Pretend You Love Me

The news stuns everyone in the Palace Valley Repertory Company: The popular resort-area theater will soon fall victim to the wrecking ball and bulldozer. The property in Northern Indiana’s lake country is being sold by its Chicago-based owner. But not if Carolina DeLuca has anything to say about it.

When Cara storms into a spectacular high rise overlooking Lake Shore Drive to confront the heartless tycoon who has Palace Valley in his sights, she is stunned to see a familiar face on the other side of a massive desk. The heartless tycoon is Patrick, the stubble-bearded stranger she’d had an electrifying encounter with at a lakeside beer joint near Palace Valley only a few days ago. Like the tavern itself, he had been dripping with rough-hewn charm.

When J. Patrick McGill, the tough Chicago land developer, comes around his desk to casually greet Cara, she notices that along with the Armani suit, he is still wearing the gunslinger boots she’d tripped over on the night they met. Before she can recover and launch an attack, Patrick blindsides her with a deal: He'll reconsider the buyout if she poses as his lover at a house party he’s hosting at his retreat in the wild north woods. Thinking only of Palace Valley, with little time to consider the consequences, Cara boldly agrees. She soon realizes, though, that it will take everything in her actor's bag of tricks to pull off the charade he's coerced her into.

Passions heat up as they take dead aim at each other across the wide divide between Art and Business. During a midnight sail to Mackinac Island, Patrick begins to suspect why he hasn’t thrown this one back, while Cara realizes that there’s much more at stake than Palace Valley’s future.