They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They're wrong. It's paved with lies, surprises, and necessary conveniences... Ayla Peterson has built a quiet, steady life in a small North Carolina town-raising her five-year-old daughter, thriving as a nurse practitioner, and keeping her heart safely walled off after a brutal divorce. Everything she has, everything she loves, rests on the foundation of one friendship... and one devastating lie. When Sofie's birth mother dies unexpectedly, the truth detonates Ayla's world: billionaire hotel magnate Nolan Bishop never abandoned his child. He never even knew she existed. And now he does. Nolan isn't the settling-down type. He's a globe-trotting, scandal-magnet businessman with no interest in fatherhood-until the letter arrives. Until he meets the daughter he never asked for but can't walk away from. Until he meets the woman who's raised her with fierce devotion. Ayla can't deny him access. She can't win a custody battle. And she can't ignore the one solution Nolan proposes with ruthless logic and surprising tenderness. A marriage of convenience. For Sofie. For stability. For show. But living with a man she shouldn't want-and wanting him more every day-forces Ayla to confront the question she's avoided from the moment Nolan Bishop walked into her life: Does she risk losing her daughter... or risk her heart to keep her? A slow-burn, emotionally charged contemporary romance about second chances, found family, and a marriage that becomes anything but convenient.