Book Title: The Honeymoon Gambit (Catalina Dreams Book 2)
Author: I.M. Flippy
Publisher: I.M. Flippy
Cover Artist: Janna Urbanski
Release Date: August 14, 2020
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance
Trope/s: Fake dating, workplace romance, enemies to lovers
Themes: Self-acceptance
Length: Approx. 45 000 words/ 200 pages
It is a standalone story.
Buy Links – Available on Kindle Unlimited
Sell the fake relationship and they might sell the client. If they don’t kill each other first.
Blurb
Todd Ellis and Eric Yoo cannot stand each other.
Todd is too chaotic. Eric is too serious. But they’re both rising stars at Jackson & Larabee Associates.
Pretending to be a couple in order to impress a new client is not going to be easy.
All Eric has to do is not kill Todd and keep smiling.
If he could avoid falling in love with him, that would be good too.
Welcome to Catalina Island.
Todd was having fun and had not expected to.
“So, we were working late one night.” He snuck a knowing look laden with implications at Eric, his eyebrow a telling arch, his lips slyly pursed. “To tell you the truth, I wanted to work late, and I didn’t need to… because Eric was working late that night—”
“Ooooh.” Alphonso crowed and clapped his hands.
ETA to Catalina was another twenty minutes, but Todd felt he could have gone on another hour.
He had Alphonso and Jordan eating out of his hand. It didn’t feel much different from pitching a campaign, except that he had to remember to smile at Eric every once in a while and lean into him as if he was having trouble keeping his hands off his boyfriend.
Eric seemed enthralled.
“Anyhow,” Todd went on, “it was just the two of us in the office, you know? And I was into Eric for the longest. It may not have been the most professional thing in the world, but his office is next to mine and I went over to talk to him with some dumb excuse… I remember he was standing by the window. He was dictating into his phone, right?”
Todd imagined the moment as he spoke. It was a fantasy he’d entertained more than once; that underneath it all, Eric Yoo was fiery and passionate and super into Todd. He imagined Eric standing in the moonlight on some late night in the office and looking at Todd with his intense gaze and Todd would just know.
“He looked so devastating in the moonlight,” Todd went on. He looked at Eric, who stared silently back at him. “I couldn’t help myself. I gave him the look. You know the look? He gave me the look back and suddenly we were kissing? I couldn’t even tell you who moved first.”
“That is so goddamn romantic,” Jordan said. He took a long sip of beer and pointed the bottle at Todd. “You are so into him. I can tell. This is so sweet, I love it.”
Todd nodded rapidly and swallowed the last of his La Croix. “Yep. Yeah, I guess I’m bad at hiding it.” He felt Eric sit up a little straighter next to him.
“He’s a real romantic,” Eric said, in the same serious tone he would use to discuss life insurance. “Of the two of us. I mean. Definitely more so than I am.”
He was so painfully stilted. Todd could see the slightly baffled looks on Alphonso and Jordan’s faces. Eric sounded like a terrible actor doing a cold reading. Todd forced a laugh. “Eric is just a little uncomfy with this whole thing being public is all.” He wrapped an arm around Eric’s waist and was shocked when Eric went pliant against him. “Um… PDA. All that. It’s more my thing than his.”
“Yeah,” Eric said, and shivered in Todd’s arms. “Yeah, I hate PDA. But this is okay.”
***
If Todd had not known better, he might have imagined that Eric liked Todd’s arm around his waist for the way he leaned into it, his shoulders dropping, that tense stiffness that seemed to follow him around easing up. But Todd did know better. Eric was just a little more improvisationally talented than Todd assumed once he got into the swing of things.
The rest of the ride to Catalina Island passed without incident. Though Todd could not say he felt at all relaxed, as much as he appeared at ease with Eric by his side. Stackler watched the two of them with a laser focus. But he played his part well too, laughing along with Jordan and Alphonso and acting as if taking over their account was the furthest thing from his mind.
“I’ll be honest with you two,” he said at one point, a chilled wine spritzer in his hand as the yacht skimmed along the water. “I’m only here for the food. But if I can help with Gigi at all, that would be great. I’m just glad that I bought you two on board. So to speak, haha.”
Alphonso and Jordan were charmed. They laughed and clapped Stackler on the back. Todd only exchanged an irritated look with Eric.
Finally, the yacht pulled into the marina at Catalina, creeping along behind the other boats to a waiting empty slot near the crowded dock.
“Oh! I’ve just realized…” Jordan slapped his forehead as their bartender brought the bags up to the deck from the stateroom. “Alphonso, we have to speak to the concierge and switch their two rooms to one since they’re a couple. Surely, you’ll want to share a nice suite.”
Todd sucked in a breath and slipped his hands in his pockets, nodding in agreement. He snuck a look at Eric, who looked away bashfully. There was something cute about that and Todd stifled a smile. The slightest implication that the two of them were actually sleeping together beyond just dating seemed to embarrass Eric.
They had discussed this particular consequence.
“We could say you have restless leg syndrome,” Eric said at one point, staring Todd down. “So even though we’re together, we often sleep in two beds. Because you can’t stop moving.”
“You want to tell them that,” Todd had said, “you go right ahead. I don’t think I can say that with a straight face.”
Now the moment of truth was upon them. Todd watched Eric with a raised eyebrow, waiting for him to insist that Todd was a restless sleeper who needed his own space if the two of them were going to get any rest. But Eric’s mouth snapped shut, and he nodded.
“That would be great,” Eric said. “We’d really appreciate it. It will be like our own little honeymoon!”
Todd opened his mouth, and no sound came out. He had been looking forward to Eric’s attempt at making the lie convincing.
I.M. Flippy lives in Hollywood, California with her two judgmental cats, Guthrie and Colbert.
Flippy has been writing her whole life and a few of you may have read her fanfiction.
Flippy enjoys margaritas, good movies, reading just about anything, getting political, and obsessing a little too much about Stranger Things.
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