All Lina Morales wants is to survive her sister’s wedding with her pride intact and a perfect plus-one, but when her date’s infuriating best friend sees through her act, she must choose between keeping up appearances or risking her heart for something messy, magnetic, and real.

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Thirty-three-year-old book editor Lina Morales has perfected three skills: revising herself as deftly as her authors’ manuscripts, placating her no-boundaries Tejana mother, and keeping her heart on ice after a lifetime of abandonment. That is, until a kiss with a gravel-voiced stranger at a dive bar ignites a five-alarm fire in her. Thankfully, she’ll never see him again. Right?

When her mother insists Lina find the perfect date for her sister’s wedding (the one her ex is invited to), she snags Enzo Esposito: a dating-app dreamboat who’s handsome, ambitious, and safely spark-free. They've got zilch in common, but that's nothing a little self-editing can't fix. She’ll be a volleyball-volleying, martini-sipping, Coltrane connoisseur. Piece of cake...until Enzo’s best friend turns out to be Jake Kelly, the dive-bar stranger.

And he sees right through her act.

Unlike Enzo, Jake’s all smart mouth and scuffed boots with an insufferable confidence that makes Lina flustered and, infuriatingly, honest. Now Lina’s juggling her cracking charade, her mother’s relentless overreach, and her growing feelings for the man who threatens both her ruse and the walls she’s built to keep her heart safe. With the wedding countdown ticking and her mother’s pressure escalating from plus-one to permanent, Lina must choose: keep faking it to protect herself, secure Mr. Perfect, and finally earn her mom’s approval, or risk heartbreak to be seen—and loved—for who she really is.