A Fresh Start

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Blurb:

A plus size, marriage of convenience, interracial, billionaire romance book. For writer Grace Hickory, she wants nothing more than to see her name on the cover of a book. But for now, she’s stuck at her mundane job at a publishing house, watching her dream slowly fade away.

When she attends a book event for Alan Barden, she thought she would just be meeting her favorite author, and perhaps get a book of his signed. She never expected to end up on a date with him—and then having him propose to her! Alan’s plan was supposed to be just a marriage of convenience that will benefit both of their careers…

But something begins to bloom between them… Will Grace finally realize her dreams? Or will love get in the way of their marital arrangement? Find out in this BBW, BWWM wedding romance story by Ellie Etienne.

Chapter 1

“I’m almost done,” called Grace, reading so fast that her eyes seemed to be zooming across the page. She was running a bit late.

She would really have said that it wasn’t her fault. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t want to do the work. She did, honestly.

But the manuscript was so bad. It had sparkling werewolves in it.

Grace didn’t have anything against werewolves. She’d read some well-plotted werewolf romances with generous amounts of humor that made her chuckle and hold on to the edge of her seat.

But werewolves that sparkled and rode around on rainbow unicorns were something else altogether. If you wanted to do a parody, that would work admirably. But this writer took herself so very seriously. She wanted to do an epic drama.

Could anybody really blame her for having taken a few breaks? It was the equivalent of cleansing your palate, rationalized Grace. Usually, she would just have skimmed a few pages of the manuscript and written a suggestion – only if this were for hipsters to like ironically would’ve been her note – and let it go at that.

But this manuscript had come in with a post-it note of its own. The author was the publisher’s wife’s little sister, who had, apparently, been on some potent acid when she’d written it. So now Grace was on a deadline and needed to put together constructive criticism, delivered nicely and tactfully, for the little brat who thought she could write.

Grace read the paragraph again, just to be sure that she’d gotten it right. Yes, young Michelle thought that it made complete sense to make a human with no extra powers other than the desire to live happily ever after have a bare knuckle fight with a werewolf. And, holy crap, she’d made the human win.

She scribbled a note about how believable, even within a supernatural universe, even within the realms and tropes of fantasy, was important.

Grace really wanted to go back to her break novel – the novel she’d been using as the palate cleanser. It was really good, and every chapter so far had ended on really gripping cliffhangers. She could hardly wait to go home and read the whole thing.

But it was six in the evening and she didn’t see herself going home for another hour. She cringed just a little when her manager came to her.

“Grace, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay back and finish this before you can leave tonight. I wish she’d done a soft copy instead of writing it out, you could’ve taken it home. But as it is, I’m afraid you need to finish it and leave the hard copy here before you can go home.”

Grace shrugged and slumped down in her chair a bit.

“All right, Katie,” said Grace, her voice listless.

She didn’t blame Katie. She knew that Katie didn’t like to ride anybody’s ass hard. She was just about the nicest manager anybody could hope for, ever. But even she was subjected to the whims and fancies of the publisher.

“I wish I could’ve given this one to somebody else, Grace. I am sorry you’re stuck with it.”

Katie was thirty and only a couple of years older than Grace. She tried to talk to Grace as a friend, but Grace was always aware of how much better off Katie was. Sometimes, she felt that Katie had sailed through the promotions and become a manager because she was tall, slim and blonde. Grace was tall, but slim and blonde were two things she would never be as long as she lived.

Not that she minded, usually. Grace loved her curves, her beautiful dark skin that was almost the color of espresso, her eyes that were like rich dark chocolate, the bouncing curls of her long hair – all of herself. She had no problems with self-love.

But sometimes, it felt as if her skills and her abilities were overlooked just a bit too much. Katie was a smart and skilled woman, but so was Grace. Anyway, even if Grace was perfectly friendly with Katie, she didn’t really want to be friends with her. Katie was her manager, and a good one.

“I wanted to ask you if you’d like to have a drink with me, too. But I guess that’ll have to be another time.”

Katie looked at Grace wistfully, her eyes large and blue. Grace smiled and shrugged.

“Guess I’ve got to finish this. Jeez, Katie, rainbow unicorns and sparkling werewolves. Who on earth told this girl that she could write?”

Katie chuckled and shrugged.

“We do have the oddest bestsellers.”

“Not this one. Yes, I’m being nice. At least, I’m really trying to be nice. It’s the best I can do.”

Katie patted her shoulder, and Grace felt like her hand had lingered on her shoulder just a second longer than it had to. She shrugged off the thought, but not the hand.

“Give yourself a nice reward for getting through it,” suggested Katie.

Grace sighed.

“I am. I reward myself with what I swear will be one page of the new Alan Barden book every time I get through a chapter of this drivel. But that book is so good, I can’t stop reading it. That’s why I’m not done with the sparkly rainbow.”

Katie laughed, a bit more uproariously than she had to, thought Grace.

“It’s too bad he’s such a privacy maniac. You would’ve enjoyed going to the event.”

Grace’s ears almost literally pricked up.

“What event?” she pounced.

“Oh… You didn’t know? I thought it was an open secret! I shouldn’t have said it. Forget I said a word.”

But Grace could see, of course, that a few slight nudges and Katie would spill the beans. Besides, Grace’s curiosity could slay a whole pride of lions, not just a cat. There was no way she was going to let that go.

“No, come on, Katie. I won’t tell a soul. Besides, if it’s an open secret, I’ll probably hear about it anyway. I’ll just destroy myself with curiosity by then. And I won’t be able to focus on the rainbow unicorns.”

Katie smiled, all coy. Grace sighed and needled again.

“Please? Pretty please? An event would be so much more wonderful than this book. An Alan Barden event? He doesn’t do events. In the two years I’ve been here, I haven’t set my eyes on him even once. I’ve seen that agent of his once, that’s it. And I’ve seen Roy pull his hair out, trying to get him to do publicity. He doesn’t do events. So what event?”

Katie perched on the edge of Grace’s desk and said what she was obviously dying to tell her.

“Well, the agent – her name is Rachel Smith – finally managed to convince him to do an event for the new book. A book signing. It’s only been on the market for two weeks and it’s doing well, but we usually see his books tapering off a little bit towards the end of the first month. If he’d just do a couple of events, that wouldn’t happen. We’d love to have him doing a couple of radio and talk shows, but there’s absolutely no chance of that.