PROLOGUE
RENLEY
“What are you doing?” I ask the man who’s joyfully down on one knee in front of me, a
sparkle in his eye and hope in the upturn of his lips.
Dressed impeccably in a bespoke suit, holding out a monstrous engagement ring in a
wooden box, is Theodore Williams, properly known as Theo.
British, posh, and delusional…an alarming combination in my opinion.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks, his brown hair curling over his forehead while
his clear blue eyes gaze up at me.
“It looks like you’re proposing.”
His curled smile lights up the front yard of my home where he’s firmly planted himself for
this momentous occasion. “That would be correct.” Then to my horror, he clears his throat and
says, “Riley—”
My expression falls flat, while his friend, Rupert, whispers, “It’s Renley. Her name is
Renley.”
Theo’s eyes widen. “Oh shit, you’re right.” Plastering on that charming smile again, he
continues in that posh British accent of his. “Pardon me. Renley Henrietta—”
“My middle name is not Henrietta.”
“It’s not?”
“No. It’s not.”
Confusion laces his brow, his nose scrunching up in a cute way. “What is it?”
I fold my arms over my chest. “It’s Lynn.”
“Lynn?” He tests that out for a second. “Renley Lynn…Renley Lynn. Are you sure?
Because Lynn doesn’t sound right.”
“I’m positive. It’s Lynn.”
“Well then, my mistake.” Clearing his throat again, he continues. “Renley Lynn Gosling,
will you do me the honor—”
“Gossage.”
His face contorts in confusion. “Huh?”
“My last name is Gossage.”
“Now you’re fucking with me.” He stands up. “It said on your profile that your last name
is Gosling. Like Ryan Gosling.”
“No, it didn’t. It said Gossage, like Goose Gossage.”
“Who the hell is Goose Gossage?” he asks.
“This is very romantic,” Rupert says off to the side, looking like he’s watching a tennis
match, his head bouncing back and forth.
“Richard Michael Gossage, also known as Goose, was a pitcher for the Yankees.”
“Oh.” Theo shakes his head. “I don’t do sports, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, I could tell from the leather tassel on your loafer.”
He glances down at his shoes. “These are Berlutis.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“Obviously. I could tell from the paint stains on your threadbare overalls.”
Pardon me?
“Not the way to win her over,” Rupert mutters from the side of his mouth.
“You’re right.” Theo takes a deep breath, shakes out his arms, and then gets back down on
one knee.
You have got to be kidding me.
Note to self, never drink margaritas with Aunt Kitty, ever again.
Get Aunt Kitty a new tablet that is not cracked so we don’t mistake the words financier
and fiancé.
And never give your home address to strangers!
He opens the ring box again, holds it in front of me, and then smiles. “Renley…uh—”
“Lynn,” Rupert assists.
“Yes, that’s right. Renley Lynn Gossage, will you do me the greatest honor of my life and
be my wife?”
“Nice rhyme,” Rupert says.
“Thanks, mate,” Theo replies, and I swear, that smile of his, reaching from ear to ear, it’s
gleaming. Actually sparkling.
I have known him for less than a day—yes, a day—and I already hate him.
Despise.
Desperately want to take him to my backyard and shove his face into a patch of poison ivy
because he’s a thorn in my side, a massive disappointment, and everything I hate about a drunken
mistake.
“So?” he asks. “Will you be my wife?”
“Absolutely…not.”
His expression flattens and he stands tall, snapping the ring box shut. “Why did you have
to say it like that? With the pause? That was spiteful. I thought you were saying yes for a
moment.”
“I told you I didn’t want to marry you from the beginning.”
“That’s not what your profile said.”
“Stop bringing up the profile.”
“Why would I stop bringing it up when that’s the reason I flew across the Atlantic Ocean
to be here with you?”
“That was your choice, not mine.”
“Uh, it was your choice, when you selected ‘match.’”
“That’s not what I thought I was matching for, and you know it.”
He tosses the ring box to Rupert, who catches it, and sheds his suit jacket, throwing it to
his friend as well. He undoes the buttons of his shirt and untucks it too.
“What on earth are you doing? If you think getting naked will convince me to marry you,
then you have no idea what kind of woman I am.”
He scoffs loudly. “I have a lot more respect for myself than to flash you the goods to get
you to marry me. It’s a bloody heat box in this town and I dressed up for you. I’m not going to
stay dressed up if you’re going to turn me down.”
He sheds his button-up shirt and then exhales loudly before flopping back on the grass of
my front yard.
For a moment, and I mean a very small moment, I allow my gaze to travel over the well-
defined contours of his chest and the delicious ripple of his abs. Good for him, being able to
obtain such an impressive physique. Must be nice to have that amount of time on your hands.
Not that I want to pay him any sort of compliment.
“Rupert, I’m going to need a lemonade instead of tea this afternoon.”
“Uh…I’m unaware of when I became a butler?”
Theo lifts up and blocks the sun from his eyes as he says, “Mate, my fiancée just turned
down my marriage proposal. I’m hurting. Lemonade is my only cure.”
“Oh my God,” I say with a giant eye roll. “Can you wallow somewhere else? Your limbs
are creeping over onto my neighbor’s lawn and I don’t want them thinking that I have strange,
half-naked British men just lazing about my yard.”
“Don’t worry, they won’t be mad.”
“Pretty sure they will be.”
“No, they won’t.” He casts his hands over his face again, blocking out the sun as he looks
up at me. “I’m renting their place for the summer. I’m your new neighbor, love.”
Wait…what? He’s going to be here all summer?
I turned him down, he’s “hurting,” he should be finding a flight back home.
“And this fiancé is not quite finished with you yet,” he adds.
Ohhh, hold on a freaking second.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means by the end of the summer, mark my words, you’ll be wearing my ring. I’m
incredibly persuasive.”
Rupert leans in and says, “He is. He once convinced me to run a half-marathon in my
mum’s best Sunday dress…and heels.”
Jesus, these two.
I don’t care if he hypnotizes me, there is no way I’m going to marry this man.
No chance.
“Dream all you want, but it’s not going to happen. Now, if you’ll excuse me, unlike you, I
have actual work to do.”
As I walk away, Theo calls out from the grass, “Gossy, the British are coming and you
have no idea what’s about to hit you.”
I glance over my shoulder to see him smiling once again. “You’re delusional.” Then I slip
into my house and shut the door, leaning against it as I take a few deep breaths.
Dear God in heaven, where is that tablet? I need to know as much about this man as
possible…and I need to order Aunt Kitty a new one.
CHAPTER ONE
THEO
“Truth or dare?”
I sway on my wingback chair, my lager clutched firmly in my hand as the room slightly
spins.
“Truth.” I tip back my bottle, gulping down the rest.
Rupert, my best friend, smirks from where he’s lying in front of the unlit fireplace, my
father’s faux-fur bearskin draped across his bare chest while he sports the war pants of my great,
great, great, great, great…uh, how many greats was that? Who fucking knows and who fucking
cares. Just know, he’s wearing crusty-arse trousers from the 1700s that he snagged from the glass
case in my father’s office.
Between you and me, I’m unsure they’re from the 1700s. I’ve spent my entire life with
eyes glazed over as my father spoke of the battle triumphs of our late ancestors. Call me
progressive but I haven’t really found the urge to care about all the blood my family has shed
over the centuries.
And the bearskin, it’s faux because I replaced the real one my dad once had with it. One
night, when we were in high school, Rupert and I snuck in, grabbed the real bearskin, replaced it
with this dupe, and then gave the real one a proper Viking burial out at sea. We got so knackered
that we both were woken up by the ocean tide slapping us in the face.
Despite almost drowning ourselves, we felt like real vigilantes that day.
Rupert rubs his hand over the faux bear fur, paying far too much attention to where it rests
just over his nipple, and says, “Gertrude Storch.”
With a loud groan, I roll my eyes. “Come on, mate.”
Rupert grins. “Did she or did she not blow you exactly seven times in one night, as legend
states?”
Trading my lager out for the bottle of whiskey we stole from my dad’s cabinet, I take a
swig…and I’m met with instant regret.
Fuck, that’s terrible.
The liquid burns down my esophagus, reminding me how shitty his drink of choice is, just
like all the other shitty choices he’s made in his life.
“Gertrude Storch…did not,” I answer, passing the whiskey to Rupert. Then, with a smile, I
say, “It was six.”
Rupert lets out a roar of a laugh that normally makes me cringe—it draws attention to our
two-man party—but my parents are currently on holiday in Spain, so I have nothing to worry
about. The only people who could possibly hear us are the house staff, but I slip them cash all the
time so they’ll never tell my parents that Rupert and I are drinking in my dad’s office, wearing
ancestral pants, while stroking the faux skin of a bear my father believes he once murdered.
“Truth or dare?” I ask as he passes me the bottle back.
“Dare,” he answers. He always goes for the dare option, hence the pants he’s wearing.
I glance around the pompous decor of my father’s office, where he admires the wealth that
has been passed down to him from generation to generation rather than conducting any business.
The brown houndstooth curtains my mum has changed out at least eight times cover the floor-to-
ceiling windows, the obnoxiously large mahogany desk where Gertrude Storch blew me twice
that one infamous night, and the self-indulgent oil painting of my father above the mantel, his
foot perched on top of a rock in his hunting gear, looking out toward a pretend field of
domesticated grasses.
I hate everything about this office, and yet…some of my best memories have been made
between these pretentious and abhorrently expensive walls—and I’m not just talking about with
Gertrude. Rupert and I have defiled this office in more ways than one.
Ehh, that came off wrong. Rupert and I haven’t defiled it in the way that Gertrude and I
have. But Rupert has rubbed his arse on almost every surface, because, you know, he always
chooses dare. I don’t think there is a spot in this office that his bare arse hasn’t touched.
Which reminds me, steer clear of that brown tweed ottoman over in the corner. If memory
serves me right, that thing had more than just Rupert’s arse on it—it had a full-on affair with his
twig and berries too.
But that picture…that picture is the fucking worst. It’s everything my father wants to be
seen as and everything he’s not.
Respected, accomplished, a man of superior stature.
But he didn’t earn his respect.
He didn’t earn his title.
He didn’t earn anything in this life. It’s all been handed to him.
Just like it will be handed to me.
And because of that, I nod toward the picture and say, “I dare you to take a permanent
marker and add something to the painting.”
Rupert’s face blanches as he adjusts the bear on his shoulder. “Do you want your dad to
shoot my head off with Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Charles’s musket?”
I chuckle. “It can be small.” When Rupert doesn’t move, I add, “We’ve never broken the
truth-or-dare pact. And it’s the one thing in this office that we haven’t besmirched.”
Rupert looks up at the picture and then back at me. “How small? Because I just found out
that my dick can pleasure women in a way I never knew.” Whispering, he adds, “I found that G-
spot, mate, and I don’t want to lose such a sacred secret.”
I give him a get real look because if I know anything about my best friend, it’s that he does
not know where the G-spot is. “You didn’t find it.”
“The fuck I didn’t. I found it.”
“Christa was faking.”
Rupert points at me with the whiskey bottle. “She was not fucking faking it. I felt it.”
“Oh yeah? Did it feel like a G?”
“Oh fuck off.”
I laugh as he stands and lets the bearskin fall to the ground. He stretches his arms over his
head, yawns, and then loses his balance and stumbles forward, right into my dad’s desk. His right
knee smashes into the front, his left hand knocks over a notebook, and his right hand only misses
the Zen garden my mum bought for my dad by mere centimeters, causing Rupert to freeze in
panic.
“Bollocks, that was a close one.” He lets out a shaky breath. “I think my dick just shriveled
up.”
“I heard it squeeze into your scrotum from here.”
“Impeccable hearing.”
I tug on my ears. “Thank you. I grew my ears myself.”
“And you say you don’t accomplish things.” Rupert tsks at me. “Dare I say, you can write
‘grows own ears’ on your list of unblemished achievements.”
“Grew my own dick and arse too.”
Rupert straightens up, puffs his chest, and slowly claps. “And the list continues to grow.” I
take a curt bow and then gulp another mouthful of fermented barley water while Rupert snags a
Sharpie from the cup on my dad’s desk. When he turns around, he dramatically holds the pen in
the air and says, “Let the besmirching begin.”
Smiling, I sit back, utterly pleased with my choice in dare. Sure, making him wear bloody
battle britches is all fun and games, but watching him become a graffiti artist on my father’s
beloved portrait—now that’s pure entertainment.
With a herculean effort—because he’s knackered—Rupert moves a chair in front of the
mantel, stands on top of it, and then gently caresses the pen tip along the bushes at the base of the
rock my dad’s perched on.
“What are you doing?”
“One second.” His tongue sticks out as he concentrates, his other hand hanging on to the
mantel to steady himself.
He swirls his hand with flair.
He leans in a little closer, examining his markings.
And when he’s done, he pulls away, caps the Sharpie, and then tosses it at me, hitting me
dead in the chest.
I glance up at the portrait, looking for any sort of defilement, but I don’t see one goddamn
piece of evidence that he made his mark. Did he even do anything?
“What the fuck is that?” I gesture to the painting.
“It’s called code,” Rupert says and then beckons me with his finger.
With a hoist, I lift my body off the chair and stumble across the floor, ramming right into
the fireplace.
“Aw fuck.”
Rupert lets out a roar of a laugh while I rub my shoulder, thinking twice about the addition
of whiskey in my drinking tonight.
“The fact that you’re not wearing any pants just made that so much better. Your thigh
jiggled.”
The fuck it did.
I glance down at my bare legs, my half-unbuttoned dress shirt barely covering my junk and
my pink toenails that Rupert made me paint as a dare looking more like a Jackson Pollock
splattered across my feet.
“Why don’t I have pants on again?”
“Because the swish swash of corduroy was driving you bonkers.”
“Right.” I chuckle. “Swish swash.”
Rupert sways. “Your words, not mine.” He clears his throat. “Now, please, bring your
attention to these bushes.”
“You didn’t actually draw?”
“I did.” He stiffens his finger into a pointer. “Right here. I wrote out ‘wanker’ in script to
mesh with the branches. It’s only visible to the drunk eye.” He slaps the oil painting. “So go
ahead, put your eye on it, you’ll see.”
Don’t mind if I do.
“Give me a hoist.”
Rupert bends down, hands clasped together so I can step on his joined palms, and then lifts
me up so my eye presses against the painted bushes.
“Oh, yup, ‘wanker,’ right there. Plain as day.”
My eyeball is kissing the canvas, and I can’t see shit, but who really fucking cares.
“Lower me down, dear sir,” I say just as he releases his hands and I fall right to the ground,
flat on my arse, with a thud. “Fucking Christ.” I roll to the side and rub my hand over my
backside. “You broke my hip.”
Rupert plops down in my dad’s office chair and lifts the lid of his cigar box. He pulls one
out and then replaces it with one that he brought with him, a cheap knockoff. He’s done it so
often that now my dad is convinced that in every box he buys, there’s always a dud in the batch.
“You’re fine, but if you don’t put pants on soon, I’m going to kick you in the cock. Can’t
stand seeing your giblets, mate. Your dick is way too big to be walking around without pants.”
I glance down at my lap, noticing nothing wrong with my lack of pants. If anything, it’s a
dignified dick and he should be honored to be in its presence. “Grow up,” I reply as I spread my
legs apart and start stretching side to side for the hell of it.
“Ahh, fuck off,” Rupert says, shooting his hand up to cover his view of me. “Christ…truth
or dare? And you can’t say truth.”
“Then why did you ask?” I lie back on the floor, staring at the plaid wallpapered ceiling, a
touch my mum found to be classy but I saw as a waste of money. But that’s wealthy arseholes for
you, wasting money on meaningless things like wallpaper on a ceiling.
“Out of courtesy to my lord.”
I lift my middle finger to my best friend and say, “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“It’s your God-given title. You’re going to have to get used to it.”
“Not yet.”
“‘Yet’ being the key word.”
“Just get on with it.”
“Fine. You chose dare, or I chose it for you. Either way, are you ready for this?”
“Yes,” I say, exasperated.
When he doesn’t say anything for a solid ten seconds, I look up to find my best friend
grinning like he has the best, most maniacal idea he’s ever come up with.
“What?” I ask, sitting up on my elbows.
“How do you feel about finding a fiancée?”
A fiancée? Has he lost his mind?
“Uh, not great.”
Rupert laughs. “Too bad, because I created a profile for you on a find-a-fiancée website.
So, I dare you to press the activate button.”
Oh fuck.
I think truth or dare just became a whole lot more serious. ...
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