Sneak Peek
I marry my brother’s best friend who’s also my grumpy billionaire boss.
Rowan Blackwell is cold, controlling, and completely off-limits.
We clash all the time, like sparks hitting gasoline.
But when a hostile takeover threatens his company, everything changes.
He moves me into his penthouse and offers a ninety-day marriage contract with zero emotions.
He believes this is the only way to protect his company and my brother’s job.
We share a penthouse I’m not supposed to feel at home in.
But the more time I spend with him, I realize I trust him more than anyone else.
The way he touches me makes me feel like I already belong to him even though it is practice.
A kiss meant only for the cameras turns slow, lingering, and dangerously real.
By the time I admit I’ve fallen, walking away is no longer an option.
And then I find evidence of corporate sabotage that I keep from him, which points to my brother.
If he ever finds out the truth, then I can lose him and my brother forever.
(Click here to get Billionaire Boss’s Fake Marriage!)
CHAPTER 1: ELEVATOR WAR
HARPER
My heels are trying to kill me.
They crack against the marble lobby like gunshots, each step a gamble between speed and a twisted ankle, and the coffee in my hand is one wrong step away from becoming a lawsuit.
The lid wasn't pressed down all the way—I knew it when I grabbed it, knew it when I sprinted out of the café, know it now as hot liquid kisses the rim and threatens to cascade down my white silk blouse.
Don't spill. Don't spill. Don't you dare spill.
The glass doors of Blackwell Industries loom ahead, all chrome and arrogance, the morning sun catching the logo etched above the entrance like a warning.
I'm seven minutes late. Seven minutes that wouldn't matter at any normal job, but this isn't a normal job.
This is working for Rowan Blackwell—my brother's best friend, my teenage fantasy, and the most impossible man in Manhattan.
My phone buzzes in my bag. I ignore it. It's probably Mateo again—my older brother, the one who got all the height and the overprotective instincts—calling to continue the 6 AM crisis that murdered my morning.
Harper, I need to talk to you. It's important. Can you come over before work?
And like the idiot sister I am, I went. I sat in his cramped apartment while he paced and wouldn't tell me what was wrong, just that something was off at work, that he had a bad feeling, that he needed me to keep my eyes open.
Keep my eyes open. As if I have time to play detective when I can barely keep myself employed.
I shoulder through the revolving door and the climate-controlled air hits me like a slap—cool, expensive, faintly scented with something that probably costs more than my rent.
The lobby is already buzzing with employees, all of them polished and punctual, none of them racing across the floor like a disaster in heels.
The elevator bank is thirty feet away. I can make it. I can absolutely make it.
Except the doors are already closing on the executive elevator—the one that goes straight to the fortieth floor, the one that will save me from standing in a crowded box with people who definitely saw me sprint through the lobby like I'm being chased.
"Hold the elevator!" I call out, because my dignity has left the building.
No one holds it.
Of course, no one holds it.
I push harder, my bag slamming against my hip, the coffee sloshing dangerously. I'm going to make it. I'm going to slide through those closing doors like an action hero and arrive at my desk only mildly disheveled instead of catastrophically late.
I think about Rowan's face when I walk in behind schedule.
The way his jaw will tighten. The way he looks at me like I'm a problem he hasn't solved yet.
I've worked for him for three months, and in that time, I've learned exactly two things: he demands perfection, and I am constitutionally incapable of providing it.
Three years ago, he was just the brooding guy at Mateo's birthday party, the one who watched me across the room with eyes like smoke and never said a word. I spent weeks thinking about that look. Months, maybe.
Now he's my boss, and the only thing he watches is the clock.
The elevator doors are six inches from closing. I lunge.
And slam directly into a wall of charcoal wool and cedar cologne.
Time does that thing it only does in nightmares—it slows, stretches, makes me feel every millisecond of the disaster unfolding.
The coffee leaves my hand. I watch it arc through the air with the kind of detached horror usually reserved for car accidents and tax audits. The lid pops off mid-flight, a lazy spiral of brown liquid unfurling like a ribbon toward the most expensive suit in the building.
Rowan Blackwell's hand shoots out and catches the cup.
Not the lid. Not the splash of coffee that's already decorating my blouse like a Rorschach test of failure. But the cup—snatched from the air with reflexes that shouldn't be legal before 9 AM.
The elevator doors slide closed behind him with a soft, judgmental ding.
For one horrible, crystalline moment, we just stand there. Me: coffee-stained, breathless, and approximately six inches from his chest. Him: immaculate, unmoved, holding my half-empty cup like it personally offended him.
God, he's tall. I always forget how tall he is.
I have to tilt my chin up to meet those storm-gray eyes that are currently dissecting me with surgical precision.
His jaw is sharp enough to cut glass, his dark hair swept back like he didn't even have to try, and there's not a single wrinkle in his charcoal suit despite the fact that I just body-checked him like a linebacker.
Meanwhile, I look like I lost a fight with a coffee machine.
"Miss Reyes." His voice is low, clipped, the verbal equivalent of a door slamming shut. "How generous of you to join us."
Behind me, I hear someone inhale sharply. I don't have to turn around to know we have an audience. The lobby has gone quiet—that particular kind of quiet that means everyone is pretending not to watch while absolutely watching.
My cheeks burn. My chest burns. Everything burns.
"Mr. Blackwell." I force my voice to stay steady, professional, even though my heart is trying to evacuate through my throat. "I see your reflexes are as impressive as your punctuality."
Something flickers in his expression—surprise, maybe, or irritation. It's hard to tell with him. The man has all the emotional transparency of a brick wall.
His gaze drops to my blouse, to the spreading stain across the silk, and I watch his jaw tighten by exactly one degree. When he looks back up, those gray eyes could freeze lava.
"Your shirt," he says flatly.
"I'm aware."
"It's stained."
"Deeply aware."
He holds my gaze for one beat. Two. The silence stretches until I can hear my own pulse in my ears, until the lobby feels like a courtroom and I'm waiting for the verdict.
Then he extends the coffee cup toward me—what's left of it—like he's handing back evidence from a crime scene.
"Fix it," he says. "Now."
The words land like stones dropped into still water. Around us, I feel the lobby hold its breath. Somewhere to my left, a woman from accounting makes a sound like she's watching a nature documentary where the gazelle is about to get eaten.
I take the cup from his hand. Our fingers brush—barely, just a whisper of contact—and I hate that I notice. I hate that my stupid, traitorous nerve endings light up like a switchboard.
"Fix it," I repeat slowly, as if I'm translating from a foreign language. "You want me to... what, exactly? Reverse time? Unspill the coffee? I'm good, Mr. Blackwell, but I'm not a magician."
A ripple goes through the watching crowd. Someone—I think it's Daniel from Legal—whispers, "Did she just...?"
Yes, Daniel. Yes, I did. And I'm already regretting it, but my mouth has always operated about three seconds ahead of my survival instincts.
Rowan's eyes narrow. It's a subtle thing—a fraction of a millimeter—but I've spent three months learning to read his microexpressions like my job depends on it. Because it does.
"I expect you at your desk in five minutes," he says, his voice dropping to a register that vibrates somewhere in my chest. "Presentable. Professional." His gaze flicks down to my ruined blouse one more time. "Unstained."
"I don't exactly keep a spare wardrobe in my desk drawer."
"Then I suggest you get creative." He turns toward the elevator bank, dismissing me as efficiently as he does everything else. "Four minutes and fifty seconds, Miss Reyes."
I should let him go. I should nod, scurry off to the bathroom, and figure out how to MacGyver a silk blouse with paper towels and prayers. That's what a smart person would do. A person who values their employment.
But I am my mother's daughter, and she raised me to smile prettily when I'm about to draw blood.
"You know," I call after him, my voice bright as sunshine, "most people say 'excuse me' when someone bumps into them. Even if it's technically the other person's fault. It's this thing called manners. I'd explain further, but I only have four minutes and forty seconds now, so..."
He stops walking.
The lobby goes so quiet I can hear the elevator music fourteen floors up.
Rowan turns. Slowly. Like a predator who's just realized the prey has teeth.
I keep my smile locked in place, even though my heart is attempting a prison break through my ribcage. This is fine. I'm fine. I'm definitely getting fired, but I'm fine.
For a long moment, he just looks at me. Those gray eyes move across my face like he's searching for something—the punchline, maybe, or the explanation for why his best friend's little sister has apparently chosen today to develop a death wish.
Then, impossibly, the corner of his mouth twitches.
It's not a smile. It's barely even a movement. But I catch it anyway, and something dangerous sparks in my chest.
"The elevator, Miss Reyes." He tips his head toward the doors that are already sliding open again. "Now."