Fake Dating the Runaway Billionaire: A Forbidden Grumpy Romance

One viral video is all it takes to turn America's sweetheart into a billionaire's alleged hostage—and neither of them can outrun the internet.

When Sebastian Ashford abandons his empire without warning, the world assumes the worst. The grainy parking garage footage circulating online tells a convincing story: brooding, scandal-prone billionaire physically dragging a terrified actress into an SUV. Except Zoe Calloway isn't terrified—she's furious. She only approached the notoriously grumpy Sebastian to get his signature on a charity pledge, and now her spotless reputation is in freefall alongside his already-crumbling one.

Their solution? Prove to the world they're madly, voluntarily in love.

The fake dating arrangement comes with ironclad rules—no touching, no feelings, absolutely no crossing the line between performance and reality. But as they hit the road together, forced into close quarters by circumstance and pursued by something far more dangerous than paparazzi, those rules start feeling less like boundaries and more like a dare. Sebastian's brooding walls chip away under Zoe's relentless warmth, and Zoe begins to wonder if the gruff billionaire hiding secrets is the most honest person she's ever met.

Dark secrets have a way of surfacing when you're already running, and whatever Sebastian fled from hasn't stopped following him. The tension between them—romantic, dangerous, undeniable—is reaching a breaking point.

Some rules aren't meant to be followed. Some men aren't meant to be saved. And some chemistry is simply impossible to fake.