She married him for the baby. The baby is gone. And now she has to figure out if there's anything left worth staying for.

Julia Hartley has spent her entire life keeping people at a safe, manageable distance — and it has always worked perfectly.

Until Orlando Page.

Their marriage was supposed to be straightforward. A practical solution to an unexpected situation. Not forever. Not real.

But eighteen months in, real is the only thing it's becoming — and Julia is terrified of what that means.

Orlando is patient. Perceptive. The kind of man who notices everything she doesn't say — and has always looked at her like the distance was worth crossing.

Or he did. Until the miscarriage she refuses to call what it was, and what it cost them both — in Edinburgh, in the months that followed, in the morning he looked at her across their Cape Town home and said the words that split everything open.

She is the last person on earth he would want to have a child with.

Now the contract has an expiry date, the walls are back up — and Julia must decide if she's finally brave enough to let someone in before she loses the one person who ever truly tried to reach her.

Can you learn to love someone you've already married — or is some damage impossible to undo?
She married him for the baby. The baby is gone. And now she has to figure out if there's anything left worth staying for.

Julia Hartley has spent her entire life keeping people at a safe, manageable distance — and it has always worked perfectly.

Until Orlando Page.

Their marriage was supposed to be straightforward. A practical solution to an unexpected situation. Not forever. Not real.

But eighteen months in, real is the only thing it's becoming — and Julia is terrified of what that means.

Orlando is patient. Perceptive. The kind of man who notices everything she doesn't say — and has always looked at her like the distance was worth crossing.

Or he did. Until the miscarriage she refuses to call what it was, and what it cost them both — in Edinburgh, in the months that followed, in the morning he looked at her across their Cape Town home and said the words that split everything open.

She is the last person on earth he would want to have a child with.

Now the contract has an expiry date, the walls are back up — and Julia must decide if she's finally brave enough to let someone in before she loses the one person who ever truly tried to reach her.

Can you learn to love someone you've already married — or is some damage impossible to undo?

A contemporary romance with:
✦ Marriage of convenience → real feelings
✦ Emotionally unavailable heroine
✦ Forced proximity
✦ Slow burn with a broken marriage to mend
✦ Cape Town, South Africa setting
✦ Low steam · emotionally intense
✦ HEA guaranteed