The Hotelier's Second Chance

Ines Duarte has poured nine years into the Belle Étoile hotel, and the morning before her soft opening, she learns she no longer owns the walls. The buyer is Kieran Bellamy—her ex-fiancé, the man who couldn't stop acquiring things, including, once, her. He doesn't want to evict her. He wants a partnership. Ines agrees on one condition: he works her front desk for a month under his real name, not the brand he built. What follows is a season of linen closets, mislabeled reservations, and a terrace argument the neighbors will never forget. Somewhere in the wreckage of their old plans, something honest starts to grow. But Kieran's company has a clause with teeth, and when Ines finds it, she has to decide whether to save her hotel or the man who once planned to put himself on the deed instead of beside her.