HIS LOVE CAME TOO LATE

“He offered me six months of his name. I gave him six months of my life. Neither of us expected to lose our hearts. Seven days. That was all Elena Hayes had left before the hotel her late mother had built from nothing was sold at auction, taking the last piece of her family with it. Desperate for a miracle, she walked into the office of Adrian Blackwood, a billionaire who could destroy a person's future with a signature and buy back their loyalty with a smile. His offer was simple. Six months as his fiancée. Public appearances. Family dinners. A convincing performance of a love that didn't exist. In return, he would save her hotel. Elena agreed, but not before making one thing clear: he could buy her time, but he would never own her. Adrian found her defiance amusing. He was accustomed to women who wanted his money, his power, and his attention. Elena wanted none of those things from him, and the more he tried to understand her, the more she became the one woman he couldn't stop thinking about. She challenged him when everyone else obeyed. She saw through his arrogance when everyone else praised his brilliance. And without asking permission, she began reaching the lonely man hidden beneath his expensive suits and perfectly controlled smiles. Then a staged kiss became a memory neither could forget. A simple act of kindness became the one thing he looked forward to. And the woman he had hired to pretend to love him became the woman whose absence he could no longer bear. But Adrian Blackwood has spent his entire life believing that losing control means losing everything. Elena has spent hers learning that love without freedom is just another kind of prison. When their pretend engagement becomes real, a secret buried in her family's past threatens to destroy the very love Adrian has fought to understand. Suddenly, every promise sounds like a lie, every sacrifice raises a question, and the man who taught Elena to trust again may be the one person she can never forgive. Now Adrian must face the one battle his fortune cannot win for him. He must convince the woman he loves that she was never a transaction, that his love was never a lie, and that the man who once believed he could buy anything is finally willing to risk everything for her. Because Elena Hayes was never the woman he could afford to lose. She was the woman he should never have let himself love if he wasn't prepared to become a different man. And when she finally walks away, Adrian will discover that the most expensive mistake of his life wasn't losing his fortune. It was teaching the woman he loved how to live without him. Some men fall in love too late. Some women leave before love can destroy them. And some hearts must break before they learn how to belong to each other.”