The Last Single Man in Texas by Jess Whitecroft

“They’re not going to pay me, I have no idea what my job is, and I have to spend the next six months in a cage match with Satan in Chuck Taylors. I can already feel the blistering hatred that’s about to break out between us, like the tingle before a herpes sore.”

When River O’Sullivan meets Benjamín Reyes at a job interview for a Houston tech firm it’s loathing at first sight. River thinks Ben is a spoiled, snotty rich brat who knows far too well that he’s gorgeous, while Ben dismisses rough Philly kid River as a hypersensitive pathological liar who dresses like ‘a dollar store Tyler Durden.’

To make matters worse they are forced to together in competition for an unpaid internship at a workplace so lousy with corporate jargon and motivational nonsense that neither of them knows what the company even does, or what they’re supposed to be doing there, beyond picking up after their slimy boss Blair’s dog. It’s only when River and Ben finally admit to each other that they have no idea what their jobs are that they realise their pure and uncomplicated hatred of each other is the one small island of sanity they’re clinging to in their lunatic workplace. And that said hatred would be much better focused on Blair.

As hate gives way to grudging respect and affection, River begins to wonder if he could ever get Ben to consider him as more than just an unlikely friend, or if that’s a thing that would never happen, even if River was the last single man in Texas.

Dog theft, revenge porn, corporate skullduggery, and a deeply regrettable incident with an electric banana – it’s all going on in this enemies to lovers slow burn romance.