The lovely attorney kept a secret from me. A baby she’s been carrying since Valentine’s night. The night we were thrown together by the roulette wheel. She never contacted me. Meant to keep me in the dark. She’s about to find out what happens when you cross a bratva boss. Punishment is in order. Sequestering until the birth. And I’ll use that time to win her surrender. Because I don’t just plan to keep the baby - I plan to make his mother my bride. And it would be much better for both of us if she were willing.

A bachelor auction. I was in an f-ing bachelor auction. I wasn’t a cow. A bull, definitely. When the ladies started to bid, it was looking rough. Until she placed the winning bid. The one I wanted. The woman who’d kneed me in the balls the other day. Yeah, I was hot for a woman who wanted nothing to do with me. I was a guy obsessed. She might be the teacher, but she was going to learn she was all mine - and I wasn’t letting her go.

Jess: Meet Mark Donovan. Ex-Army sniper. CEO of a multi-billion dollar global empire. Chiseled to the nth degree. And a man I want nothing to do with.I know the type. Dangerous. Sexy. A bad-boy who fills out a Tom Ford suit or pair of Calvin's in equally drool-worthy ways. At his core, the worst kind of heartbreaker. The kind who doesn't even know he did it.

I’m not looking for a hero, and definitely not a fake relationship with my new boss, nightclub owner Dante Fury—over six feet of dark, hot, and dangerous. But he isn’t taking no for an answer. The plan was to run, live under the radar, survive. My life’s been destroyed by some very bad people and everything I know is gone—career, friends, family. I thought I could hide as a bartender at New Orleans’ hottest new club, Ember.

I fell in love with Beckett when I was 7. He broke my heart when I was 15. When I was 18, I promised myself I’d forget about him. And I did. For a dozen years. But now he’s back home. Here. In Darling Lake. And I don’t know if I should give in to the temptation swirling between us or run the other way.