Outshine the Town A Steamy Friends-To-Lovers Holiday Romance

I took a one-way ticket to UCLA the day after I graduated.Twelve years later, I return to open another location of my company.Instead of finding a potential investor, however, I end up taking a private meeting with an attractive stranger in the coat room at a masked ball.I leave without discovering his identity.I'm here to focus on my company. That's it.Even if he does have the world's most talented mouth.There's just one tiny problem.The guy from the masked ball isn't a stranger.He's Gibson Cage, my high school best friend.The man who ghosted me after graduation.The same friendship I was hoping to rekindle.Whoops.We haven't seen each other in over a decade.Both of us have had major glow-ups. I mean, major.Me from plastic surgery brought on by a car accident.Him from nearly a decade serving in the Marines.Everyone thinks it's a foregone conclusion we'll end up together.And in this small town, our reunion is grist for the gossip mill.Especially if they ever discover what happened at the ball.Neither of us wants a relationship.That's the one thing we agree on.Our mothers keep trying to set us up, though.So we decide to make a little deal.We'll fake a relationship through the holidays.After New Year's we'll go our separate ways.The whole town will leave us alone.And I can focus on my company.Surely we can keep our hands off each other for that long, right?It's just a few weeks.We might have even managed it.If we never had that night in the coat room ?