One corporate retreat. One king-sized bed. One fake wife who is suddenly feeling entirely too real. Alyx Monroe doesn’t do messy. As a rising architect at a cutthroat New York firm, her life is built on right angles, load-bearing walls, and structural perfection. But when a rival coworker questions her nonexistent personal life in front of the boss, Alyx panics and invents a long-term partner. Now, she’s expected to bring her "other half" to a crucial, career-making weekend retreat. Enter Riley Hart. Messy, warm, artistic, and chronically broke, Riley is Alyx’s exact opposite. She’s also completely willing to play the doting wife for a long weekend in exchange for rent money. The rules are simple: ☑ Stick to the backstory. ☑ Sell the romance to the boss. ☑ Keep their hands to themselves. But when they get to Birch Cabin, they find one bed, too much wine, and a dangerous amount of friction. What starts as a strictly business arrangement quickly dissolves into accidental touches, late-night confessions, and breathless, sheet-gripping tension. Alyx designed her life to be impenetrable, but Riley is tearing down her walls effortlessly. They’re supposed to be performing for an audience, but the heat between them is real—and the hardest part of the weekend will be figuring out how to stop pretending. Fake Wife, Real Heat is a spicy, high-heat standalone sapphic contemporary romance featuring the fake dating, grumpy/sunshine, and one-bed tropes.
