink, maybe you’ll tell me what’s going on?” he asks casually, so much so she knows it’s not casual at all. He’s . . . worried?

Fuck.

Panic, ice-cold and instant, climbs up her throat.

Her knee starts to bounce, the heel of her tall black patent leather pump hitting the rung of her barstool once before it hooks around the metal. She downs the last of her drink, she lets out a shaky breath, her mind reeling back a few hours ago . . .

The heel of her simple nude pump is muffled by the industrial patterned carpet square that lines the hallway. She folds her hands in her lap and shifts against the hard plastic seat of the chair just outside the office door.

One way or the other, her life is about to change forever and it’s all in the hands of the people who sat in judgment of her for the last hour as she answered question after question, batting away their attempts to find a weakness in her defense.

And now all she can do is wait.

She knows she did her best and if there’s any kind of justice in the world, they’ll rule in her favor.

But there’s still that niggling doubt in her gut, the doubt that has her practically drilling a hole in the carpet beneath her feet.

The door opens, any potential squeak dulled by the several decades of ecru-colored paint that always seems to line the walls of any academic institution. She stands and smooths the fabric of her skirt suit down, fighting against the roiling in her stomach, praying it holds off at least until she can get somewhere private.

The older woman that emerges sends her a tight smile, one she can’t interpret despite how long they’ve known each other. Dr Miranda Wilkins, PhD in Information Science, her doctoral advisor and one of academia’s most highly renowned experts on media literacy. They met at the start of her program and Bianca was immediately intimidated as all hell and absolutely in awe of the woman who’d published the only research she respected in their mutual field of study. It’s why she came to USC and why she never regretted that decision, no matter how hard Miranda pushed her.

“If you’ll step back inside, we just have one final question left for you, Dr Dimitriou,” Miranda trails off, a corner of her mouth lifting into a slight smirk.

Bianca focuses her attention on her advisor, trying to ignore the dread that’s in her chest after hearing they have another question. She tries to conjure up the response to their final inquiry from a few minutes ago – a four-parter that truly helped her sum up the entirety of her research for the panel, about the philosophical shift necessary in information literacy and digital fluency instruction that will hopefully serve her future students for years to come, everything she spent the last five years developing, finally coalescing.

But then it clicks.

Miranda said . . . she said . . . Dr Dimitriou.

Doctor.

As in . . .

. . . she passed.

The smirk on Miranda’s face grows into a full-fledged smile as the woman who guided her through the last years of her education, who kindly tortured her and helped shape her research, and the voice of reason when stress would pile up and it all became too much, let her know that it’s over. She did it.

When she moves back into the room, the rest of the panel is all smiles as well.

“Our last question,” Miranda says, “is how will you be celebrating tonight?”

After four handshakes, one only slightly awkward hug with Miranda and a quick invite to the party she planned, she’s out the door, into the halls of the building she practically lived in for the last half of her twenties.

Done.

She’s done.

Dr Bianca Dimitriou, PhD.

She’s a doctor.

And now it’s time to celebrate.

She’s been running on adrenaline for weeks and she needs it to hold her upright for another few hours because now that the defense is over, exhaustion is starting to settle in.

She barely remembers the walk back to her apartment, winding her way through the streets through sheer force of habit. It’s not student housing, but it’s on the fringes of that neighborhood, a sort of ring around campus that no one unaffiliated with the university would want to live in, with the swarms of undergrads flooding the streets every night for nine months out of the year.

It’s not the worst place she’s ever lived – that honor belongs to the barely 100-square-foot apartment she squeezed herself into back in New York while she did her master’s.

She can’t complain really. Her place is neat and clean and safe, even though it’s been way quieter in the last couple of weeks. Her roommate, Julie, a musician, left for an opening-act gig on a national tour after years of struggling to make it. While it’s been a little bit lonely, it did give her the silence needed to prep for her defense. And Julie’ll be back soon, at least for a few days, when the tour swings through California.

Until then, she has Amelia, who is waiting for her at the door, rolled onto her back, soft white belly exposed, having clearly heard her coming down the hallway and wanting some immediate scratches to make up for her absence in the last few hours.

“Meals, I passed,” she squeals to the cat, who lets out a soft purr in return.

Sitting right there in the entry, her back against the door, she lets the cat curl up into her lap while she strokes gently against her fur, up under her chin and then back down again, over and over, a slow lulling motion. Bianca’s head lolls back against the door and the moment catches up with her as she falls asleep.

When she wakes up, it’s all at once. A huge gasping breath and immediate freak-out.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

The muted light coming in from the windows on the other side of her living room immediately tells her that she slept too long.

Against the fucking door.

God, she really was exhausted.

Her neck protests as she lifts her head, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that.

Her party starts soon.

Leaping to her feet and sending Amelia scampering off in the opposite direction with a protesting yowl, Bianca flies into her bedroom, kicking off the sensible nude kitten heels and chucking off the blazer and pencil skirt combination that she only ever wears when she needs to look professional, like on the first day of the semester, to scare the undergrads into thinking the librarian takes her job seriously and that they shouldn’t hook up in the stacks.

Not that it stops them for very long.

She’s lost count of the number of kids she’s walked in on in what they assume is a little used part of the collection, barely wearing any clothes.

Clothes . . . she needs clothes.

Jeans. Jeans are good. Jeans will be fine if she can pair them with the right top. She catches her reflection in the mirror. The one she’s wearing now works well enough, a silky red tank that ruched perfectly inside the neckline of her blazer. Now just heels . . . somewhere there are heels.

She falls to her knees in front of her closet and digs through the unmitigated mess at the bottom, feeling around until her hand emerges with one black patent leather pump with five-inch heels that she hasn’t had a chance to rock for a long-ass time.

Well, tonight’s the night.

If she can just find the shoe’s mate.

She takes a deep breath and reaches in again, hoping for a miracle.

She earned her fucking doctorate today. The fashion gods owe her a win.

When her hand emerges from the clutter again, her fingers wrapped around the shoe’s twin, something loosens in her chest.

She’s got shoes.

She’s got an outfit.

Her dark brown hair is decent, second-day curls that aren’t completely flat or frizzy or greasy, so just . . . makeup and she maybe won’t be late to her own damn party.

A few swipes of mascara, an attempt at winged eyeliner that quickly becomes a not-so-intentional smoky eye, plus some lipliner and a shiny gloss and yeah, okay, she looks good.

The heels, the jeans, the camisole, it all looks good.

“Not bad for thirty,” she mutters to herself, turning around in the mirror stuck to the back of her closet door. The bumps and curves that kind of haunted her through her teens and twenties now make her smile in satisfaction.

There’s something to be said for being comfortable in her own skin after all this time, even though despite the awesomeness of the day so far, the reality looming ahead of her is . . . nope. No. She will not think about that tonight. No job-hunt stress, no career is dead in the water before it even begins worries.

Tonight is for celebrating only.

Because everyone is going to be there.

One of the bonuses of coming back home to finish up school is that she’s been surrounded by family and friends for the five-year slog that was her degree program. She’s been around for every major event in their lives and now that she’s finally done, she gets to have them all there with her tonight for her own big moment. Her sister, her best friends from childhood and high school and summer camp and undergrad, all under one roof to toast that massively expensive piece of paper she just earned.

Making sure to fill Amelia’s bowls, and with one final glance into the mirror, she sets out into the night.

Lorraine’s is only a couple blocks away and, like her apartment, far enough away from campus that it doesn’t draw the undergrads with their fakes and inability to know their limits. Not that Lorraine would let them in anyway.

Bianca’s been coming here since she moved back to LA, to this dive bar that doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is, owned by the sweetest-looking old lady you’ve ever seen, right down to the cropped silver bob and kind blue eyes, until she opens her mouth and pure fire comes out.

Lorraine promised her the back room tonight and the first round is on her – the least she could do, she said, after Bianca helped her grandkid with his college apps and tutored him all through his four years of undergrad at UCLA.

“Hey Lorraine,” Bianca says as she slides through the door to see the woman where she always is, behind the bar, towel over her shoulder pouring out some shots for the cluster of regulars in front of her.

“Hey honey, you can head back, it’s all yours!” Lorraine calls out.

“That’s Dr Honey now,” Bianca fires back.

The bar owner scoffs. “Pretty sure you can’t prescribe shit, girl. When you can write me a script for my meds, I’ll call you doctor.”

It’s a long-standing debate, but Bianca’s too happy to argue tonight. Plus, Lorraine doesn’t mean it at all. She never talks shit unless she’s proud of you.

It’s a Thursday night, so the place isn’t packed, but it’s not empty either and as she slides through the small groups of people, Bianca checks the faces, hoping everyone has figured out where to go. Lorraine promised to cordon off a small alcove near the back of the bar that she sometimes rents out for private parties.

The sound of everyone else talking over the music fades a bit as she rounds the corner. Miranda and her wife are already there and immediately move in to hug her, a way less awkward hug than they shared earlier that day right after her defense was complete. Bianca knows that she’ll count the woman as a friend and mentor for the rest of her life.

“Congratulations again. We’re a little early because someone was neurotic about parking,” her advisor says, rolling her eyes affectionately at her wife, Sarah, a doctor, the kind Lorraine actually thinks counts, at Cedars-Sinai.

“And I was right, we circled for ten minutes before we found a spot,” Sarah says, but hugs Bianca next. “Congratulations, sweetie. We’re really proud of you.”

With her mom and dad retired and living in Arizona, this feels as close as she’s going to get to parental approval tonight and it feels damn good. She’ll talk to her folks tomorrow during their weekly Skype call. But that’s her phone buzzing in her bag and it’s possible they’re calling now to congratulate her.

Nope.

It’s a text from her sister, Lexi, who is always late for absolutely everything because her kid never lets her get out of the house on time.

—Hey Bianca Bean, I am so so so proud of you!! Congrats! Alec has a fever though so I’m gonna have to take a rain check tonight. Drinks on me next time!! Xoxo

Ah, so this time her kid isn’t letting her leave the house at all. The perils of motherhood. Even though Bianca’s brother-in-law, Chris, is perfectly capable of taking care of Alec, even if he’s sick, that never seems to happen. Lexi insists she’ll understand when she has kids one day, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.

“Everything okay?” Miranda asks. When Bianca looks up, she’s frowning down at her.

Gesturing vaguely at her phone, she nods. “Yeah, fine, but my sister can’t make it.”

But then her eyes are drawn over Miranda’s shoulder where a group of her fellow students are filing in through the door of the bar. Despite spending the last five years in the same program, she hadn’t really made any good friends. Most of them were just sort of peripheral figures in her classes, at the same conferences – nice enough, but between her own coursework, teaching her classes, shifts at the library and making time for her friends and family, there was never any time for new people.

There was one notable exception, though she’s not sure she’ll see him tonight. She hasn’t spoken to Xavier Byrne in weeks, maybe months, as her defense prep consumed her every waking moment.

Still though, it’s nice to get congratulatory hugs and give out reassurances that even though she’s the first in their year to successfully defend her thesis, she won’t be the last, that they’ll all join her in the post-defense promised land.

It’s a good turnout.

But every few minutes her eyes drift to the door when it opens, never revealing the faces she most wants to see.

She’s nearly through her third drink when another text comes in. This time from Isobel, her freshman roommate from undergrad.

—I’m not gonna be able to make it tonight! I’m so sorry. I’m the absolute worst. Dinner on me next week?

Swallowing down another sip of her drink, Bianca sends:

—Kk, we’ll miss you!

And she’s barely hit send when another message pops up.

From Chloe, her best friend from summer camp who trauma bonded with her over being left in the woods for six weeks, even if their cabins had air conditioning and the most outdoorsy thing they were required to do was swim in a lake.

—Fucking Josh invited his boss and coworkers over for dinner tonight without telling me. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you!

She isn’t even finished reading that one when another pops up. From Erik, her former work husband who was the one who told her she wasn’t crazy for going for her PhD when she was absolutely miserable in her high school teaching job.

—Don’t hate me, but I can’t make it tonight. The twins are co. . .