Desperately Seeking Househusband Read online

  Desperately Seeking Househusband

  Marika Ray

  Marika Ray Publishing

  Contents

  Desperately Seeking Househusband

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Note From the Author

  Reading Order

  Sneak Peek of The Cult Queen

  Desperately Seeking Househusband

  Copyright © 2019 by Marika Ray

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: September 19, 2019

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Special thanks to:

  Cover Design by Laura Halloran

  Editing by Lawrence Editing

  Proofreading by Shayne Ryder

  Desperately Seeking Househusband

  house·hus·band

  /ˈhousˌhəzbənd/

  noun

  a man who lives with a partner and carries out household duties traditionally done by a housewife rather than working outside the home.

  1

  Gabby

  The damn coffee grinder roared in the background, grating on my nerves and fanning the flames of the epic headache brewing inside my skull. Why did every available man in a fifty-mile radius have to be such a douchecanoe?

  My ad was crystal clear: handsome, mid-thirties, single, willing to sign a confidentiality agreement, and have decent acting skills. Although, considering I’ve lived on the outskirts of the City of Angels my whole life, I should have known that last requirement would send in the crazies. There were more than enough jobless wannabe actors in LA to keep a steady line of eager beavers out the coffee shop door from now to eternity.

  And there was. A line, that is. I’d been getting the hairy eyeball from the barista for the last two hours, but the men just kept coming. My bottomless coffee had been refilled a few too many times, causing shaky hands, a rapid heart rate, and increasingly poor decision-making skills. I could feel my blood pressure rising, like the steam coming out of that big machine over there where the neighborhood crack dealer brewed up another concoction meant to addict you and enslave you. Which was how I found myself interviewing possible men there at a coffee shop, instead of somewhere more suitable, like an office suite, or behind the dumpster out back. Considering the caliber of men I’d interviewed, I could have just set up a table by the trash receptacle and gotten the same outcome.

  Probably should have tossed this whole idea into the trash while I was there.

  “So you see, my porn experience makes me perfect for the position. Any position, baby.” The sleazy guy sitting across from me winked and rubbed his knee against mine under the table. I reminded myself to douse all bodily surfaces in hand sanitizer before I climbed into my car and left this whole day in the past where it would be stricken from the record and hopefully forgotten about.

  “Okay, well, thanks for that delightful insight. I’ll give you a call if you make it to the next round.” I smiled with my lips firmly pressed together in a pucker, the best I could scrounge up in terms of polite discourse. If I let my lips open again, I couldn’t be held responsible for what would come out. The filter would be gone.

  The guy gave me a wink, his Fabio-esque blond hair sliding off his forehead with the movement and hitting him in the eye, making him wink a second time, which was two times too many for my liking. The smile morphed into a grimace my face muscles didn’t have the ability to hold back. The B-list porn star got the hint and took off, maybe because he’d lost circulation from the excessively tight jeans he wore like a second skin. Not a bad ass in those jeans, but a great ass a fake boyfriend didn’t make. I thought that was how the phrase went.

  I took a sip of my now-cold coffee and mentally pep talked myself to continue this debacle. I wasn’t a quitter. Though I’d never been faced with an obstacle quite like the one on my hands today. The really shitty thing was I’d gotten myself into this mess, which meant I was determined to get myself out of it.

  When the television producer originally called, it seemed like the perfect thing to do. I mean, I hadn’t eaten in months, so I was operating from a place of starvation and we all know what women are capable of when carb-deprived. Regardless of my physical status, agreeing to be on the new reality show sounded like the perfect way to exact revenge on my no-good-boss-banging-cheating-asshole ex-boyfriend of five long years. On the surface, it was simple: get on Desperate Househusbands and show my ex I was totally and completely over him, living my best life with my hottie boy toy with the mucky-mucks of Los Angeles.

  Once you scratched the surface—which was a really weird phrase because nobody scratches the surface of things past the age of five or maybe only as an accident, yet here we go as adults using that phrase to mean diving in deeper to something when really, you’d be pissed if someone scratched your surface of pretty much anything—you’d start to see the breakdown of this grand idea of mine.

  First, I had no boyfriend and certainly no fiancé like the producer thought I had. And considering the show was Desperate Househusbands, you kind of needed a partner to be eligible. Crazy rule, but who was I to make them change it?

  Second, now that the filming schedule was set, I had three weeks to find a man to pretend to be my fake boyfriend, get to know him, move him into my house, and hope like hell we could pull off a couple so freakishly happy and in love that my ex would regret every “late night working” and beg me to come back just so I could kick him in the nuts and walk away with my head held high.

  A lot of ifs in that scenario, I was aware. Which was why I put an ad online before I could second-guess myself and got busy interviewing potential fake boyfriends. There was no time to lose. I had eighteen days before we were in front of the camera and eventually on national television. No pressure. And no time for waffling. Even though a waffle sounded excellent right about then.

  “Next!” I called out, rubbing the space between my eyebrows. Perhaps I was at the point in the day where you need to switch from coffee to alcohol. Maybe that would help me get through this.

  I looked up and saw a potential winner approaching. Nice-looking guy, early thirties maybe, had all his hair and teeth. Things were looking up.

  “Well, hello. What’s your name?” My smile felt more natural, a little less forced.

  The man pulled out the chair across from me and sat down, an eager smile greeting me. “I’m Adam. I was hoping we could get this project started today.”

  “Oh.” Well, that was pretty forward, but hey, a guy who knew what he wanted and asked for it could be kind of hot. “Let’s go over a few questions and see if we’re a good fit.”

  He nodded, the smile growing, so I went for it. “What makes yo
u feel like you’d be the best candidate for the job?”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, his cheeks heated a bit, which made me super curious. “To be honest with you…I can be honest, right?” He leaned forward across the small table, his voice dropping. Color me intrigued. I nodded, wanting him to continue more than I wanted that alcoholic drink. “It’s so rare to find an artist that wants to paint what most people view as an imperfection. I mean, there aren’t many of us walking around with three perfectly formed nipples, you know.”

  My face froze, the breath trapped in my lungs with nowhere to go, which was fine because I think my heart stopped too, so no need for more oxygen just then. Have you ever had an out of body experience? Where you feel like you’ve floated away and are now simply looking down at your life and shaking your head? I have. This was it. The moment I could observe from afar where everything had gone wrong.

  But eventually, I floated back down and had to rejoin the body that was currently in the middle of a busy coffee shop with a nice guy who just told me his big, dark secret. And now I’d have to take all the cringe-worthy awkwardness I felt and make him feel it when I told him he had the wrong interview.

  I finally regained bodily function and sucked in a large gulp of air and blew it out. “You’re right. I don’t think there are a lot of men with three nipples. I mean, I’m only a case study of one, but I’ve never come across a male like that and I’ve seen quite a few chests in my life.” I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head to get back on track. “I’m so sorry, Adam. I think you may have the wrong coffee shop. I’m interviewing fake boyfriends, not nipple models.” I almost scoffed, but caught the irony of the whole thing before it came out in my tone of voice. Who was I to judge when I was here on a similarly ridiculous mission?

  His face blanched and he sat back, his knee hitting the underside of the table and sloshing my coffee around dangerously. “Yo-you’re not Blair?”

  Shaking my head slowly, I attempted to let him down as easily as I could. “No, I’m sorry. I’m Gabby. But good luck with the modeling thing. I, for one, am a big proponent of just being yourself, third nipple and all!”

  He blinked. I got curious.

  Leaning in, I had to ask, “Does that third one have sensation?”

  He rolled his eyes and stood abruptly, leaving the coffee shop before I had a chance to apologize. Damn that mouth of mine. Always meaning the best, but coming out with the worst.

  I went back to rubbing that spot between my eyebrows, eyes closed. Maybe I needed a new plan. Maybe instead of a total stranger, I should go down the list of friends and coworkers to see if I could convince them to do the job. Might make things awkward after the show, but that was in the future and I would deal with it then. I needed a fake boyfriend now.

  “I kinda wanted to know if the nipple was on his chest or some other area of his body.”

  The voice held laughter, barely constrained, possibly having the same weak filter my mouth had. I popped open my eyes and looked left to the source of the voice, seeing a good-looking ginger smiling at me deviously from the table next to me. The part of me that had gathered dust in the last year since Hewitt and I had broken up perked up from its slumber and leaned in for a closer inspection of the young man. He appeared late twenties and straight-up adorable with a dimple winking at me from a face that looked like it smiled on the regular.

  2

  Gabby

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance, though half of me was turned on and panting while the other half was so embarrassed by the day’s events I wanted to flee the coffee shop. “I thought my sensation question held merit.”

  He nodded, a light in his eyes flaring as he talked. “Oh, it certainly did. There were quite a few questions that needed to be asked. It’s a shame he left so quickly.” He glanced up at where my line of men had left a collection of trash like the beaches in LA after Memorial Day weekend. “Looks like you’re out of interviewees.”

  I glanced over too, seeing not one man left as a possibility for my project. My shoulders sagged and my bum screamed at me to get off the damn wooden chair already and get the blood flowing.

  “Well, I guess that’s that.”

  “What’s that?” the handsome stranger asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  He increased the wattage on the smile. “You said that was that. What was it you were trying to accomplish? Besides entertain your fellow coffee addicts with your titillating conversation. Pun intended, by the way.”

  I guffawed, the sound more like a burp than a laugh, but that was what happened when I startle-laughed. Some people snorted. I guffawed. The caffeine kicked into gear in mysterious ways, loosening my mouth mostly, which was never a good idea.

  “Good one. I’m actually trying to hire someone and you’d think there’d be eligible men in a big city like this, but it’s been udderly disappointing.” I gave him a saucy wink, playing his word game and hoping the eye flutter came across better than Fabio from earlier.

  “What’s the job?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You looking?”

  He shrugged and I enjoyed the way his T-shirt stretched across his shoulders. “For the right job, yeah, I’m definitely looking. So give me the deets.”

  I smirked, yes, actually smirked at him. “Did you just say deets because it rhymes with teats?”

  He hopped out of his chair and for a hot second I thought I went too far, as usual, with the nipple references. Then his tall body plopped down in the chair across from me and he leaned his forearms on the table, his gaze drilling into mine. A faint waft of cologne and soap hit my nose and now all parts of me wanted to stay and play with this stranger.

  “Marry me or hire me, you decide.” His lop-sided grin told me he was playing, but my heart lurched in my chest nonetheless. Then again, I’d had about six cups of coffee and no food, so it could have been the caffeine prompting an imminent heart attack. Fate only knew.

  “Funny you should say that actually,” I mumbled, pausing to drink him in, the straight nose, broad smile, angular jaw all doing weird things to my stomach. At this proximity, I could even make out a faint line of freckles across his cheekbones. His hair was longer on top and had a distinct auburn tinge to it, making me wonder, combined with the freckles, if he’d been a vibrant redhead at birth.

  “I’m Rhett, by the way. Figure if we’re getting married, we should know each other’s names.” He lifted his hand and stretched it out toward me, letting it hover there over the table, waiting for me to reciprocate.

  “Gabby,” I breathed out, sounding entirely more breathy than I intended. Inwardly I winced as I was going for confident businesswoman, not twenty-year-old Britney Spears. I compensated by sliding my hand into his and gripping like my life depended on crushing his bones in an arm wrestling match. He flinched a second, squeezed back, and then tried to let go. I shook his limp hand and then finally let him go just as the moment teetered on awkward. Though everything today had been dripping in awkward, so why not add more to the mess?

  I cleared my throat and tried to get back on track. “I, um, need a man to fill a position.” Why did everything I said sound so sexual now with Rhett around? “You’ll need to sign a confidentiality agreement and be able to give me three months of your time. I’ll pay well, with bonuses for going above and beyond.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, then scratched behind his ear. I noticed for the first time his T-shirt said “WTF Where’s the Food?” Any guy who liked food that much had to be a decent citizen, right? Did ax murderers have a sense of humor? Wait, wasn’t Ted Bundy a super congenial guy along with being a serial killer? Crap, I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but maybe I should have put a background check as a prerequisite for landing the job. I didn’t want to publicly attach myself to a guy fresh out of prison or on the run from the law. Fake boyfriend or not.

  “I’m sorry, I think I missed it. What’s the job exactly?”

  I held his steady gaze, quite proud of myself for not drowning i
n his blue eyes—noticing yes, maybe swimming, but not drowning. Clearing my throat again, I figured ripping the Band-Aid off was the best approach. Get it out there all at once.

  “I need you to pretend to be my long-term boyfriend and go on a reality show with me.”

  He stared at me, not moving. My knee started bouncing under the table, my body unable to sit still while I waited for him to laugh me out of the coffee shop. I couldn’t believe I’d actually offered the job to someone. I’d honestly lost all hope a few hours ago and there I was offering the position to a random stranger who wasn’t even there to apply for the job.

  My phone rang from my bag on the floor by my feet. I held up a finger and reached down to grab it, seeing it was one of the guys from the newspaper office calling.

  “Sorry, I need to grab this.” I answered and pressed the phone to my ear, looking away from Rhett’s heavy stare. “Gabby Cole.”

  The guy on the other end droned on and for the first time I welcomed his long winded questions as it gave me a chance to take a break from this conversation with Rhett.

  “Bob?” I finally cut him off. “I already sent the article in this morning. It should have already been proofed by now.” I glanced back at Rhett, seeing that he’d gone pale behind those freckles, and I started to worry I’d really shocked him with my outlandish job offer. Maybe the Band-Aid method wasn’t the best approach. Maybe baby steps into the cold water would have been ideal. Too bad I’d dumped him into the icy waters of the Pacific. “I gotta go, but check with Wendy. She should have it.”