The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1) by Sherie Keys

Chapter1
     
    “Come on, Minnie, it won’t hurt to at least meet him, right?”
     
    Minnie (properly, Minerva Saffron Harrison, courtesy of a mother’s affair with new-age philosophy and a father who wouldn’t say no) glowered and shoved the young man’s arm off her shoulder. “I said I need to think about it, Ave. That means at least a day or two, not ten minutes.”
     
    Avery Reynolds slid back into his seat, at an angle from her at their shared coffee shop table, still wearing the grin that reached all the way up to his thick eyebrows. “Look, you can’t stay with your mom forever —she drives you crazy. A place to stay for three years and a good chunk of change afterwards — that’ll give you a chance to get on your feet, at least."
     
    She sighed. Avery had a point, as much as she didn't like to admit it - she'd been trying to get out on her own for three years, since turning eighteen, but still in school and without a job to pay the bills, she hadn't managed. At the same time, she didn't really want to end up like Avery himself, bouncing back and forth between girlfriends and relying on romance to keep food in his stomach.
     
    "And he's not expecting sex any time soon. I already told him you were nervous about it."
     
    "You told him that?!" Minnie's outburst was loud enough that a couple of the students bent over the next table looked up in their direction.  She immediately went silent and tried to sink into her seat until they went back to work. "Tell me you didn't say it like that."
     
    Avery just laughed a little at her, which didn't do much to improve her mood, so she kicked him lightly under the table. Minnie's awkwardness about sex was the reason she and Avery had broken up in the first place, after dating most of the first year out of high school. It had been a mutual thing, and a large part of it was their different sexual needs - Avery was high-strung and very interested in sex, and Minnie's own appetites couldn't keep up.
     
    "Don't worry, don't worry—"
     
    "Of course I'm going to worry. He's one of your friends, Avery; I think I'm the only person you know who doesn't try to get laid three times a week."
     
    He just laughed more at that, while her face flushed with embarrassment. "It's not a big deal if you say no," Avery said after a moment, swirling the end of his tea around in the cup. "I just thought - hey, better that one of my friends gets that half a mil than a stranger."
     
    It was Minnie's turn to laugh. "What, so you can mooch more fancy tea off me?" And with that, their conversation turned to other, more mundane things.
     
    But the offer hardly left her mind for the next few hours, even after she left Avery and the coffee shop behind to sit through another hour of animation lecture.
     
    ----
     
    The offer was this: five hundred thousand dollars, plus room and board for the duration, for a three year "relationship" with the richest of Avery's playboy friends. Minnie had never met James Sanders, but she knew from Avery that his father was one of those rich, back-room businessmen whose names never quite reached the public eye. James, in contrast, wanted to use the money his father left him to get his name out there - and in a way, he had. It just wasn't in a way that would help him build up the tech business he was looking to start in the next year or two. Living the way he had - five or six girlfriends a year, spending his father's money, rather than getting any kind of job - had given him a reputation as unreliable and a do-nothing, and it was a reputation he was now working hard to reverse .
     
    Part of that meant getting a steady girlfriend and settling down - marrying her, maybe having kids. It was the one thing James couldn't do on his own (he'd already gotten a job somewhere in the middle of his father's company and was working his way up, rather than using his influence to just start out there), but it was something that his money could buy for him.
     
    And that was