Faking it in Hollis Landing: A Landing Novella

Sadie Marsh left Hollis Landing at eighteen without saying goodbye. Ten years later, she's back; broke, grieving, and forty-six days from losing her late grandmother's bakery to the bank. There's only one problem: the loan committee won't extend her credit unless they believe she's actually staying. Which means Sadie needs roots. Fast. Enter Jonah Reyes - the one person in town with every reason to slam the door in her face. He's also the only contractor who can save her building before the deadline hits... and he's got a family problem of his own that a convincing, committed, entirely fake relationship would solve just as neatly. It's the perfect arrangement. Clear rules. Clean end date. No real feelings involved. Except somewhere between the dance rehearsal dip that wasn't supposed to be real, and the storm that stranded them together with nowhere else to look but at each other, the lie stopped feeling like one. Now the whole town believes in them. Sadie's starting to believe in them too. The only question left is whether Jonah can trust the girl who left once not to run again before a small town's worth of gossip tears down everything they've built. A small-town, fake-dating, enemies-to-lovers romance about bakeries, bad timing, and learning that the realest things sometimes start as the biggest lies.