The Reluctant Marriage

Marlee Betty doesn't cry at her own wedding. She is too busy memorizing the exits.

The marriage was never her idea. It was a merger first and a wedding second: two families, one shaky empire, and a contract signed with a smile she wasn't in the room for. Her family gets the Kingsley money and the Kingsley shield. The Kingsleys get her — a bright, stubborn aspiring editor with a sharp tongue and zero intention of playing devoted to a man who looks at her like a typo in his schedule.

Matt Kingsley doesn't want a wife. He wants his grandfather off his back, and if the price of his inheritance is putting a ring on the daughter of his family's oldest business partners, then fine. He lays down the law on day one: separate rooms, separate lives, stay out of his way, and don't get comfortable, because this arrangement could end as easily as it started.

Marlee counters with rules of her own. The mansion is big enough for two strangers to ignore each other very politely.

That's the plan.

The plan does not survive contact with breakfast. It does not survive his housekeeper, who keeps sliding her his favorite recipes like contraband, or their friends, who keep locking them in rooms together, or the arguments that start over burned toast and end with both of them forgetting who was winning. Somewhere between the staged smiles for the cameras and the nights they each pretend not to wait up, the performance gets easier — and the pretending stops.

Because Matt keeps doing things a contract never asked for. Standing between her and danger before his brain catches up. Listening to her talk about books like the words actually matter. And Marlee keeps catching herself doing the unforgivable: wondering what his morning voice sounds like, caring that he didn't come home, needing one more minute of a conversation she swore she didn't want.

Then the past claws its way back. A ghost from Matt's old world resurfaces — a man with a grudge, a gun, and a family connection that will gut-punch them both — and Marlee discovers her husband has been keeping secrets since before the vows. The lies were meant to protect her. They blow up the fragile trust instead, right around the time Marlee's own family history turns out to be more tangled, and more dangerous, than she was ever told.

Now the two people who swore this marriage meant nothing have to decide what it actually is: a business deal with matching rings, or the realest thing either of them has ever risked. Saying the words at the altar was easy. Meaning them might cost everything — and wanting them might already be out of both their hands.

The Reluctant Marriage is a slow burn forced marriage romance packed with banter that bites, forced proximity, a hero who falls first and denies it longest, and a heroine who never once waits to be rescued. The tension runs white hot while the bedroom door stays tastefully closed, letting the longing do all the heavy lifting.

Perfect for readers who inhale marriage of convenience, enemies to lovers, and he falls first stories in one sitting — and who know the best love stories are the ones nobody thought to ask the bride about.