A Love Written In Blood
Joy Vanilla
by L Steele
Some rules exist for very good reasons — and James Hamilton is every single one of them.
He's her best friend's older brother: six feet three inches of brooding Royal Marine, complete with a jagged scar, glacial blue eyes, and a talent for making Sienna feel simultaneously invisible and utterly seen. She's spent years perfecting the art of ignoring him — no easy feat when the man fills every room he walks into and looks at her like she's a problem he hasn't decided how to solve yet.
Sienna has bigger priorities anyway. She's an aspiring chef fighting for her big break, trading twelve-hour shifts and dishwater-pruned hands for the dream of her own kitchen someday. Falling for a guarded, emotionally unavailable billionaire with military ghosts and zero interest in feelings? Absolutely not on the menu.
Then a family crisis lands them in the most inconvenient arrangement imaginable: a fake engagement that needs to look very, very real.
Suddenly the man who's always kept his distance is her devoted fiancé, and the lines Sienna swore she'd never cross are blurring faster than she can redraw them. James is still gruff, still infuriating, still completely wrong for her — except when he looks at her like that, or says her name like it costs him something.