ALMOST HIS

Artemis St. Clair has always dreamed of choosing her own love. But time is slipping through her fingers: her father, a high-ranking nobleman, has arranged for her to marry a grim, controlling 40-year-old baron who makes her skin crawl. In desperation, Artemis travels town to town under the guise of "exploration"-secretly hoping to stumble across the kind of epic, heart-pounding romance she reads about in books.

But love never seems to find her.

Until one rainy afternoon, while hiding from her chaperone, she slips into the quietest place in the world-the old town library, dusty and mostly abandoned.

That's where she sees Ni'ev Lombardi.

A towering, silent man with unreadable eyes and muscles that stretch his old button-down shirt to the brink. He reads in the dark corners. He never speaks. But he writes.