Finding a good roommate through a classified ad isn’t as easy as it sounds. I was starting to lose hope. Until a knock at my door came, and God answered my prayers. Except...uh...wrong prayer, God. I’d definitely requested the big guy find me a drop-dead gorgeous man on more than one occasion...just not as my roommate. Declan Tate talked me into interviewing him anyway. While he was amusing and charismatic, I wouldn’t have been comfortable living with a man, so I regretfully declined. Then, cupcakes showed up at my door.

I didn’t know her name, but I heard her laugh, tasted her lips, and felt her warm skin as I held her in my arms. Together, we watched our young children playing in the sand, the warm ocean lapping at the shore behind them as the setting sun painted the sky. She was my soul mate, and this was our life, our beautiful forever.... Then I woke up - alone in a hospital room, connected to wires and machines. There was no wife, no kids, not a single soul waiting for me. That life I dreamt of never existed. The woman I loved, the woman I knew better than I knew myself - she wasn’t real.

Trey Westcott - devastatingly gorgeous. Intimidatingly brilliant. Powerful beyond belief. As the first trillionaire in existence, my boss lives a life most people can only dream of. Anything he wants is a snap of the fingers away. But when the coldhearted magnate snaps his fingers and requests me for a stint on his arm playing the role of his devoted fiancée and then some, he makes an offer I can’t refuse. And so I don’t. But I make it clear that he’ll have my time, my body, my attention, my discreet professionalism - everything except my heart. It’s not for sale. 

I had a plan to escape the friend zone. Step one: sneak into Reed’s room. Step two: sleep with him. But when the lights turned on, it wasn’t familiar blue eyes I saw. These were dark, angry, and full of demons. And they belonged to Reed’s much-older brother. Four years later, Nash Prescott is no longer the help’s angry son. I’m no longer the town’s prized princess. At 22, I’m broke, in need of a job. At 32, he’s a billionaire, in need of revenge.

Vaughn Spencer. They call him an angry god. To me, he is nothing but a heartless prince. His parents rule this town, its police, every citizen and boutique on Main Street. All I own is a nice, juicy grudge against him for that time he almost killed me. Between hooking up with a different girl every weekend, breaking hearts, noses, and rules, Vaughn also finds the time to bully little ol' me. I fight back, tooth and nail, never expecting him to chase me across the ocean after we graduate high school.

Growing up, Ramsey Stewart branded my soul in ways time could never heal. At 12, he asked me to be his girlfriend. At 13, he gave me my first kiss. By 16, we’d fallen in love, planned a future together, and had our eyes set on the horizon. Love never fails, right? But for Ramsey, it did. I failed him. The entire world failed him. At 17, Ramsey was convicted of killing the boy who assaulted me. "Move on", he wrote in his first and only letter from prison. There was no such thing as giving up on Ramsey. Love may have been our curse, but he was mine - then, now, and forever. 

My planned trip for two unexpectedly turned into a trip for one. Rather than let my breakup get me down, I packed my bags and decided a week at a luxury resort was just what I needed. But one calamity after the next, and suddenly I was stuck without a hotel room, along with a few hundred other people. It looked like my fancy vacation was about to turn into me sleeping on the hotel lobby floor. Until I overheard a gorgeous man pretending to be someone he wasn’t in order to steal a reservation from a guest who hadn’t shown up yet. 

It’s natural to want the one you can’t have. And for as long as I could remember, I’d secretly wanted my brother’s best friend, Jace. He was six years older and always treated me like the sister he never had. Fast forward a decade. We were all in our 20s now. Jace had moved in with my brother, Nathan, and me to help us make ends meet after our parents died. It was just the three of us - an odd family dynamic. Living under our roof, Jace was as bossy and protective as ever. But he certainly didn’t look at me like a sister anymore. That was what made things so complicated.

The first time I met Hudson Rothschild was at a wedding. I’d received an unexpected invitation to one of the swankiest venues in the city. Hudson was a groomsman and quite possibly the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid eyes on. He asked me to dance, and our chemistry was off the charts. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with him, considering the wedding I was at. But our connection was intense, and I was having a great time. Though the fun came to a screeching halt when Hudson figured out I wasn’t who I’d said I was.

River Tate is a god on campus. The king of football. A tattooed bad boy with gunmetal eyes that see right through you. The only chink in his armor is HER, the girl he pretends doesn't exist, the forbidden one with the shy smile and lavender hair. Anastasia Bailey is a nobody.

There’s a legend at Waylon University: The first girl you kiss freshman year at the bonfire party is the one you’ll never forget. She’ll crawl under your skin. She’ll spark a passion so fierce you’ll burn the world down to possess her. You might even put a ring on it. But...timing is everything. That kiss can go horribly wrong. She might run in the opposite direction. And boy, did Serena run. 

The beginning of my sophomore year in college was off to a rough start. On the first day of orientation, I had an altercation with an infuriating British dude in a campus bathroom. (The ladies’ room was out of order. So, I used the men’s room. Don’t judge.) I got home later that night and realized that the foreign student we were expecting to rent a room in my parents’ house was allergic to our cat. So, the spare room went to someone else: Caleb - the British guy from the men’s room. And so it began...my love-hate story with Caleb Yates. Or was it hate-love in that order?

Fake. That's what we are. That's what we agreed to be. So why does it feel so real? I thought it would have been harder, convincing everyone our school's star receiver was mine and mine alone, but I was wrong. We played our parts so well that the lines between us began to blur until they disappeared completely. The thing about pretending, though, is that someone's always better at it, and by the time I realized my mistake, there was no going back.

Deacon was rough on the exterior, but apparently on the inside? Mr. Single-and-Ready-to-Mingle was a baby whisperer. After that night, we became friends. He’d go for coffee runs. Come over to chat. Normal friend stuff. But over time, our conversations ran deeper. We got closer. Until one night we crossed the line.  

When some pretty little thing shows up at my doorstep with a suitcase, claiming she rented my house for the summer, I waste no time informing her that my house isn't for rent. Some Internet jack*ss scammed her out of all her money, but that's not my problem. Only when I find her sleeping in her car a couple days later, I can't turn my back. I make her an offer: room and board in exchange for working on my ranch. She agrees, and I open my doors to a girl who sings too loud, sticks her nose where it doesn't belong, and distracts me with her tight jeans and those full lips.