Showing results by author "Alina Jacobs" in All Categories

My new billionaire boss looks like he needs something sweet in his life. I graciously offered to let him stick his hand in my candy jar. It has salt water taffy and gummy worms! I can't believe he thought it was inappropriate! In an effort to redeem myself, I set out to show Mace that I wasn't a clumsy, car-destroying, electronic-killing, accident-prone, walking disaster. That lasted all of five minutes before I set his seaweed and quinoa lunch on fire. Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing either.

I kept smiling when I caught my fiancé coming down my sister’s chimney on Christmas Eve. I gave polite congratulations when they got engaged. And I even offered to help decorate for their Christmas wedding despite the fact that was supposed to be my dream wedding. But when my sister cuts up my great-grandmother’s one-hundred-year-old wedding dress and turns it into a skank show, even though that was the dress I was going to wear on my wedding day? Well, this elf is torching down the North Pole.

Armed with comfy pants, overpriced coffee, and a highly anxious emotional-support corgi, I prepare to face him. Corporate boss. Villain. Salinger Svensson. I step into his office. His perfect mouth twists into a sneer. There is no heart of gold beneath that suit, just a big black pit. He’s a shark in the frothy waters of high-stakes finance. He might be the archetypal-asshole CEO, causing all in his path to quake in fear, but he’s never had to face down a basic bitch in her thirties.

Two weeks ago, I was an optimistic office girl with a Pinterest vision board and a dream. Now? I’m standing in a billionaire’s penthouse office, trying not to throw a donut at his smug, perfect face. McCarthy Svensson is my new boss-slash-personal tormentor. Though he thinks he’s my only protector. He’s wrong. He’s way worse than the merry-go-round of ex fiancés who may or may not be stalking me, including ex-fiancé number one of three, who fakes his death then pops up out of a casket. Alive.

Forget the summer I turned pretty…that was the summer I got hips, acne, and utterly humiliated by Aaron Richmond. This summer? This is the summer I had to marry the bastard. When I walk down the aisle towards my enemy, all to save the Coleman family fortune, I shouldn’t give in to my wounded inner 14-year old-self. I should smile, blink up at him prettily, and declare to have and to hate…Err...hold.

Chris Winchester is a billionaire with serious trust issues, and I am a photographer trying to survive in the world of high-end weddings. And the billionaire’s penthouse is about to be marriage and a murder if he doesn’t stop hitting his snooze button a thousand bazillion times in the morning, while I’m trying to work and get my life back on track.

Hire a hitman to take out my cheating ex? It was an eggnog-fueled mistake, I swear! On Christmas Eve, my perfect fiancé stands up at the altar to declare his pure undying love… for my evil stepsister. Cue public humiliation, a ruined wedding, and me crawling back to my small hometown to work minimum wage at my granny’s Christmas café. Just living the holiday dream. But I refuse to show up sad and alone to my cheating ex and man-stealing stepsister’s engagement party.

Welcome to life as a wedding dressmaker for the rich and entitled of Manhattan. I’ve seen it all - from the most spoiled brides to the most egotistical Wall Street bros. The worst? Mark Holbrook. Billionaire. Arrogant. Knockout sexy. Certifiable jerk. He hates weddings, and I hate him.

I admit it was me who shouted, “Looking good, hot stuff!” at Mr. Richmond this morning, but I didn’t mean it like that. Yes, Mrs. HR Lady, I know how it looks. Believe me, I am totally anti-catcalling, but that’s not what that was. Honest. I was paying him a compliment! That’s kind of what I do: I’m a proud, small-town Floridian, and Manhattan is craving some Florida sunshine—nothing like a sincere compliment to turn those New York frowns upside down!

When you kiss your perfect boyfriend under the mistletoe...only for your cousin scream to the family that you stole her man, you realize that you will never again have a merry Christmas. In my defense, I didn’t know my boss—yup, boss. Buckle up because this is messy—was my cousin’s newly minted and totally lying fiancé. I thought he was the Nutcracker Prince come to finally show my family that I, too, was worthy of putting the star atop the Christmas tree.

When you're a blacklisted preschool teacher and somehow end up coaching the worst team in the NHL, it's shaping up to be the crappiest Christmas ever. We’re adding an NHL head-coaching job to the Yule log dumpster fire of my holiday season. I lost my apartment and had to move back home for the holidays. My mom sneaks into my bedroom to watch me sleep because she “can’t help it. I missed my little girl so much, Ellie!” And my day-drinking granny has declared herself the team's new equipment manager so she can ogle hockey butts in the locker room.

In my perfect world, it would always be winter and never Christmas. I despise the holiday. I hate carols, shopping, and pretending to be a perfect family. I walked away from my family, or rather, they walked away from me. My heart is like ice. See it creeping up the walls. Oh, wait, no, that’s royal icing.

I turn weird and awkward around attractive men. I'm a nervous sweater, and when Archer walked into my art cafe that night, he was making me soaking wet. He was stupidly attractive - which caused me to go into excruciating detail about my sweating problem, insult what he had under his fig leaf, and imply I was running a brothel. My career as an artist was a joke. I was desperately trying to live the #bossbabe life after I couldn't hack it as an artist in New York City and moved back to my small hometown. Now my business is failing. But hey, suffering is inspirational, right?

When your wedding-crazy, septuagenarian grandmother arranges a contest to see which of her granddaughters marries first, you have to bring out the big guns. And my billionaire boss Blade’s guns are banging! Billionaire, high-powered CEO, more money than personality, Blade Svensson is all business. He needs to win a contract, and I need a house. He and I both know that this is a logical, rational response to one of life’s many curveballs.

Welcome to life as a wedding planner for the rich and entitled of Manhattan. I’ve seen it all - from the nastiest bridezilla to the most overindulged billionaire. And Evan is the worst. Tall, dark, and handsome, he has a ridiculously ripped body under his formal suit and runs a massive hedgefund that’s actively making the world a worse place. I don’t even feel sorry for him when he walks away from the alter in a daze

Five years ago, I royally screwed up, lied, and broke the heart of the woman I love. A sane man would buy her a nice present and grovel. Guess I must be crazy. I love Meg more than anything. So why am I running against her for mayor of Harrogate?

Beck Svensson fired me right before rent was due and in the middle of a rainstorm. That’s why he’s at the top of my hate list, along with pickles, people who steal other people’s lunches out of the office fridge, and trying to fold a fitted sheet. But you know what? It’s fine - totally fine. It’s freedom! I could do anything! I could start a bakery or farm the mushrooms growing in my soggy apartment carpet. Or I could just show up at the temp office at hate o’clock in the morning for a new assistant job.

The Thanksgiving turkey is still warm, and I’m already up to my eyeballs in debt from my failed business. To make matters worse, my knight in flannel never appeared—you know, the guy, the one who was tall, dark, and plaid, who had a friendly yellow lab and a truck and sold firewood, the one who showed the big-city heroine the true meaning of love and Christmas. Yeah, he did not come rescue me.

When the townspeople of Harrogate almost riot over the Christmas décor thievery committed by the chair of the Elf on the Shelf Committee, I know I’m not going to survive the holiday season unless drastic action is taken. Biddy Jefferson turning up dead in my Christmas market stall is not exactly the type of drastic measure I had in mind. With no alibi and a town obsessed with pinning the murder on me, I have to clear my name. This is on top of planning the upcoming holiday ball, dealing with quirky stall owners in the Christmas market, and corralling confused tourists.

I thought I had my life all planned out—great career, swanky condo, wonderful fiancé.... A fiancé who did not show up to our wedding. A bride’s worst nightmare came true, live in front of all my family and friends. And his family and friends. Ryan James was the cake topper on top of this wedding cake of humiliation. All I wanted was to clear everyone out of the venue, throw the hors d'oeuvres in the trash, then light the wedding cake on fire. But Ryan insisted on still holding cocktail hour. And the elaborate five-course meal I had planned. And dancing.