The Only One

And now a sneak peek at For Real (Rules of Love, Book One) coming November 14 from New York Times Bestselling author, Chelsea M. Cameron!

Two people. One fake relationship. What could go wrong?

When virgin Shannon Travers gets fed up with her friends demanding that she find a boyfriend, she enlists the help of tattooed, mohawk-rocking graphic design student Jett. He’s more than happy to play along with their Fake Relationship, including the Ten Rules of Fake Dating that control-freak Shannon comes up with. Even if he likes to violate them. Repeatedly.

But what happens when Fake Dating starts to feel… not fake anymore? Will Shannon be willing to let go and embrace the first thing in her life that’s ever felt REAL?

“I’m sorry to bother you, but can you watch my computer?”

“What?” I pulled by earbuds out and looked up to meet a pair of astonishingly golden-brown eyes set in a chiseled face under a head of black hair that was shaved short on the sides and left long on top and gelled to one side like a wave. From the top of his shirt peeked several tattoos and his arms were covered, but I didn’t have a chance to see what they were, as my eyes were draw back to his eyes and I was left momentarily without words.

I fished for some in my brain and came up with two.

“Yeah, sure.”

He flashed me a quick smile and got out his cell phone and dashed out of the cafe. I’d been so immersed in working on my paper that I hadn’t even seen him come in, but a quick scan around showed me that he was sitting at a table right behind me.

A quick glance toward the front door showed me that he was strolling up and down the sidewalk in front of the cafe, still talking on his phone. I turned in my chair and glanced at his laptop, which was open to Facebook. I was too far away to see anything, but I knew the page layout well enough. He also had a stack of books and a notebook open with some scribbles in it. A cup of what looked like black coffee steamed next to the computer. I turned back around quickly so he wouldn’t catch me being a total creeper. Plus, I needed to get back to work. I couldn’t get distracted now.

I was just starting the second semester of my junior year, and I could almost taste my degree. It tasted like victory and thick paper. In less than two years I would have a bachelor’s of science degree in business and be well on my way to an MBA. It made me shiver inside just thinking about having my own office at the top of a glassy skyscraper, sitting at my mahogany desk and crossing my nylon-clad legs as I signed a corporate merger with a pen that probably cost more than the car I currently drove.

Shut it down, Shannon. Shut it down and focus. I breathed three times, in and out, closing my eyes and emptying my mind. Everything drained out and I locked my eyes back on the document. My paper wasn’t due until next week, but I had never waited until the last minute to do a paper like everyone else. You never got anywhere by procrastinating, as had been proven by both my parents and my older brother, Cole by the dizzying array of semi-failed jobs and careers they’d had. Sometimes I was convinced I was adopted because even though I looked like the rest of my family, with brown hair and blue eyes, I didn’t act like a single one of them. I’d heard my parents wonder more than once if I was possessed. They were joking, of course, but it still stung when they pointed out what I was already painfully aware of. That I didn’t fit in.

“Thanks.” The laptop guy was back. He put his hands on my table and leaned down so his face was close to mine. Dude, invade my personal bubble much? “I don’t normally trust strangers with my stuff, but you look…” his eyes skimmed their way up and down my body, and I shifted under his scrutiny. “Trustworthy,” he finally said.

Well, I probably did. I had to go to work in the operations department of a local bank later, so I had a black pencil skirt with a white blouse tucked into it and my cute-but-comfortable tan pumps on. In contrast, his shirt had some sort of video game robot or something splashed across the front and his jeans were skinny, but not to the point of being way too tight. It would be clear to anyone looking at us side-by-side that we had next to nothing in common.

“I think that’s a compliment,” I said as he stood up and started moving back toward his table.

“That’s up to you,” he said, walking backwards and finally sitting back down. I turned back around, shaking my head. Whatever.

I started putting my earbuds in, but stopped when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“For your trouble,” he said, as I slowly turned around to see him standing right behind my chair, holding a plate out to me with a scone on it. “Raspberry scone?”

“Uh, no. Thank you. I’m good.” I’d just polished off a blueberry muffin and was on my second cup of black tea.

“You sure? This is a really good scone. You could do what my mom does and wrap it up and take it home with you. I swear, she put a steak in her bag once.” He waved the plate in front of me, as if that was supposed to entice me.

“No, thanks.” I turned around again and hoped he would go away.

“Fine, then I guess I’ll just owe you one.”

I turned my music back on and ignored him. Saint-Sens filled my ears and drowned out the rest of the noise in the cafe as I pulled my focus back to my paper.

An hour later, I typed the finishing touches on my paper and started packing my things up. The guy was gone, but I’d been to absorbed to notice when he’d left. My chances of seeing him ever again were slim, since Central Maine University had nearly ten thousand students, and most of them were commuters.

I said a quick prayer before I turned the key on my Crown Victoria, hoping it would start. Thankfully, the engine engaged with a minimum of sputtering and I drove from downtown Hartford to the next town over, Deermont, where my job was. I parked near the back of the building and swiped my card in the door. I had just enough time to get to my desk, turn my computer on and clock in. Barring a death or dismemberment, I had never been late.

My cubicle was near the back of the building, in the “farm” as everyone called it. I said hello to a few of my coworkers, most of whom were fellow students. My favorite coworker, Amelia, wasn’t working today, which was a bummer. Nearly everyone else’s cubicles just had a few papers or photographs, but hers was covered in her drawings and positive notes and pictures of butterflies. Amelia was literally the sunniest person I’d ever met. Sometimes she was too much, but during those dark times when you got down, she always was a breath of fresh air and things never seemed too bad when she was around.

I had a stack of loan files that needed to be scanned, so I started with removing the staples from all the pages. Yes, it was as boring as it sounded, but at least I could listen to my music. I put my earbuds back in and got to work. This was what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. Everyone had to start somewhere. I had to pay my dues, even if that meant removing staples from a two hundred page appraisal.

Three hours later I was ready to go back to my apartment and get back to work on my homework. I was fishing in my purse for my keys when my hand closed on something. It was a paper crane folded out of notebook paper. What the heck? I didn’t know where it had come from, but the only explanation I could think of was that the laptop guy had dropped it in there, either by accident or on purpose. It was a weird thing to do, so I hoped it was by accident. He was Asian, so maybe it was just a thing that he did to celebrate his culture. God, was that racist?

Maybe he did it all the time without thinking about it.

I turned it over in my hand as I walked to my car. They were supposed to be good luck or something, so I set it on my dashboard. I didn’t really believe in superstition, but you could never be too careful. I didn’t want to risk any bad mojo.

“I’m back,” I said as I unlocked the front door to my craptastic apartment. I shucked off my heels and sighed in relief. There was nothing quite as nice as taking your heels off at the end of a long day. Men could just never understand that.

“How was work?” My roommate, Hazel was hovering over a pot of something in our microscopic kitchen. This could be bad.

“Fine. What are you making?” I said, setting my bag down and trying to avoid going into the kitchen, in case this turned out to be one of her experiments.

“Relax, it’s from a box.” She held up an empty box of mac and cheese. I didn’t breathe easier, because she’d definitely messed that up more than once. “And I bought a pre-made salad and there is ice cream. So we’re good.” Only then did I let out a breath. She held the spoon out and I took a bite. Phew.

“I swear, every time I cook you act like I’m feeding you poison.” Hazel and I had become friends two years ago when we’d lived next door to each other in the dorms. She’d had issues with her roommate, I’d had issues with mine and we ended up moving in together halfway through the year and we’d been living together ever since. We were both poor as all get out, but we’d managed to find an apartment in Deermont and it hadn’t fallen apart yet, although it was held together with duct tape and staples.

As much as we got along, Hazel and I were visual opposites. Her skin was gorgeous and dark and she got a tan within twenty seconds of standing in the sun. Her hair was long and curled in perfect rings, unlike mine that tended to do it’s own thing and be curly on some days and not so curly on other days. She was tall and had the kind of figure that made guys eyes pop when she danced. I would hate her for it, but she was always saying how jealous she was of my body and my “cute and perky” boobs. She had some delusion that her butt was flat, but at least hers was in proportion to the rest of her body. There was a reason I wore a lot of black on my bottom half.

“You going to work?” Hazel had gotten herself a job as a bartender a few nights a week at the campus bar. It was a little bit classier than some of the college establishments, but the tips sucked, so it was a trade off.

“Yeah, in an hour. Remind me why I didn’t sell my organs online to pay for my education?” I grabbed a fork and started stealing bites of mac and cheese from the pot. I was starving.

“Because it’s illegal?”

“Right. That. They might frown upon that at law school, yes?”

I nodded and she got a fork too. We often ate dinner like this. Less dishes to wash.

“Usually.”

We finished off the pot and then shared the salad from the plastic container as we sat on the couch and worked on our various never-ending homework assignments.

“So it’s going to happen tonight,” Hazel said as she put on the tight shirt she always wore to work. It showed a lot more cleavage than she was comfortable with, but she got better tips that way. I didn’t hate the player, I hated the game in that instance.

“What’s going to happen?” I already knew the answer.

“I am going to find a nice young man to pop that cherry of yours.” She jabbed her fork at me and I backed up so she didn’t stab me with it. There it was again. The reminder that I was a card-carrying member of the Virginity Club. I wish I had some good reason, that I was like, saving myself for Jesus, or my parents had put the fear in me, or told me that if I had sex with a boy that my ears would fall off and I’d gain forty pounds, but I had no such excuse.

The truth was, boys were gross. Part of me was still semi-convinced they had cooties. I’d sort of dated, but every time I thought about getting physical, or close to a guy, he smelled weird, or had hair on his knuckles, or burped or did something else to completely turn me off.

I’d been on a few dates here and there, but usually I’d have to send out an emergency call to one of my friends. Sooner or later, rumors went around my high school that I was a lesbian, and I went ahead and let them spread. Of course, then girls started hitting on me, but they were easier to fend off.

I thought that in college, I would have the chance to maybe meet someone. Someone who wore a tie every day and expensive cologne and had a 401K. Yum. But, here I was, well into my junior year and that fellow hadn’t shown up yet. Sure, there were plenty of guys on campus, but a lot of them were taken. Or gay. Or taken and gay. Or total and complete douchebags. Or budding alcoholics. Or gay, taken douchebag alcoholics.

Since my friends had always struck out when it came to setting me up with a boy in order to make him my boyfriend, they’d lowered their expectations to just getting me laid. I didn’t exactly advertise my virginity, but it always seemed to come up when people were drinking and swapping stories and I got red-faced and ran away to the bathroom when everyone started talking about their first times.

“How many times have I told you, I’m set. It will happen when it’s supposed to happen.”

“Don’t give me that fairy godmother, dreams come true shit. We don’t need to find your prince charming. Just a non-skeezy guy to do you a service. Think of him as… a plumber. For your vagina.” She scraped the bottom of the container for the last few croutons.

“A plumber? Have you ever seen a sexy plumber? Outside of a porno?” One of the other things my friends had done to try and make me want to have sex was make me watch it. I’d only lasted about five minutes when I had to run away and beg them to shut it off. Seeing other people… doing things like that? I didn’t understand how anyone could find that sexy. Plus, the girls were like, unbelievably flexible. No way I could contort myself like that.

I’d been branded as a prude from then on.

“Why are you so hung up about it? I know you have a little battery friend.”

“Yeah, so? Just because I’m a virgin, I’m supposed to not know about my own body?” Hazel had also surprised me a time or two when I thought I was alone. “I have a sex drive, Haze. Being a virgin doesn’t stop me from having sexual feelings.”

In fact, I probably had more than the average girl, just because they were so… pent up.

“We just need to take those sexual feelings and transfer them to something with a penis. A real life penis. With a boy attached to it.”

I shook my head and went to take a shower.