15 bab Bersambung Lena Davenport is running out of time.
With her scholarship-fueled future and coveted gap year hanging in the balance, the brilliant, meticulously-planned Yale pre-med student has exactly three weeks to dismantle her mother's suffocating social schemes. Her mother's plan? To auction Lena off to the most "suitable" trust-fund husband at the elite Blackwood Gala.
Lena's only solution is desperate, reckless, and brilliant: hire a human catastrophe.
Enter Ethan Bellweather, the local mechanic. He's oil-stained, perpetually sarcastic, financially compromised, and the ultimate neighborhood "blight"-a man whose family was ruined years ago by Lena's mother. Ethan is the perfect anti-prospect, and he harbors a deep-seated vendetta against the Davenport name.
Their pact is simple:
The Unsuitable Contract.
Ethan will be Lena's wildly inappropriate, all-consuming boyfriend, creating enough scandal to secure Lena's freedom. In exchange, Lena will help Ethan acquire the vintage car at the Gala auction-a final, sweet act of revenge for his family.
The Rules are Clear:
Duration: Three weeks.
PDA: Minimal and chaste.
Goal: Secure Lena's freedom and Ethan's revenge.
Rule of Absolute Privacy: No talking about real feelings.
But as the social pressure escalates and their performance becomes dangerously real-complete with stolen kisses, shared family secrets, and a common bond over the hidden "physics of ambition"-Lena realizes she's falling for the man she hired to destroy her life.
When her mother threatens to expose Ethan's most painful family secret, Lena is forced into a final, impossible choice at the Gala: her guaranteed freedom, or the man who taught her what real love-and real engineering-truly looks like.
