Business or Pleasure


 
 
 
 PRAISE FOR WEATHER GIRL
 “That feeling you get when you curl up on the couch on a rainy Saturday, with a great book in one hand and a spiked hot chocolate in the other: that’s the feeling you get when you read Weather Girl.”
 —Jasmine Guillory, New York Times bestselling author of While We Were Dating
 “A sexy storm of a book.”
 —Sophie Cousens, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Next Year
 “A delightful romance. Perfect for rainy days and sunny days and everything in between.”
 —Helen Hoang, New York Times bestselling author of The Heart Principle
 “Rachel Lynn Solomon has crafted a magical story that celebrates hope, resilience, and love. My forecast: read it, and you’ll be on cloud nine.”
 —Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis
 “A tender, hilarious, and heartfelt love story you’ll read in one sitting!”
 —Tessa Bailey, New York Times bestselling author of It Happened One Summer
 “[Solomon’s] realistic portrayal of the internal struggles that come with the highs and lows of optimism and depression, and how it affects sex and relationships, is an important one.”
 —BuzzFeed
 “Humorous, captivating, and delightful.”
 —USA Today
 “Heartfelt charm, memorable characters, steamy moments . . . this rom-com has it all.”
 —Women’s World
 “Whether sunshine or rainfall, Weather Girl is the perfect read no matter what storms you’re facing.”
 —The Nerd Daily
 PRAISE FOR THE EX TALK
 “A very funny book . . . Rom-coms need tears the way bread dough needs salt, and here the mixture strikes a perfect balance between sweet and savory.”
 —New York Times Book Review
 “The Ex Talk delivers. This book is quick, spicy, and sweet.”
 —Shondaland
 “More than lives up to the hype.”
 —PopSugar
 “The Ex Talk is so many things: a banter-packed laugh-out-loud rom-com, a meditation on how grief shapes our lives and our love, an ode to the joys of public radio and podcasting, and an all-around exquisite romance.”
 —Entertainment Weekly
 “A glimmering, sharp, and delightfully feminist rom-com. The Ex Talk just crashed its way onto my forever-rec pile.”
 —New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren
 “With a crisp and affectionate attention to detail, Rachel Lynn Solomon breathes life across her pages that’s so relatable you could sink right in.”
 —Rosie Danan, author of The Roommate
 
 
 BERKLEY TITLES BY RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON
 
 The Ex Talk
 Weather Girl
 Business or Pleasure
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BERKLEY ROMANCE
 Published by Berkley
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
 penguinrandomhouse.com
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Rachel Lynn Solomon
 Readers Guide copyright © 2023 by Rachel Lynn Solomon
 Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
 BERKLEY and the BERKLEY and B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Solomon, Rachel Lynn, author.
 Title: Business or pleasure / Rachel Lynn Solomon.
 Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley Romance, 2023.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022046231 (print) | LCCN 2022046232 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593548530 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593548547 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3619.O437236 B87 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.O437236 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220923
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046231
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046232
 First Edition: July 2023
 Cover design and illustration by Vi-An Nguyen
 Book design by Daniel Brount, adapted for ebook by Molly Jeszke
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_144196919_c0_r0
 
 
 
 For anyone who took a little while to figure it out and anyone who’s still figuring it out—it’s never too late.
 
 
 
 
 I’ve been searching all the wrong places
 I’ve been trying too many faces
 Only one way to go
 This is the way back home
 —“Maps” by Lesley Roy
 
 
 
 
 
 
 chapter
 one
 This book was a real labor of love,” says the woman seated behind a table of hardcovers sporting her makeup-free face, scrunched mid-yelp as she attempts to drink from a garden hose. “I can’t believe it’s something I can finally hold in my hands! And the cover’s not too bad, either.”
 The audience laughs right on cue. In the back row, I can practically feel Noemie cringe beside me. “I’ve made bowls of cereal that were more a labor of love than the effort she put into that book,” she whispers.
 She’s not wrong—I experienced it firsthand. Still, I give my cousin a nudge. “Be respectful.”
 “I am. To the cereal.”
 I press my lips together to keep from reacting and focus on the stage, where Maddy DeMarco commands the room with a warm, practiced confidence bordering on emotional manipulation. The bookstore is filled with just a fraction of her 1.6 million Instagram followers: mostly women, mostly white, mostly dressed in sustainable linen they bought using her discount code MADSAVINGS10. At first I thought it was a cult, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure. Her brand of saccharine positivity doesn’t quite do it for me anymore—whenever I need self-love, it’s more likely to take shape as something handheld and battery-operated. Which Maddy has devoted tragic few (read: zero) social media posts to.
 She’s built her career on empty affirmations and obvious advice. Case in point—the book is called Go Drink Some Water: A Guide to Self-Care, Self-Discovery, and Staying Thirsty.
 “People often ask how I turned one viral post into a lifestyle brand,” Maddy says, crossing one