Friends Without Benefits

There are three things you need to know about Elizabeth Finney: 1) She suffers from severe sarcastic syndrome, especially when she's unnerved, 2) No one unnerves her like Nico Manganiello, and 3) She knows how to knit.
Elizabeth Finney is almost always right about everything: the musical merits of boy bands are undervalued by society, “benefits” with human Ken dolls are better without friendship, and the sun has set on her once-in-a-lifetime chance for true love. But when Elizabeth’s plans for benefits without friendship are disarmed by the irritatingly charismatic and chauvinistic Nico Manganiello—her former nemesis—she finds herself struggling to maintain the electric fence around her heart while avoiding a Nico charisma-electrocution or, worse, falling in love.
'Friends Without Benefits' is book #2 in the Knitting in the City series. Each book is a standalone, full length (110k words), contemporary romantic comedy novel, and follows the misadventures and exploits of seven friends in Chicago, all members of the same knitting group.
"I recognized him instantly even though the last time I had seen him in person he was seventeen, naked, and asleep. I was sixteen, haphazardly dressed, and sneaking out his window. Niccolò (aka Nico) Manganiello. Nico. Freaking Nico Manganiello. Rooted in place—one hand holding the informed consent forms and patient brochures, the other hand clutching my chest—I could only gape in abject horror. Paired with the horror was also wonder and, much to my infinite frustration, feminine appreciation. I was entirely unprepared.
Everything about this Tuesday had been perfectly normal until this moment. I arrived to work at 4:30 a.m. for my shift. I argued in the locker room with my nemesis, Dr. Megalomaniac Meg. I planted a lotion- exploding, unopened gag box of latex gloves in Dr. Ken Miles’s ER clinic room for my annual April Fool’s day joke. I worked through the backlog of charting I’d left the day before. And, finally, was paged to the fourth floor clinical research unit to discuss a research study with a family. Freaking Niccolò freaking Manganiello. He was shorter than I expected, but taller than I remembered. He looked different in person than he did on TV, older. On his show he always towered over his guests, but looking at him now I guessed his height at about six foot or six foot one. His hair wasn’t brown anymore; it had matured into raven black. His face was more angular, strong, as were his shoulders. But, even from this distance, I knew his eyes were the same jade green. Nico was standing in profile, his muscled arms crossed over his chest; he leaned against the arm of the couch and spoke in hushed tones to an older woman. I instantly recognized the woman as his mother, Rose; she was sitting on the beige sofa and a little girl who I did not recognize was on her lap. The child was clutching a blue blanket."