A scandalous bargain. A loveless arrangement. An inconvenient truth: She's falling for the man she bought.
Eleanor Hartwell committed the ultimate sin in New York's ruthless high society-she pushed back. Now, with her reputation in ruins and Mrs. Astor's doors firmly closed, her steel magnate father offers one solution: purchase a prestigious husband whose name can't be questioned.
Alexander Whitmore is that husband. Devastatingly handsome. Impossibly proud. Completely broke. His Knickerbocker bloodline stretches back generations, but his father's gambling debts have left him with nothing but a crumbling brownstone and crushing shame. Eleanor's three hundred thousand dollars can save him-if he's willing to sell the one thing he has left. His name.
The deal is simple: She gets respectability. He gets survival. They maintain separate lives under the same roof.
But nothing about their arrangement stays simple.
Not when late-night conversations in his library reveal the brilliant, lonely man behind the aristocratic mask. Not when her fierce defense of him at a society salon makes his carefully controlled heart stutter. Not when a snowstorm traps them together and proximity becomes unbearable torture. Not when she realizes the cold businessman her father negotiated with has a romantic soul that sees her-truly sees her-in ways no one ever has.
Just as they begin building something real from their foundation of lies, a vindictive enemy threatens to expose Alexander's father's crimes and destroy everything they've built. Now they must decide: Hide behind Eleanor's fortune and live in fear? Or face the scandal together and prove their love is worth more than any price?
From the glittering opera houses to the scandalous gossip columns, from arranged marriage to passionate partnership, this Gilded Age romance proves that sometimes the best love stories begin with a contract and end with a choice.
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