Theater of Engagement

A fake engagement to the one person they've been dreaming about forever, all to avoid a debt? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Caleb Adarsh Joshi is focused on one thing: building his acting career. Already the star of a well-respected British detective series, he's finally getting noticed by Hollywood. The last thing he needs is for his grandmother to demand that he go look into the money she loaned out to help start a theater decades ago, especially when it means coming face-to-face with the woman of his dreams. Valeria Pasamonte has only one concern: her students at her summer stock/teaching theater in the mountains of North Carolina. All dreams of an acting career have been perfectly rechanneled to avoid thinking about the rejections she knows she'd get for being plus-sized and Hispanic in a size-00, white acting world. But when Caleb arrives, she knows he must be coming for the money her family has never repaid, all of which is sunk in the theater, with nothing to give away. When Caleb suggests a fake engagement to distract his grandmother, it seems like a perfect answer to their troubles, especially as they can't seem to stop finding themselves in very intimate situations. But the longer they're together, the more they have to admit that they'd like to make this permanent. Still, can Valeria stand the heartache of a front-row seat to a brilliant career which she can never have herself? They've got one week to decide whether this can work--or go back to the solitary lives they aren't so sure they can bear anymore. This funny, steamy, multicultural, new adult, fake engagement rom-com will have you rooting for both passionate love and the perfect career. It's Book 1 in the Love at the Mountainside Theater series.