Blog Tour: Wicked Arrangement (Bad Boys and Wallflowers #1) by Maya Rodale

Wicked Arrangement

Bad Boys & Wallflowers #1.5

By:  Maya Rodale

Published:  Dec. 31, 2013

Publisher:  Avon Impulse

Source:  Publisher

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GR's Summary:

The first installment of a sexy, whirlwind romance about a modern day heroine writing historical romance novels based on her romantic misadventures with the bad boy billionaire.

Jane Sparks has accidentally announced her engagement on Facebook—to the infamous Bad Boy Billionaire, Duke Austen. As soon as it’s discovered that Jane and Duke barely know each other (One hot kiss at a party does not a relationship make), she’ll be humiliated. And then Duke does something Jane never expected. He plays along with her charade.

With his hard partying, playboy reputation jeopardizing a fifty million dollar investment deal, Duke realizes an engagement with the hot but oh-so-proper librarian could be just the thing to repair his reputation. This good girl tempts him to be very wicked…but just with her. It’s unprecedented. Inconceivable. Totally alluring.

As the unlikely match of librarian and tech entrepreneur set out to convince the world—and the internet—that their love is real, something unexpected happens: they start falling for each other. But Jane is secretly writing a historical romance novel that could expose their carefully constructed romance…unless two perfect strangers are content to be perfectly scandalous together.

My Take on this Journey:

Wicked Arrangement, by Maya Rodale, is the first segment in a 3 novella series. This is my first experience with reading one of Ms. Rodales' books and I was pleasantly surprised.  The novel starts out with a punch and keeps the reader captivated from the onslaught.  Jane Sparks is an assistant Librarian by day. She has been dumped by her high school boyfriend, Sam, because she is too predictable.  He wants a girl that doesn't have her whole life planned out.  Jane is crushed by the break up.  She already had her wedding planned out on Pinterest, knew what street they would live on, which house, how many kids, and where she would work for the rest of her life.

Jane moves away from her small town, Milford, to the high life in New York City, aspiring to be a romance novelist.  She is working at the public library, and rooms with her friend, Roxanna.  Roxanna is a writer for Jezebel.com; a smut writer.  She has all the gossip on the major players, biggest stars, and life in the fast lane.  After the close of the library, a big party for the rich and famous is going to take place, and Roxanna talks Jane into going to the party. As soon as they get to the party, Jane loses sight of her friend and is on her own. She has to talk herself into belonging with this crowd at the party, putting on her black Domino mask and music filled earphones, like the rest of the crowd.  She spots a gorgeous man and decides to go for it.  Little does she know that the man she follows in to the quiet room is none other than the billionaire bad boy, Duke Austen.

After going into the dark room, she is mortified to hear the moans and gasps in the room.  She thinks it is the stranger she followed in.  She shushed the couple to her own surprise, due to the good girl conflict of working at the library, always following rules, and being so straight laced.  She tries to escape the dark room without them seeing her face, on her hands and knees, when she runs into the stranger.  He is completely disarming with his delectable, boy next door grin.  Before Jane know's what is happening to her, the rogue has her pushed up against the stacks and fireworks start exploding!  Out the door goes all convention, until a vibrating phone stops their brief but hot as hell encounter.  This gives Jane some juicy ideas for her romance novel, at last.

The next day, Jane receives an invitation to her tenth high school reunion. After showing Jane a picture with a caption of Duke, Jane verifies that he is the man she was making out with the night before at the party.  Her friend fixes things on Facebook to look like Jane is engaged to the billionaire bad boy, Duke, so everyone back home will think she has an exciting life, and she can save face with Sam, her ex, that is living it up.  Roxanna is proud of her ingenious idea in finding Jane a hot date to the reunion, to get her retribution.  To Jane's surprise, she is texted by a foreign number inviting her to the roof top bar at the Soho House to celebrate their engagement. and there starts the ever exciting fake relationship of these two unlikely characters.

Sparks fly in this arranged relationship, with fun banter, dry humor, and eventual romantic relationship.  You have to read this short novella.  You won't be disappointed, except with the all too soon cliffhanger.  Happy Reading!!! Looking forward to the next segment, coming soon!  I give Wicked Arrangement, by Maya Rodale, 4 Sparks Flying, Swoon Worthy, Hot Kisses Against Stackable Stars!!!  

My Favorite Quote:

" 'Jane Sparks.  Librarian at the New York Public Library.  So you weren't kidding.'  'I just shushed you at a party,' I replied.  'Do I seem like the kind of girl who has a sense of humor?' 'You seem like the kind of girl who needs a good orgasm.' "

Excerpt:

Bar Veloce—the next day

@TechCrunch: Duke Austen’s startup, Project-TK , is rumored to be seeking $150m investment at a $1.2 billion valuation. Here’s why it might not happen.

Is the third time a charm for Silicon Alley party boy Duke Austen? After the spectacular flameouts of his first two startups, he’s on the verge of a major win—as long as investors can overlook his reputation for hard-partying and worries about him paying more attention to the hot supermodels instead of hot new products. Even if he gets the funds, Austen’s prospects of remaining in charge of the company he founded are slim, unless he cleans up his act. Read More . . .

“This.” I set down the damned invitation on the bar.

“What is this?” Roxanna asked, looking up from her iPhone. We often met here after work for drinks and supper before returning to our microscopic, claustrophobia-inducing Chelsea apartment.

“This is the invitation to my tenth annual high school reunion. In other words, I have just been invited to a party to showcase what an utter failure I am.”

“What are you talking about? You have ditched Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, and your boring ex-boyfriend for the glamorous life of a single working girl in New York City.”

“I’m working as a library assistant, which is a step down from my previous job as head Librarian. I told everyone I was going to write a novel but I only have a word document that reads ‘Untitled Romance Novel’ and not much else. And I still love my ex-boyfriend, thank you very much. And he’s been dating. I saw it on Facebook. I have not been dating.”

“No, you’re just having hot and heavy hook-ups with strangers. Much better if you ask me,” Roxanna said with a grin. I had told her a little bit about what had happened at the party last night, leaving out the most embarrassing bits. Which is to say, I left out most of the story.

“One hook-up. Once. And while I was pawing at some random guy in the library like an adolescent, everyone else has gotten married and had children. Look—” I said, pulling up the list of my friends on Facebook, many of them from Milford High School. “Melissa, married. Has a baby. Rachel and Dan, married. Two children when some people don’t have any! Kate Abbott, who was totally horrible to me throughout high school is ‘seeing someone special.’ And it’s only a matter of time before Sam posts MARRIED! BABY! He keeps posting about dinners at all romantic places around town.”

“What, all three of them? You have to unsubscribe to his status updates,” Roxanna said dryly.

“I don’t know how,” I grumbled. “Technology mystifies me.”

“Here, let me see if I can do this on your phone,” Roxanna said. I handed it over without a second thought. “I’ll take care of this while you pine away for the days of card catalogues, horses and bayonets.”

“We were voted Most Likely to Live Happily Ever After,” I said glumly.

“Aww, should we go home and look through your yearbooks?” Roxanna asked, pushing her red hair over her shoulder.

She was tough as nails and just what I needed. In return, since she was a disaster at things like laundry, cooking, and paying bills, I helped make sure she had clean clothes, Wi-Fi, and didn’t subsist exclusively on bourbon and popcorn.

“No, it will only make me feel worse,” I said with a sigh. I knew because I had already looked through them. It was all the inscriptions that slayed me. Stay in touch. Don’t ever change. 

Growing up, I had this idea of what my life would be like, and I did everything I could to make it happen. Good grades, good school, career in the library sciences, which would allow me some flexibility when Sam and I married and had kids.

We planned to get engaged after he finished his dissertation. Then he’d get a job as a professor at the nearby Montclair University.

We planned to have a house on Brook Street—I knew just the one—with great bookshelves and a yard for the kids. Maybe a couch from Pottery Barn. .

Then POOF—fired. Then POOF—dumped.

Sam had coldly explained that he wanted to see more of the world. Date other people. Be with someone more adventurous. Someone who didn’t have every detail of her life already pre-ordered.

“Ah, this will make you feel better,” Roxanna said when the bartender set down our drinks: a glass of chardonnay for me and bourbon on the rocks for her. “Cheers.”

“I just had this idea of what my life would be like by now,” I said as Roxanna messed around with my phone. “And so did everyone else. I had already planned my wedding on Pinterest. Now he’s squiring some girl around town to all the romantic spots while I’m working at the low level job I had in college and I’m hopelessly single.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t give a fuck what my loser high school classmates thought of me,” Roxanna said, sipping her bourbon and still messing around with my phone.

“I know. I’m seething with jealously.”

Truly, I kind of was.

“But since you clearly do care, why don’t you show up with a totally hot, successful date?”

I sighed and smiled. “It would make everyone jealous, wouldn’t it? No one would ask me if I missed my old job, why Sam and I broke up or how my novel writing is going. The problem is your plan requires me knowing a hot, successful guy. The only guy to ask me out since I moved here is José at the bodega.”

“Speaking of hot, successful guys, why do you have a friend request from DUKE AUSTEN?” Roxanna looked up at me, her blue eyes wide and her mouth open in shock.

“Hey, why do you still have my phone?”

“Jane! Is this the guy you hooked up with?” Roxanna held out my phone showing the Facebook profile of That Guy. All dark eyes, tousled hair, unshaven. Like a pirate or a highwayman or some rogue up to no good. Yeah, that was the guy.

“I think so. It was dark. I had a mask on,” I said. I figured he was just some charming but scruffy guy who was probably a struggling actor who tended bar at some hipster dive in Williamsburg. Totally un-dateable.

“OMG,” Roxanna said. Gasped, really. “OMG.”

“What?”

“Jane, this is DUKE AUSTEN,” she practically shrieked. Then she looked around as if someone might overhear this conversation. As if he were Somebody.

“I can see that. But who is he?”

“He’s only the billionaire co-founder of Project-TK. See, you do know someone hot and successful. OMG do you ever!”

“He didn’t look like a billionaire.”

“Why? Cos he didn’t wear a suit and grey tie and wave around fat cigars and a bottle of 26-year Macallan? Welcome to the startup world, Jane. Where the billionaires look and act like the guys next door.”

OMG, indeed.

“He caught me on my hands and knees,” I whispered, horrified. “And shushing people at a party.”

“And then he hooked up with you. I spent all day working on a story about him, in fact,” Roxanna said. She grinned wickedly before launching into everything I needed to know about him. “His company is seeking a series C-round of financing but everyone is freaking out because he’s a brilliant disaster and they’re afraid he’ll blow it like he did in his first two companies. Even if he gets the money, the investors might force him to step down. He can code and he can sell anyone on anything. But then he was always getting wasted and missing work or getting embroiled in all sorts of scandals with models. And there are rumors of drug use. He’s all kinds of bad news.”

“Why can’t I just find a nice guy with a steady job and benefits?”

“Oh, the romance. Oh, be still my beating heart,” Roxanna said dryly. “I have an idea.”

Roxanna grinned wickedly and started doing something on my phone. I reached for it, and she lunged away. “Hey, Jane, watch the drinks.”

“Roxanna, what are you doing?”

“This.”

She held out the phone.

Heartbeat: stopped.

Breathing: stopped.

My life: Over.

Duke Austen was tagged in Jane Sparks’ life event

Jane Sparks and Duke Austen got engaged

Everyone would see it. My mom, my dad, my sister. Everyone from Milford, my co-workers at the library, everyone I had ever known that had an Internet connection. Sam. He would see it.

And then all those people would see that it had been a joke, a prank or the desperate and wishful thinking of a lonely girl. Haven’t I had enough mortification?

I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t answer all those people saying sweetly (or not so sweetly) “I thought you were with so-and-so. What happened?” It hurt too much to always say I don’t know when things kept going wrong.

Instead, I shrieked and lunged for the phone knocking over my class of chardonnay. It shattered, spilling all over the bar and dripped down into my nude patent pumps. My life was in shambles. And there was wine in my shoe.

“What have you done?” I gasped.

“I just got you a hot date for your high school reunion. You’re welcome.”

“No, you just got me a fiancé!”

“Even better, right? I hope he gets you a giant diamond ring,” Roxanna said dreamily. “Although, he’s probably only a billionaire on paper—or he will be once Project-TK has their IPO. But don’t worry, I’m sure he’s got a few actual millions tucked away.”

“How do I undo this?” I frantically jabbed at the screen. It was so unsatisfying.

“I have no idea,” she said with a shrug. “Facebook settings are impossible to figure out.”

“Roxanna!”

My phone dinged with an incoming text message from a number I didn’t recognize.

917-123-4567 : Meet me at Soho House in ten minutes for celebratory drinks.

Jane Sparks: Who is this?

917-123-4567: Your fiancé

Guest Post

5 Reasons to Fall In Love With the Bad Boy Billionaire

By: Maya Rodale

Every girl loves a bad boy—right? And the qualities that get a bad boy billionaire his fortune are devastatingly sexy. Check out these five reasons to fall in love with Duke Austen, the ultimate Bad Boy Billionaire.  

1.  This bad boy billionaire is incredibly intelligent. Duke Austen is a brilliant tech entrepreneur who is not only charming, but insanely good at coding. He is all brains and brawn. 

2.  You have to see this bad boy billionaire’s smile. Jane Sparks likens it to “one of those devastating smiles that were most often found in the pages of romance novels.” As you might imagine, it makes her heart skip a beat. Or two. 

3.  This bad boy billionaire has a sense of humor. He teases Jane, the heroine, by calling her “Sweater Set” after the prim clothes she wears (which he inevitably removes).  They love bantering almost as much as…kissing and more. 

4.  This bad boy billionaire has a wicked sense of adventure. When a prank Facebook post appears announcing his engagement to a girl he’s only met once (for one crazy hot kiss) he doesn’t freak out…he spies the perfect opportunity to repair his playboy image and score a huge investment deal. He just didn’t count on falling love… 

5.  This bad boy billionaire knows exactly what to do with a grey silk tie—and no, he’s not wearing it. To say any more would be NSFW but it’s perfect for your e-reader ☺ 

Purchase At:

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About Maya Rodale:

Maya Rodale began reading romance novels in college at her mother’s insistence. She is now the author of numerous smart and sassy romance novels. A champion of the genre and its readers, she is also the author of the non-fiction bookDangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation Of Romance Novels, Explained and a co-founder of Lady Jane’s Salon, a national reading series devoted to romantic fiction. Maya lives in New York City with her darling dog and a rogue of her own.

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