Falling for Mister Wrong by Lizzie Shane Read Free Book Online Page A

fire if she
tried, but the thought was there.
    She wanted domestic bliss, damn it. Every
freaking Hallmark Channel movie on the planet had conditioned her
to especially crave it over the holidays and she was supposed to be
on her way. She was engaged to Mister Perfect.
    But now Mister Perfect was spending more time
talking to talk show hosts than her and all those idyllic moments
from the last three months felt like a mirage. All week she’d been
sneaking peeks at the Rock of Ages, tucked into her nightstand, as
if that would make her engagement feel real again. If it ever
had.
    The first of the torches appeared at the top
of the mountain, wending their way down. The snow had let up enough
for them to hold the parade after all. Caitlyn burrowed into her
couch, curled beneath her favorite throw, and tried to bask in the
warmth of the season. If Daniel were here with her, she’d be
leaning against his side, his arm tucking her tight to him. Maybe
there would be holiday music playing softly over the stereo.
    Her cell phone rang shrilly, shattering the
lovely little holiday dream and Caitlyn scrambled to untangle
herself from the throw to reach it before it shrieked again. It was
the Marrying Mister Perfect phone. Only Miranda or Daniel would be
calling.
    Her heart leapt at the thought that it was
him, then she kicked herself for being so pathetically desperate to
hear his voice, then she kicked herself for being so cynical. She
was allowed to be happy to hear from her fiancé.
    Fiancé. It still didn’t seem real.
    She punched the button to connect the call.
“Hello?”
    “Baby! Happy New Year!” He shouted the words
above a roar of background noise.
    “Daniel? Where are you?”
    He laughed. “You’ll never believe it. The
network invited me to their New Year’s Eve—” The rest of the
sentence was lost in a sudden surge of cheering.
    “I can barely hear you.”
    “I know! It’s a mad house. I think it’s
getting louder by the minute as we get closer to the ball
dropping.”
    Her heart clutched hard as she put the pieces
together. “You’re in New York?”
    “Right in the heart of everything, baby! We
can see the crowds in Times Square. But it’s nothing without you,
baby. I wish you were here.”
    I wish you’d stop calling me baby. “I
could have been,” she said. “I have lots of excuses to be in New
York. My mom lives there. We could have had a quiet New Year’s Eve
together—nowhere public, but at least we could have been together,
if you’d let me know you were going to New York.”
    “Oh, baby, I didn’t even think of it. Things
have been so crazy. I don’t even know my own schedule. The network
has a girl whose entire job it is to tell me when and where I need
to be places.”
    She wanted to forgive him. If only he hadn’t
sounded so self-important. So pleased that he merited his own
scheduler. “I just miss you.”
    “And I miss you. More than anything. This
won’t last forever. Once the show starts airing, the promo push
will die down after the first few weeks. Until the finale. And then
we’ll be together.” The background noise receded, like he had
walked away from the party, then dropped drastically, as if a door
had shut. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. We need to
give US Weekly and People an answer about whether we’ll both do the
cover feature the week after the finale airs. Obviously, we won’t
tell them your name just yet or that we’ll be married, but they
want confirmation that the winner will sit down for the interview
with me. Magazines like to line that stuff up way in advance and
we’d be the cover story, baby.”
    Her stomach roiled queasily. “I thought the
publicity stuff was all you.”
    “It is for now. But when you win, it will be
both of us. We’re America’s Couple, baby.”
    For the love of God, stop calling me
baby. “But we will have just gotten married. I thought we’d be
able to get away—”
    “This would only be a short break