Match Play
September 13, 2022 (probably. or earlier)
Billionaire Mitchell Saltonstall needs a fiancée, right now, and a pretend-fiancée is just fine with him.
One drunken New Year’s Eve, Mitchell and his buddies wagered a hundred mil each against Gabriel “The Shark” Fish that they were better at business than he was. Never, ever bet that kind of cash against a guy with a nickname like “The Shark.”
Mitchell tried to buy a golf course, but that fell through. He tried to buy a sports store, and that deal blew up in his face. Finally, he found a golf tee-times booking app that was floundering. He bought it from the original investors for pennies on the dollar and rechristened it “Match Play,” a dating service app for single golfers, assuring them that “It’s just golf!” and they can “Play A Round” with golfing singles in their area.
Oh, the puns are endless, but pictures of “giant knobby-headed drivers” are strictly forbidden.
The problem is that Mitchell accidentally became the face of Match Play in an interview, and no one will trust a dating app with a single CEO.
The very last person he should have conscripted to be his fake fiancée was Arielle Carter, the cute, sassy blond secretary in the front office, whom he’d literally grabbed around the waist during an interview and dragged against his side, whispering that he’d pay her ten thousand dollars to kiss him for the cameras.
He didn’t know she’d melt against him and her kiss would turn him on like stadium lights.
Or that with a makeover for the television commercials, Arielle Carter would become an absolute bombshell and he wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off of her.
And he really hadn’t known that Arielle’s father was the original investor who’d lost his life savings in the failing tee-times app, and that’s why she hates Mitchell’s guts.
During the months-long promotional tour to regional golf shows to sign up new singles, the air between them crackles with attraction, and their kisses and caresses seem more real. In Los Angeles, after a particularly convincing photo spread for Golf Journal, they discover that the five-star hotel room has only one bed.
They’re stuck together until next New Year’s Eve when the bet with The Shark ends, or Mitchell will lose everything he’s worked for.
Assuming Arielle doesn’t bean him with a golf club first.
All of Blair Babylon’s books include mature themes, characters who act like adults, an unusual number of dead bodies for romance novels, people working through past trauma, dark humor, philosophy, nifty vocabulary, and explicit spicy scenes that may include bondage, domination/submission, sadism, masochism, roughness, positions that only highly trained contortionists should attempt, and deep, serious emotions.
Children and animals are sometimes in danger but are never injured nor murdered.
Things Blair’s books do not include / Blair does not write about: rape described in detail for titillation, any kind of sexual violence described in detail for titillation, coerced sex that happens (may be threatened), forced pregnancy that happens (may be threatened), noncon, dubcon, child abuse, CSA, or animal abuse.
In the very few instances where a character is sexually assaulted, it either happens entirely off the page, happened before the book began, or is not shown in detail. For instance, at one point, a sexual assault that happens in a book is entirely contained in the words, “And then—” Characters deal with the trauma afterward, and—and I cannot stress this enough—and then they get through it and reach a place where they are okay.
In the list, “Discussed” means this category is discussed but does not happen.
TRIGGER WARNINGS / CONTENT ADVISORY / SHOPPING LIST
THIS BOOK INCLUDES:
Sex, Explicit / Spicy / Five-Chili-Peppers / Earphones highly recommended for audiobook
Nudity, Explicitly Described
Dominance / Submission / Total Power Exchange
Sexual Positions that only skilled contortionists should attempt
Alcohol / Drinking to Excess / Bad Decisions
