Patricia Peel has had a crush on her boss Sam Wainwright for 6 months – in fact that's the reason she took the job in human resources at the Barrington Corporation. They've grown to be best friends and now that his engagement has been broken off, she's about to declare herself and ask him out. Only before she can he asks her to pretend to be his fiancée. The boss of the company, Rex Barrington II is retiring to travel around the world and told Sam to step up his wedding date (not realizing it was called off) as he wants to leave HR in the hands of someone stable or whatever. Patricia surprises Sam by agreeing and the two of them start spending even more time together, giving Patricia a makeover to fit in better with Sam's exes and allowing Sam to start to see her as a woman as they practice kissing for believability But then Rex proposes to have the wedding at his house before he goes away and Patricia agrees...
Patricia is a virgin and she's scared all along that if Sam finds out he will think it's asking too much of her to go through with this platonic pretend engagement, but she rally wants to do it so that Sam can wake up and see how wonderful she is and want to marry her for real. Sam is a HR manager for a major worldwide corporation who is scared of losing his job if he doesn't get married. I could buy this plot for about 10 seconds before it started to drive me crazy. Seriously. An HR manager who thinks he will lose his job because he's not married. Seriously. Again. And this is 1999 in Arizona for Pete's sake.
Also, half the office (Patricia's friends) know that Sam just broke up with that other girl and thinks that it's because he fell in love with Patricia, while the other half is lead to believe that Patricia is the original fiancée despite them having not met before 6 months ago! Other things annoyed me too – when Patricia falls asleep at Sam's house, why does he put her in his bed and take the guest room for himself (I mean apart from giving us a wonderfully originally scene where she thinks they slept together - there's more (including the usual wonderful stuff about what a gift a woman's virginity is) but I guess you get the point. Bright spots for me were Patricia's mother and the mystery of Rex III, but I'd much rather read different books about them instead of this one. I should disclaim that I did read the French version of this book in case it's just my reading comprehension or something - if anyone's read the English version and found it better, I would love to hear about it!
