Owned By Desire

Mistaken by Fate

Sera Moretti came to Harborview for an annual screening, the same one her father’s people have vetted every January since she was twenty-one. A new computer system and a nervous trainee nurse changed that. Two floors above her, a surrogate was waiting for the procedure Dante Valeri had planned down to the last signature.

Dante wanted an heir and wanted nothing to do with a wife. A wife was a door left open, and he had watched what came through one. Sera is Salvatore Moretti’s daughter. His rival’s child is now growing inside her.

Their families have spent years trying to ruin each other. Now they have one child between them and one option that keeps it safe: a marriage contract, signed by two people who never chose each other.

Dante set the terms. Sera is reading every page.

A dark mafia romance of rival families, a marriage of convenience and a baby neither of them planned.

This is based on the opening chapters I read, so check it against the rest of the plot. I wrote it for Mistaken by Fate. I can do the same for Stand-in Bride or Bound to Him, or change the tone of this one.

The Collision Book One of the Casanova Series

Nell Hartley took the housekeeping job at the glass house above West Vancouver for her mother’s medical bills. She had no plan to end up on the kitchen floor with Callum Ashworth, the port heir who never brings the same woman home twice. Six weeks later she was staring at two pink lines.

Callum doesn’t lose, and he has already worked out how to win this. He offers Nell a contract: marry him, carry the baby, and stay eighteen months. After that she can leave with enough money to cover her mother’s care and start over. The child stays with him.

The terms are cold and airtight, and Nell signs. Then Callum starts coming home for lunch. He learns how she takes her tea. A stranger begins photographing her through the windows, and a society rival finds the one document that could ruin them both.

Nell has spent her life waiting for people to leave, and she keeps a bag half packed just in case. Callum has never had to ask anyone to stay.

A dark, slow-burn contract marriage romance with a possessive hero, a heroine who won’t be bought, and a love that was never part of the deal.

Your manuscript already ends with a “Back Cover” section. This version is new and shorter, and it follows the same story. Tell me if you want the original wording or a different tone.

Yes. The tool sets BL = 0.125 in on all four sides. The panel reads “Bleed 0.125 in on all sides”, and the exported PDF sets the trim box inset by that amount.

• Height: 9 in trim plus 0.25 in of bleed gives 9.25 in. This matches your spec.
• Width: the tool’s total is 12.805 in, not the 13.601 in from your spec. That is 6 + 6 in for the panels, a spine, and 0.25 in of bleed. The 13.601 figure doesn’t add up to a 0.549 in spine (12 + 0.549 + 0.25 = 12.799 in).
• Spine: it is computed from page count at 0.348 in per 300 pages, so it won’t always be 0.549 in.

Check the 13.601 in figure against your printer’s template. If the printer needs a different width, I can set the spine or total to match.

Owned by Desire

Tessa Marlowe went to the Nightjar to save her father’s hotel. Luca Vitale’s company owns the debt and plans to call it in on Friday. His assistant had already turned her away, so she sat at the bar in a borrowed red dress and told the stranger beside her she was nobody.

He didn’t give his name. She didn’t ask for it. By morning she knew exactly who he was, and he had thrown her out.

Five years later, Tessa is raising their son in a small town three hundred miles from Castle Reach. When the boy falls gravely ill, one person in the world has the blood match that could save him. It is the man she has spent half a decade running from.

Luca wants his son, and Tessa wants nothing from him. The house on Hallam Ridge is large and quiet at night. It is two hundred and eleven steps from his door to hers, and he has counted them.

He has never lost anything he wanted, except once.

A slow-burn dark mafia romance with a possessive hero who has to earn what he once threw away, a heroine who refuses to be owned, and a love that is fought for one step at a time.