Ava Kingsley

She needs forty million rand by Friday. He needs a wife.

Cape Town founder Isla Adair has given four years and every waking hour to Threadline, her small recycling start-up. When the bank calls in her loan, twenty-two jobs are about to vanish. Then cold, brilliant investor Callum Rhys makes her an offer: he'll save her company if she marries him for one year, to satisfy his grandfather's will and keep his ruthless uncle away from the family empire.

Separate bedrooms. A forty-two-page contract. And one rule: no touching in private unless she asks.

Isla will never ask.

But a honeymoon photoshoot with only one bed, a husband who secretly listens to her sing every morning and a fire that was no accident are about to test every clause. Because someone wants this marriage to fail. And Callum is hiding the one secret that could end it.

A steamy fake-marriage romance with a guaranteed happy ending.

He needs a wife within ninety days. She needs a factory built.

Engineer Marli Venter has drawn every line of her dream plant in the Eastern Cape. Nine investors have said no. Then Ruan Rhys, the secret half-brother of Cape Town's most powerful family, offers her a deal: marry him before New Year to meet his late grandfather's will. He'll fund the plant and build it with his own two hands.

Marli writes the contract on a napkin. One year. Separate rooms. No lies, ever. Ruan adds one clause: no pretending in private.

But one farmhouse with one bathroom, a storm that cuts the power and a man who learns her language for her are hard to resist. When a rival board member sets out to prove the marriage is a sham, Marli discovers Ruan has a secret of his own. It could send him to the far side of the world.

A steamy marriage-of-convenience romance with a guaranteed happy ending. Can be read as a standalone.