Heating Up on the Lava: 1

By the time Daphne Konstantin sees the headline, half the internet already believes she's engaged to Ronan Caldwell. It would be funny if it weren't such a disaster. Daphne is only supposed to survive a three-month yacht season and the elite retreat contract that comes after it-long enough to keep her apartment, keep cooking, and keep her life under her own control. Then a quarantine seals off an entire wing of a luxury hotel carved into black lava rock, trapping her with the city-shaping developer whose name can move markets and ruin mornings. Ronan is used to closing deals, not explaining why a private balcony photo and one vicious tabloid have suddenly given him a fiancée he barely knows. Especially when his family is demanding reconciliation, the board is circling for blood, and a public engagement to someone else has already been pushed too far into the spotlight. But behind Reykjavík's blue steam, midnight orchids, and rooms lit like secrets, Daphne discovers the man Ronan hides from everyone else-the one who drives an old vintage car alone, reads letters he was never meant to keep, and looks at her like she's the first thing money has never helped him understand. He can buy land. Silence. Time. He cannot buy her trust. And when the truth of what he's been doing behind her back rises to the surface, Ronan will have to decide what matters more: the empire he built, or the only person who has ever made him want a smaller, truer life.

Pagina's: 239, Paperback, Independently published