Salt and Smoke

Two leases. One loft. One summer that ruins them both - in the best possible way.Eli Marsh is broke, freshly evicted, and dragging everything he owns up a spiteful elevator when he discovers the catch: someone's already living in his new apartment. Marcus Vale is all hard edges and harder rules - his kitchen, his hours, no music before nine - and he is not in the mood to share a loft with a chaos demon in paint-stained jeans.But their crook of a landlord has vanished with both their deposits, neither of them can afford to leave, and Marcus has a restaurant to open two floors down. So they strike a deal: three months, separate corners, and then they never have to see each other again.It would be a great plan, if the city would stop conspiring against it. A heat wave. A burst pipe. A bottle of wine and fourteen feet of fresh paint. One rainy night that ends with their hands tangled together in the dark - and a chef who's terrified of wanting anything he could lose, discovering that he doesn't want to let this one go.Then Marcus's golden, ruinous ex walks back through the door and asks for a piece of everything they've built. And the only way two stubborn men get their happy ending is if the one who always lets go first learns how to hold on - out loud, in daylight, for good.Salt and Smoke is a steamy, standalone MM forced-proximity romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after and no cliffhanger.