The Fake Wedding Project: A Novel, page 1
OTHER TITLES BY PIPPA GRANT
For the most up-to-date booklist, visit Pippa’s website at www.pippagrant.com.
The Last Eligible Billionaire
Not My Kind of Hero
The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)
Rich in Your Love (Tickled Pink #2)
The Three BFFs and a Wedding Trilogy
The Worst Wedding Date
The Gossip and the Grump
The Bride’s Runaway Billionaire
Copper Valley Fireballs Series
Jock Blocked
Real Fake Love
The Grumpy Player Next Door
Irresistible Trouble
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2024 by Pippa Grant
All rights reserved.
Pippa Grant® is a registered trademark of Bang Laugh Love LLC
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662513343 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662513350 (digital)
Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson
Cover image: © Olga Andreevna Shevchenko / Getty
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Dane Silver, a.k.a. a man very unaware of his own romantic situation
Chapter 2 Amanda Anderson, a.k.a. a big-city dog walker who is currently very confused
Chapter 3 Dane
Chapter 4 Amanda
Chapter 5 Dane
Chapter 6 Amanda
Chapter 7 Dane
Chapter 8 Amanda
Chapter 9 Dane
Chapter 10 Amanda
Chapter 11 Dane
Chapter 12 Amanda
Chapter 13 Dane
Chapter 14 Amanda
Chapter 15 Dane
Chapter 16 Amanda
Chapter 17 Dane
Chapter 18 Amanda
Chapter 19 Dane
Chapter 20 Amanda
Chapter 21 Dane
Chapter 22 Amanda
Chapter 23 Dane
Chapter 24 Amanda
Chapter 25 Dane
Chapter 26 Amanda
Chapter 27 Dane
Chapter 28 Amanda
Chapter 29 Dane
Chapter 30 Amanda
Chapter 31 Dane
Chapter 32 Amanda
Chapter 33 Dane
Epilogue Amanda
Bonus Epilogue Chili, a.k.a. the world’s laziest dog
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preview: Until It Was Love!
Chapter 1 Goldie Collins, a.k.a. a life coach not currently regretting any of her decisions . . . which is about to change drastically
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter 1
Dane Silver, a.k.a. a man very unaware of his own romantic situation
Someone is breaking into the house.
It’s broad daylight. My dog is beside me. There are neighbors nosy enough to notice—if any of them are home.
And someone is definitely jiggling the living room window on the side that overlooks the backyard.
Not that I can talk. This isn’t my house. I technically broke in too.
But my sister told me where to find the spare key for her little cottage, and the person now banging the lowered blinds of the window wouldn’t do that if they knew where the spare key was.
Mine was a legitimate break-in.
This break-in is more likely criminal.
But is there crime in the little town of Tinsel?
Not likely.
I look down at Chili, who’s sitting beside me on the overstuffed yellow-checkered couch that faces a brick fireplace with a television above the mantel.
My fluffy tan mutt stares back. He’s about fifty pounds of some golden retriever, some Labrador, and some something else. I could get him a doggy DNA test, but he’s a good dog, if a bit lazy, and that’s what matters most.
“You gonna do something about that?” I ask him.
He yawns. Then looks back at the window to the left of the television and fireplace. Been a while since I took stock of Lorelei’s house, but I’m reasonably certain the window is at least five feet off the ground.
Whoever’s breaking in is going to a lot of work considering the front and back doors are both unlocked.
And there’s an arm flinging itself up over the sill, making the lowered blinds bang more. It’s a slender arm attached to a slender hand with slender fingers tipped in pink.
Definitely not Lorelei’s arm.
She’s not the pink-nail-polish type.
I look at Chili again.
He grunts at me and lays his head back down on the couch, where he’s in the direct path of most of the rotating fan’s track.
As a puppy, he would’ve been racing to make a new friend. But since he hit two years old, he’s happiest when someone else does the sniffing and investigating. I’ve had dogs all my life, and I’ve never had one this lazy.
Until you’re talking about food. Then, don’t get between the beast and his breakfast.
Trust me on this one.
From outside the window, there’s a grunt far more feminine than Chili’s grunt.
I set aside my laptop—work can wait—and pull myself to my feet. Debate tossing on a shirt.
You wouldn’t think it could get above ninety in this part of Michigan, but August has been brutal. Glad my grandparents have air-conditioning.
Wish Lorelei did, too, but that’s a future project for her fixer-upper. And the heat wave should break in a few days.
We hope.
I walk through the breeze coming off one of the two fans circulating air in the little cottage, earning another disgruntled noise from my dog, as the intruder’s second arm hooks itself over the windowsill and bangs the blinds more.
There’s one more grunt, and then a woman’s curly, brown-haired crown pokes under the blinds. She huffs and heaves, propelling the rest of her head through the window.
And then she lifts her face.
Recognition clicks instantly, and I’m so caught off guard, I stumble backward.
Her gaze lands on me, and she goes slack jawed and wide eyed, then acks and tumbles off the windowsill, banging the blinds around.
“Are you friggin’ kidding me?” I hear Amanda Anderson mutter as I catch myself and leap toward the window.
And yes.
That is definitely Amanda Anderson. Thick, curly brown hair. Brilliant brown eyes. Natural olive skin. Pouty lips that were always more prone to smiling back in high school.
She’s in a black tank top and short jean shorts, sitting on the ground amid the holly bushes with her arms braced behind her, staring at me like I’m a ghost.
“You’re not friggin’ kidding me,” she says.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to see Lorelei.” She winces. “Actually . . . that’s not right. I . . . need to see you. But I didn’t know you’d be here. I knew you were in town, but I didn’t know you were here here.”
Amanda Anderson needs to see me?
It’s been years since the last time we spoke to each other.
Not because there’s any animosity between us.
Not exactly.
Our families have hated each other for generations, though no one in my family has been able to explain why in any manner that’s made sense.
Their feud is the soot mark on the otherwise happy, peaceful town of Tinsel, Michigan, where it’s Christmas all year round.
Even on days like today when you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.
I’ve lived in San Francisco since I graduated from college. Last I heard through Lorelei, Amanda had moved to New York to pursue a career as an actress.
Not surprising.
Especially to anyone who watched any of her performances with the high school theater.
She lit up the entire stage.
Which is an opinion I’ve kept to myself, even knowing that Lorelei and Amanda often had lunch together at school despite our families’ feud.
They make me was what Lorelei always told our parents. They want our families to get along, so they make me.
The teachers made me wouldn’t have been an excuse I could’ve used if I’d gotten up the balls to ask her on a date.
“This is better.” Amanda’s face doesn’t match her words. Her face says this is terrible and I want to go live in a hole. Which isn’t the kind of nice that I remember her being. “This way, we can keep Lorelei out of it. She’ll never have to know, and she won’t have to take sides, and it’ll all be over before you laugh about it with her later, when I’ll be long gone to stew in my own mortification for the next forever. Can I come in? I really don’t want to talk about this with witnesses.”
I glance at the houses in view from the backyard.
Doesn’t look like there are any nosy neighbors snooping, but you never know.
“They’re all downtown for . . . erm . . . a meeting,” Amanda says. “But I don
“What kind of meeting?”
“Can I please come in?”
“Back door,” I tell her. “It’s unlocked.”
“Oh. Well. That would’ve been easier, wouldn’t it?”
My guard is up. I’m already testy for having been guilted into spending an entire week in Tinsel before my grandparents’ anniversary party. I’m hot and sweating and need to put on a shirt.
And despite all that, I smile at Amanda’s self-deprecation. “Have you and easy ever gotten along?”
“You laugh now . . . ,” she mutters while she leaps to her feet and strides quickly past the window up the stairs to the deck just off the living room.
I grab my T-shirt and pull it on—fuck, it’s hot—and then look at Chili again. “Still not moving?”
He pops one eye and gives me a silent no.
Lazier than usual today, but then, we haven’t been in heat like this in forever.
The screen door clatters as Amanda lets herself in. “Yep. That was easier.” She looks me up and down and winces again. “Can we sit down? Preferably on opposite sides of the room with me closest to the door when you decide you want to murder me? Which you don’t have to do. I’ll fix this. Cross my heart and triple pinkie promise, I will.”
She hasn’t changed at all. Still unpredictable. Still prone to the dramatic side. Still always able to make me smile no matter what’s coming out of her mouth.
My heart gives a painful thump.
I had such a crush on her in high school.
Not that I ever had the courage to tell her that. Family feud aside, she preferred dating the football players and the class president. Not the guys who were in band and on the mathlete team.
No shade to Amanda.
She was always kind to everyone, but the popular crowd was where she belonged. Where she fit.
I scratch my chest where it’s starting to drip sweat and gesture her to the blue La-Z-Boy nearest the screen door, then seat myself once again on the couch, but this time on the other side of my dog.
Farther from her.
At her request.
She sits at the edge of the chair, crosses her legs, and weaves her hands around one bare knee. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna go for it. And before I tell you what I have to tell you, I want you to know that I’m very, very, very sorry. I will fix this. I will set this right. I will tell them the truth. I just . . . haven’t yet.”
I lean back and hook an ankle over my own knee.
College and then city life have helped me get over feeling like the geeky band guy who blushes at the slightest look from an attractive woman, but there’s something different about facing your original high school crush fifteen years later.
Especially after coming to realize just how off you felt growing up because of always having to be on guard to never let your family know you’d had any kind thoughts about the enemy. Or that you didn’t understand why you had enemies, and why everyone couldn’t just get along.
Tinsel might be magic for everyone else, but for me, it’s nothing but stress and unease. I was not built to be a participating member of a long-standing family feud of indeterminate origins.
Not when it overshadowed every shining moment of my childhood.
“The truth about what?” I ask her.
I honestly can’t guess what she’s about to say. I never could. And that was half my fascination with her.
For as much as I like predictability in my own life, I still envied the whirlwind of unpredictability that she thrived in.
She sucks in a breath that has her chest lifting, highlighting the curve of her breasts, and she squeezes her eyes shut before she answers. “That we’re engaged.”
Chili lifts his head and gawks at her.
My jaw meets my chest.
She peeks at us out of one squinty eye, then sighs and opens both eyes again. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I don’t know why I said it. My grandma told me that when she announces her retirement this weekend at the party for her fiftieth anniversary of working at the bakery, she’s leaving me the gingerbread bakery, and I can’t bake, and I love Tinsel, I do, but I belong in the city. New York City. It just—it feeds my soul, and I like to think that I give it something back too. And Lorelei and I were talking about dinner right before I went to see my grandma and she said you were coming to town and might join us even though you and I haven’t seen each other in years and I was thinking about how we’d have to be so sneaky to have dinner without my family finding out—”
“Breathe,” I interject.
Can’t help myself.
I don’t think she’s drawn a full breath since she walked in the door.
Also, I need to breathe.
I need to breathe, and I need to think.
My fingers curl into fists and then stretch out on their own as I hunch forward. If it wasn’t so hot, I’d leap up and start pacing.
Engaged.
Engaged to Amanda Anderson.
While I’m not getting engaged to anyone at this point in my life, the news doesn’t have me as shocked as I would’ve thought it should.
Or as horrified.
She takes a massive breath that makes her chest rise and fall again, drawing my attention to the hint of cleavage at the neck of her tank top, and then she dives right back in. “So you and Lorelei and our families’ stupid fights were already near the top of my brain, and I looked out the window of the Gingerbread House and I saw your family’s Fruitcake Emporium, and then Grandma said I’m the only person who can take the gingerbread bakery now, and the next thing I knew, I was blurting out that I was engaged to you. I panic-engaged us because being engaged to a Silver is basically the only thing worthy of instant disinheriting and it seemed kinder to tell her that being in love with the enemy was the reason I can’t take over the bakery.”
“Breathe,” I say again.
“I’m breathing. Also, I don’t personally think you’re the enemy. I promise. I know you’re a nice guy. Lorelei says so.”
“Breathe more.”
“I’m so sorry—”
I hold up a hand, cutting her off. Chili grunts—that’s his annoyed someone’s interrupting my sleep grunt—and puts his head back down on the couch.
“Ohh, is that your dog?” Amanda says.
I don’t answer.
My brain is spinning too fast, putting a puzzle together and taking me on a path that is far, far, far from my preferred predictability as I give in to the desperate need to move right now. The fan hits me as I pace, then the other fan, but neither offers relief.
I don’t think like this.
I don’t jump to conclusions or solutions like this.
I say and do the predictable thing, always—You need to tell them we’re not engaged, or I will—except my entire being is revolting over that idea.
And instead, there’s an unexpected whisper in the back of my mind telling me to stop, drop, and think.
Think about how I didn’t want to take this entire week in Tinsel for my grandparents’ anniversary party, but my dad guilted me into it. Might need an extra set of hands for last-minute plans. You don’t come home enough. Already told us you won’t be home for Christmas.
Think about how I’ve been cutting our conversations short every time he starts complaining about anything around Tinsel.
About how his favorite thing to complain about is Amanda’s family.
About how I said I got a promotion at work, and the first thing I heard was my uncle cackling in the background. Bet none of them Anderson kids get promotions as fast as our Dane does. Like I’m not a person, but a prop in their war. Just like always.
Dane’s valedictorian. Those Andersons have never done that. Dane aced his SATs. Those Andersons have never done that. Dane’s first clarinet. Those Andersons have never done that.
About how the fruitcake shop isn’t doing well, and everyone’s denying it, and if they’d all pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and address the problem instead of blaming the Andersons for god only knows what reason, maybe they could find a solution that isn’t trying to destroy that gingerdead family.
Yes, gingerdead family.
It’s fucking stupid.
My heart’s doing its own thing that it needs to get over, and get over immediately.
If I do this—if I propose—suggest this idea that’s growing louder and more persistent in my mind—it’s purely for the reason she already said.
I don’t think you’re the enemy.
Lorelei has to sneak around to have dinner with one of her oldest friends.
