Love, Theoretically

Adjunct professor and theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway is tired of barely surviving. Physics is all she ever wanted to do, but she’s spending so much time teaching, commuting, grading, and answering student emails that she can’t work on her research. In order to pay her bills (including for the insulin that keeps her alive), she moonlights as a fake girlfriend. It’s an easy job—until she meets Jack Smith, a repeat client’s hot and annoying older brother. Elsie can read anyone and reflect back a person they’ll like. But she can’t read Jack, and he seems to hate her on sight. When she learns that Jack is an experimental physicist and on the hiring committee for a job that would actually pay her a living wage, with health insurance, she’s terrified that he’ll blow her cover. Elsie is prepared to fight for the job she wants, but she isn’t ready for the fact that Jack seems to like the real Elsie or that she might actually like him too.