The CEO and the Clumsy Manga Artist

Brandon Clark has everything the world is supposed to want. He is the face of Creation Company, the empire behind the biggest comic publisher in the business, and when he steps off a plane from Hong Kong the arrivals hall turns into a wall of black cars, bodyguards, and screaming cameras. He gives the press nothing but sunglasses. Behind them sits a quieter problem: the most eligible CEO in the city cannot remember the last time anyone wanted the man instead of the money.

Then there is Camille Parker. Her fingers are permanently stained with ink, her rent is a monthly horror story, and her manga keeps getting rejected by company after company, even though anyone who watches her draw can see the gift. The high point of her week is painting a comic wall in her best friend Efia's cafe. The low point is waking up after one blurry barbecue night with a stranger's absurdly expensive coat draped over her couch and no memory at all of the man it belongs to.

The coat's owner turns out to be Brandon, who for once in his life lets someone believe he is an ordinary guy with an ordinary name. When Camille lands a colorist interview at Comic Centre, the crown jewel of his empire, he keeps turning up at her side: no tie, no title, planting himself between her and every disaster her famous clumsiness can find. He quietly assigns his security team to guard her without her knowledge. Mysterious dinners start arriving at her door every single night. And when a supermarket photo of her with another man reaches his phone, he groans and begs his best friend into weekend surveillance duty.

But gossip in that building travels faster than the elevators. Two jealous women corner Camille in a mirrored elevator and warn her away from the boss where no cameras can see. The truth about Brandon's name detonates the friendship they were building. Just when a first date ends in a first kiss at her door, her college nemesis Madison Thomas resurfaces at an industry workshop in Japan wearing the same cold smile, and back home a fired employee comes looking for revenge with a knife in her hand.

Brandon has spent his whole life fixing things quietly from the boardroom: filing charges in secret, guarding her without asking, loving her from behind a wall of lawyers and bodyguards. Now his secrets are stacked higher than her rent, and Camille has to decide whether the man who lied about his name is worth the beautiful, dangerous world that comes attached to it.

He should have known better than to fall for a woman who trips over absolutely nothing. She should have known better than to trust a man who tells the truth about everything except his own last name. Between them stand meddling brothers, matchmaking best friends, rival comic houses, and one very patient city that has been waiting for the scoop of the year. Falling in love was never the plan. Staying alive, employed, and honest about it might be harder than either of them thinks - and twice as sweet.