The Billionaire's Ultimatum

A single white rose petal has fallen onto the mahogany table, and Liz Calloway cannot stop staring at it. The band is tuning on the far stage. The ballroom smells of beeswax polish and fresh paint from the ceiling restoration. It is 6:47, the gala starts at eight, and Liz has one hour and thirteen minutes to level the candles, get her invoice signed, and make it to the hospital before visiting hours end. Her sister has been asking for her all day. *Looks like a funeral threw up on it.* James Sterling is standing three feet behind her in a charcoal suit, telling her that her centerpieces look like a mausoleum. Liz has been awake since four-thirty. She hauled three hundred roses in from the flower district in a rented van, cut her palm on a stray wire, and bandaged it with a napkin from the coffee cart outside. She informs him that his mother's assistant approved the arrangements three weeks ago. His mother's assistant was let go yesterday. Mia Calloway is at Brooklyn Methodist with kidney function at fifteen percent. A life on dialysis is not sustainable at that level, the transplant waitlist runs three to five years, and the surgery that would actually save her costs two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that insurance will not cover. Liz has eleven thousand in savings and a small events business that is barely breaking even. Then James Sterling calls her with a proposition, and the number he says out loud is the exact number she needs. *Not a real one. A fake one. I need someone to pose as my fiancée for a series of family events.* Three months. Half upfront, half on completion. A confidentiality clause that forbids her from telling anyone why she needs the money, including the one part of the story that is actually true. What Liz does not know is how much of the Sterling family this is really about: a father who hands out titles and keeps the leash short, and a woman named Eleanor who was in the room when the contract was signed and has been holding it ever since. What James does not expect is a florist who refuses to write her dying sister out of the arrangement. *I won't hide her. She's in Brooklyn Methodist with fifteen percent kidney function.* A contemporary billionaire romance about a contract with an expiry date, a transplant with a deadline, and two people who are supposed to be performing. The romance is closed-door.