JE

He never chased. She never expected to be chosen. London’s elite know Lucien Vale as the billionaire who never stays, the man with a different woman on his arm every month and a heart no one has ever managed to keep. Ella Bennett couldn’t be more different. She’s a twenty-four-year-old primary school teacher who measures her days in finger paintings, storybooks, and gold star stickers. Sweet, endlessly kind, and convinced she doesn’t belong among Theo Ashford’s wealthy, powerful friendship group, Ella expects to be the outsider. Instead, they make her one of their own. Sunday dinners become tradition. Weekends away become routine. And thanks to a friendship group that refuses to do anything separately, Ella finds herself spending far too much time with the one man she can’t quite understand. Lucien was never supposed to notice her. He certainly wasn’t supposed to become obsessed with the girl who blushes every time he looks at her. As London’s most notorious playboy falls first—and falls impossibly hard—Ella begins to realise that maybe she was never “just Ella.” Maybe she was always the one person capable of bringing the city’s coldest man to his knees.