Man Candy

By Elise Sax

“Elise Sax will win your heart.”—NYT bestelling author Jill Shalvis

“Fans of laugh-out-loud romantic suspense will enjoy this new author as she joins the ranks of Janet Evanovich, Katie MacAllister, and Jennifer Crusie.”—Booklist

“A fun read sure to entertain.”—RT Book Reviews

Raine Harper is in love with Wade Gates. But Wade likes women who are model thin, and Raine is model thin plus a whole lot of pounds. Desperate to make him love her, she trains just a little too hard and passes out in the arms of superstar movie star Dirk Adams. Dirk thinks Raine’s junk in the trunk is perfect and proposes to make Wade jealous by becoming her pretend boyfriend. Pretend soon seems very real. Is Dirk a great actor, or is something really developing between Raine and the movie star?

The Five Wishes Series: Five hot and hilarious novellas about wishes that go terribly wrong...fortunately. Five Wishes...A happy ending is just a coin toss away. Each novella is approximately 100 pages with NO cliffhanger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elise Sax
• Release date: Oct 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370498659

Elise Sax

USA Today bestselling author Elise Sax writes hilarious happy endings. She worked as a journalist, mostly in Paris, France for many years but always wanted to write fiction. Finally, she decided to go for her dream and write a novel. She was thrilled when An Affair to Dismember, the first in the Matchmaker Series, was sold at auction to Ballantine.Elise is an overwhelmed single mother of two boys in Southern California. She's an avid traveler, a beginner dancer, an occasional piano player, and an online shopping junkie.Like her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theelisesax?ref=hlFriend her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ei.sax.9Or just send her an email: [e-mail] can also visit her website and get a free novella: elisesax.com

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Man Candy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Elise Sax

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Elise Sax

Cover design: Elizabeth Mackey

Formatted by: Jesse Kimmel-Freeman

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Also by Elise Sax:

Five Wishes Series

Going Down

Man Candy

Hot Wired

Just Sacked

Wicked Ride

Five Wishes Series

Three More Wishes Series

Blown Away

Inn & Out

Quick Bang

Three More Wishes Series

The Matchmaker Series

An Affair to Dismember

Matchpoint

Love Game

Playing the Field

Forever Series

Forever Now

Bounty

Switched

Moving Violations

Man CANDY

Five Wishes Series – Book 2

elise sax

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

Hot WIRED EXCERPT

SWITCHED EXCERPT

Also by Elise Sax

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

Wade Gates is mine. His gorgeous, perfect, hotter-than-hot everything is all for me. I’ve waited my entire life—ever since I fell in love with him when he lent me his glue stick on the first day of preschool—but now I’m through waiting.

I’ve pined and dreamed and hoped and prayed. I’ve hinted and suggested and plotted, and during one particularly humiliating drunken evening, begged. But that’s all over now.

Twenty years later, he’s going to give me his proverbial glue stick, and give it to me good. Better than good. Perfect, if I’m not mistaken about Wade’s potential. And not just perfect. Forever.

Wade’s forever, perfect glue stick.

Mine.

All right. Sure, I admit that Wade doesn’t know he’s mine. He has no idea, in fact. It’s not just that he’s playing hard to get. It’s more like he doesn’t know I exist. Yes, he grew up next door to me in a house on the lake. Yes, we went to school together all the way through high school.

But I was invisible all that time. Fat girl invisibility. It’s an official disease. You can look it up on WebMD. Symptoms include the inability to get help in a store.

Normally, I’m perfectly happy with how I look. But Wade Gates only has eyes for model-thin women. He likes Keira Knightley, and I’m more like… well, nothing like Keira Knightley.

But I’m determined to make him see me. After years away, he’s coming back to visit our town, Esperanza, and it’s now or never, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m thinking all these things as I take another lap, running around the lake late at night. It’s T-minus six days until Wade lands back in Esperanza, and I’m sweating calories as fast as I can.

I hate running. I’d rather have a root canal than run. I’d rather take a math class than run.

Just as I’ve spent the past few years successfully avoiding root canals and math, I’ve never actually run before. I mean, not unless you count that one time at the Walmart after-Christmas sale, but I don’t count that because I only ran a few steps before I was trampled by sadistic discount shoppers, hell-bent on hundred-dollar flat screens.

But tonight I’ve been running for thirty minutes straight. Thirty minutes of one foot after another, pounding the hard sand of the lake’s shoreline. Thirty minutes of hell.

I ran out of oxygen twenty-five minutes ago. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have brain damage. I’ve got a stitch in my side, and since I’m not wearing a sports bra, I think I’ve permanently injured my boobs.

No wonder I’m not skinny. Who would voluntarily do this to themselves?

I would.

All for the love of Wade Gates.

On your right, a man announces behind me.

I turn to see him, just as he catches up to me. In the dark, I can only make out his outline, but he’s big, in great shape, and he’s not wearing a shirt.

Are you okay? he asks me.

Just keep moving, bub, I gasp and sputter.

You might want to rest. You’re breathing pretty hard.

Nothing to see here, I pant, waving him along. I just need to alter my pace. I’ve been running full out for too long.

Are you running? I thought you were walking.

Ha. Ha. Funny, I say with the last bit of air left in my lungs. I’ve reached the end of my breathing ability. Gah! I sputter, and then my legs refuse to go any further. Stopped dead in my tracks, my knees lock, and I fall over. Flat on my face.

*

I’m spinning around and around. What is this? Astronaut training? In the distance, I see the fountain in the middle of the town square. I spin my way to it and finally stop spinning to land on my butt.

The fountain is over a hundred years old, and it’s bone dry. It’s never had water in it, as far as I know. A coin appears in my hand. I’m desperate to throw it into the fountain, but I can’t stand up. I can’t even move my legs.

If I don’t throw the coin into the fountain, however, my wish will never come true, and I need it to come true. I can’t be happy unless my wish comes true.

Wait a minute. The coin, the fountain, my wish… it’s all familiar to me. I’ve been here before. In fact, I’ve already made my wish.

Are you coming around? There you are.

I hear the voice as if it’s coming from inside a toilet bowl. Far away with a flushing sound. I will my eyes to open. It takes a few attempts, but they finally flutter open.

Good morning, he says.

I’m lying on my back in the sand. I realize the flushing sound is actually the gentle waves of the lake. I have a perfect view of the star-filled sky and the shirtless man, who is holding up my legs, I’m guessing to make the blood flow back to my brain.

Who are you? I ask. Let go of my legs.

Dirk.

You’re not wearing a shirt.

It’s hot, he explains. I notice he hasn’t let go of my legs. How many shirts are you wearing? Six?

He’s close. I’m wearing four layers. "I’m