The Fake Date Clause

Vivian Shaw arrives at Ashford Media Group for a final-round interview and collides — literally — with the man who will be her new boss. The scalding coffee he spills on her blouse in the lobby is the first thing Sebastian Ashford will not let her forget. He keeps her ruined blazer. He moves her interview to the top of his schedule. By the end of her first week he is asking her to sign a contract she did not expect: a six-month fake-dating arrangement to deflect his father's marriage pressure and the campaign of his half-sister Lyra. Vivian agrees, because the rent is real and the alternative is a kind of principled poverty she cannot afford. What follows is a slow negotiation between two people who are not on the same side — Sebastian precise and wrong about what he believes about Vivian; Vivian principled, underpaid, and right about things he will not yet admit about himself. The clause is a contract — and, eventually, the place where two people learn to be honest with each other. A billionaire romance about coffee, contracts, and the cost of admitting you've stopped pretending. Read the free preview chapters on SweetNovel.