Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96312 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Then my videographer bailed, and in walked Maddox Sullivan.
Grumpy. Gorgeous. Growly. A mountain man with zero chill and even less tolerance for influencers like me. He agrees to film my content—off-camera only—but when my first date cancels, guess who ends up in front of the lens?
Cue the fireworks.
Our chemistry is instant. My followers are obsessed. #TeamMaddrian starts trending. Suddenly, all my dates are mysteriously dropping out, and Maddox is reluctantly starring in every single holidate—sleigh rides, snowball fights, cocoa by the fire, kisses under the mistletoe.
And I… I’m starting to forget this was ever supposed to be pretend.
Because every time Maddox looks at me, I feel something real. Something lasting. Something terrifying.
I came here for curated content. Now I’m dreaming of a life I never thought I wanted—with a man I never saw coming.
But am I falling for the picture-perfect holiday fantasy? Or could this be the start of my real-life happily ever after?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
#LUXURYMEETSLEGACY
ADRIAN
I stared out the rental car window at the weathered timber sign.
Legacy, Montana. Population 8,743.
In other words, too small for a good wine bar. They probably had domestic beer on draft and antlers on the walls of their one roadhouse.
My phone buzzed with another notification. I didn’t bother looking, not only because I was driving, but also because I already knew what it would say. Three thousand followers lost this week. The comment under a recent post had summed it up: Getting boring, Adrian. Same old luxury hotels. Yawn.
Which was exactly why I was here, of course, freezing my ass off in twenty-eight-degree weather instead of lounging poolside in LA. My latest sponsor, Nordique luxury après-ski wear, wanted “true holiday magic”—the kind of wholesome Christmas content I’d never done. But if I pulled this off, it could mean a full-time brand ambassador deal. The kind of eye-popping money that would keep me from crawling back to Connecticut to work for my father’s insurance company.
I’d spent five years building a brand, and Adrian Hayes—the luxury lifestyle personality and digital nomad—wasn’t known for small towns. I thrived in cosmopolitan cities and exclusive resorts, places where the lighting was perfect and the backdrops were designed to be photographed. Not… I looked around at the rustic town of Legacy and sighed. Hunter McShotgun’s Wilderness Outpost.
But maybe rustic could work. Maybe the small-town vibe would give me exactly the kind of authenticity and relatability I’d been missing in recent posts. At least I really freaking hoped it did because the project with Nordique had the potential for much more.
When I’d first pulled up the company’s social media tags on my laptop, I’d winced. “Looks like their target demographic is forty- to fifty-year-olds,” I’d protested to my manager, moving to my phone to scroll through my own posts—rooftop cocktails in Miami, a celebrity chef’s restaurant opening in New York, a carefully curated beach day in Malibu. I squinted at the monitor to see if there were any visible signs of aging. “What the hell do they want with me? Do I look fifteen years older than I am?”
“Of course not, babe. But Nordique wants a spokesmodel who’s aspirational, not actually old as shit,” Vic had countered with the brutal honesty that made him both an excellent manager and a terrifying human being. “Every gay man with a jawline and a ring light would suck Old Man Winter’s you-know-what for this client. Stop whining and say yes. You’ll make it elegant and unique. You always do.”
Elegant and unique. That phrase had echoed in my head for days after I’d agreed to take the job.
In the influencer world, you had to give people the same but different. They wanted a consistent personality but not the same old repeated content. I’d built my following by being aspirational but approachable, luxurious but attainable. For the women, I was the gay best friend they wished they had, with a life they wished they could afford. For the gays, I was the man they dreamed of and sent their lurid fantasies (and pics) to. For the straight men, I was the account they loved to hate and the person who set their wife’s bar hella fucking high.
I was also known for being a little bit different. A little bit unpredictable. Take the time I did a skincare tutorial using glacier runoff in Iceland. Or the time I turned my broken umbrella into a prop on a Scottish Highlands tour and got reposted by Vogue.
Which was why I was low-key panicking now. Unpredictable wasn’t easy to plan on short notice.
After scrambling for a concept that would combine “dressing to impress” with celebrating the holidays, I’d finally landed on “The Twelve Dates of Christmas.” Twelve videos of me experiencing holiday traditions while modeling Nordique’s winter collection.
When I’d hinted at the upcoming series and asked for location recommendations, my followers had suggested too many places to count. But one had stood out as the perfect choice. Nordique’s tagline was “Where luxury meets legacy,” which meant Legacy, Montana, with its single ski slope and its small but growing reputation as a hidden gem for LGBTQ+ travelers was a clear winner.
Hopefully, a town this small, maybe with the help of its tourist population, would be able to provide a dozen potential “romances” with small-town guys for my followers to get invested in, too.
All I needed was a videographer since my usual cameraman’s emergency appendectomy had left me hanging.
But first, I needed a small vat of coffee to combat the effects of my early morning flight.
When I parked and stepped out of the car, the cold air immediately bit at my face, and my breath formed little clouds in front of me. I zipped my jacket higher and said a silent apology to my beautiful Prada winter boots—which had never seen actual snow until today—as I crunched down the icy street.