Ava Bennett’s running out of time and options. Her family’s company is barely hanging on, buried by debt, and creditors who aren’t waiting around. Everything her parents built is about to slip through her fingers. Then Luca Black shows up. He’s got an offer: marry him for a year, and he’ll bail out Bennett Enterprises. It sounds straightforward enough, a contract, a ring, twelve months. No strings attatched. Luca isn’t exactly easy to read. He’s icy, sharp, and makes it clear he’s in this for business, nothing else. But spending every day together, things start to shift. The arguments get under her skin. The tension? It’s electric. And faking it isn’t as simple as she thought. But Luca has his own secrets. Ava’s starting to wonder why he chose her, and as she digs deeper, she suspects her family hasn’t told her everything, either. The contract says their marriage ends after a year. Her feelings refuse to follow the rules. And when time runs out, Ava has to ask herself; what if the man she never wanted is suddenly the one she can’t imagine losing?