Eight years ago, Lena Marchetti said no to an arranged marriage and lost her father's fortune, her name, and the man she refused. Now the Rothwell family's fixer finds her in Zürich with an invitation to a midnight auction - and the only lot on the block is her own debt, payable in one currency: marriage. Adrian Rothwell never forgot the night she walked away. He bought the contract to destroy it. He didn't count on Lena showing up in person, wearing his mother's necklace, ready to bargain. Their agreement is cold, private, and temporary. One year. No affection. No bedroom. Then a snowstorm, a locked study, and a box of letters she never sent. A slow-burn arranged marriage romance about a man who buys everything and the woman who finally teaches him to ask.

Halloran House is falling down. Corin Halloran is the only one who won't admit it. Maren Okonkwo is hired to catalog his mother's library - and ends up cataloging her new boss instead. He's forty-six, cold, brilliant, and grieving a mother whose death is the only thing he won't discuss. She's twenty-eight, patient, and not interested in being anyone's assistant. But the company is collapsing, the board is circling, and Maren is the only person Corin lets close enough to see the truth. When a rival offers her a fortune for the estate's secrets, she refuses - and discovers that the key to saving Halloran House has been in the library the whole time. A slow-burn age gap boss romance with a modern gothic edge, a heroine who will not be kept, and a hero who has to leave his own house to earn her.