Small Press Finalist #22 - Try Me On For Size

TRY ME ON FOR SIZE
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
81,000

QUERY:

In an attempt to save her floundering lingerie business, Mia suggests a radical idea: a custom-designed sex toy. She just didn’t expect to be the one to test out the prototypes, or find love in the process.

When her widowed business partner is emotionally unable to help with the hands on research this venture requires, it’s up to Mia to have sex with the potential “Spokespenises,” whose presence in the store will be just as important as their toys on the shelf. But once the first bedroom interview is complete, she realizes it’s not as easy as she thought to keep these trysts all business and no pleasure. With her overbearing family scrutizing her every move, and none of them wishing for her success, her sanity is in as much risk as the shop is.

Oliver thought he was talking to a random stood-up woman at a bar, but when she mistakes him for her interviewee, he can’t resist going along with the charade. The business proposition is too enticing to pass up. For once in his life, he’s doing something that makes him happy, reputation be damned. And maybe it will also rid him of his evil, lying fiancé.

FIRST 150 WORDS:

Mia Montanari had never been on an actual blind date before, and knowing her first would end in pre-planned sex didn’t ease her anxiety at all. What the hell did I get myself into? And this wasn’t even sex for pleasure. It was a job requirement and she’d yet to decide if it was a perk or not.

Not a perk. Definitely not a perk.

Though Mia enjoyed sex with hot guys, she normally liked to get to know them first. She was old fashioned like that.

The bar was kind of dead for a Friday night. She’d chosen this particular place for its proximity to her apartment. The closer her place, the less chance she’d chicken out. She couldn’t chicken out. Too much rode on this. She’d have to suck up her anxiety and just do it. Like a machine. A sexual robot.

Mia knew the bouncer at The Red Brick Inn pretty well.