Contracted for One Year

Twelve months. Four public appearances a month. One shared address. No children. No feelings. Full annulment at year's end. Saoirse Brennan signs the contract because her rowing academy has three weeks before the bank takes the building. Rafael Cordeiro signs because his grandmother's voting shares are the only thing standing between the family shipping empire and a conglomerate that would gut it. She moves into his Lisbon townhouse with two duffel bags and an Olympic medal. He gives her a list of rules on the refrigerator in his own handwriting. They perform the perfect marriage for a year—galas, Sunday lunches, a leak to the tabloids that was not in the contract. But in the Douro, in a stone cottage, in a rainstorm with one bed, the rules quietly stop applying. When the year ends, Rafael arrives at the annulment meeting with a second contract. Saoirse reads the final clause out loud. Then she signs it. A spicy billionaire arranged-marriage romance about contracts, cousins, and the one clause nobody drafted.