The Inheritance Clause

HIM

I came back to Whitfield Hollow to bury my father and sell everything he left me. Instead, his will chained the winery — and forty million dollars — to one condition: I marry within ninety days, or it all goes to the cousin who spent a decade trying to ruin me.

I don't have ninety days to fall in love. I have a spreadsheet, a shortlist, and a girl who owes the town bank more than her family's orchard is worth.

Della Sue Calhoun doesn't want my money. That's exactly why I want her.

HER

Beau Whitfield walks into my diner like he never left — like he didn't spend twelve years becoming a stranger with a private jet and a jaw made for saying no. He offers me a number that would save my grandmother's orchard, a ring, and ninety days of pretending to be his wife.

I tell him no.

He doesn't ask twice. He just waits, the way a man waits when he's already decided you're his — and slowly, infuriatingly, he's right.

The contract says ninety days. It doesn't say anything about the way he watches me across a room like he's memorizing me, or the way "Mrs. Whitfield" starts to feel less like a role and more like the truth. When his cousin threatens the orchard, the winery, and me, Beau stops playing by his father's rules — and starts playing by his own.

I signed a piece of paper. I didn't agree to fall for him.

I'm not sure either of us gets a say anymore.

A slow-burn, high-heat romance of contracts, claiming, and a small town that's watching every move.

Tropes: Age-Gap • Billionaire • Marriage of Convenience • Possessive Alpha • Small-Town Forbidden • Dual POV