Emma Harwell has spent seven years running Bloom & Stem, the only florist in Maple Ridge, on stubborn hope and a cooler that's been rattling since November.

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Seven years pretending she doesn't think about the boy who left.

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Carter Hayworth was a senior English classmate who played his guitar too loud on his mother's front porch and looked at her like she was the only sentence worth finishing. Then he became Carter Hayes, country music's reluctant golden boy, with platinum records, a Nashville condo, and a face on billboards she pretends not to see.

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She hasn't talked to him since his mother's funeral three years ago — the day the canyon between them turned into something she couldn't cross.

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Then his publicist calls with an offer no failing flower shop can refuse.

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Carter's label needs his next album to sell. Carter needs the press to think he's still a small-town boy at heart. The plan: a six-week PR relationship with his hometown sweetheart. A few photo opportunities. One music video. Maple Ridge plays itself, Emma plays the girl next door, and Bloom & Stem gets the kind of money that fixes coolers and pays off mortgages.

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Six weeks. Strictly business. No feelings, no porch swings, no kissing the man who became someone she doesn't recognize.

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That's the deal she signs.

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Then Carter shows up at her shop in a borrowed truck and the same too-long hair, and Emma realizes he's still Carter Hayworth underneath, the one who knew exactly how she took her coffee and what kind of flowers she actually liked. He's also somehow still the boy who left.

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The town is watching. The label is watching. The internet is watching. The only people who don't seem to be acting are the two of them, and the porch swing at Granny June's is exactly where they left it.

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But Emma Harwell built a life without him. And Carter has a tour schedule that doesn't include staying.

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Six weeks isn't long enough to fall in love. It's just long enough to remember she already did.

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Fake Dating the Country Star is a small-town second chance romance about the boy who left, the girl who stayed, and the lie that finally gives them the truth.

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FOR READERS WHO LOVE: hometown reunions, country boys with platinum records, fake dating that stops being fake, porch swings that remember, and second chances that come with a deadline

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FAKE DATING THE COUNTRY STAR

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