THE BILLIONAIRE'S BARGAIN

Elena's been Damian Cole's right hand for eight years. She knows how he takes his coffee, how he likes his emails formatted, how to read a room before he walks into it. What she doesn't know, what nobody at Cole Capital knows, is that she's just been told she has maybe a year left to have a biological kid if she wants one at all.

She's not planning to tell him either. It just happens. He's in his office next door, the walls are thin, and she's on the phone with her doctor sounding like her whole life just tilted sideways. He hears enough.

An hour later he's standing in her doorway with an offer that makes zero sense coming out of his mouth: he'll do it. Be the donor. No dating, no strings, nothing that has to change between them. Just a signature and a clinic appointment.
She should laugh him out of the room. Instead she says yes, because some offers only come around once and she's tired of being smart about everything.

The arrangement is supposed to stay simple. It doesn't. Turns out the version of Damian that shows up for this, quiet, a little unsure of himself for once, actually paying attention, is nothing like the guy who terrifies junior associates in meetings. And Elena starts catching herself wanting things that aren't in the contract. His attention. His time. Him, specifically, not just what he agreed to give her.

Then his mother finds out and has opinions. Then Marcus resurfaces, still convinced Elena owes him some kind of explanation for the life she built without him. Then someone at the office starts asking questions neither of them has a good answer for.

Elena signed up for a baby, not a broken heart. But somewhere between the fertility clinic and 2 a.m. conversations she wasn't supposed to have with her boss, the bargain stopped being about biology at all.

Then the pregnancy test comes back positive on the same night Damian's engagement to another woman, one his mother arranged months ago without telling him, hits the press.