The man who broke her heart is now the one assigning her deadlines.
Sarah Lake comes back to Maplewood Springs for a clean slate: new apartment, a coveted job at an elite marketing firm, and one ironclad rule… never let Jake Matthews close enough to hurt her again. Too bad her "fresh start" walks in wearing a suit and a title. Jake is her ex, her first love, and the reason she spent four years stitching herself back together. Now he's her supervisor on the biggest campaign of her career, and every meeting feels like a collision between what happened… and what still lingers. Jake wants to fix the past. Sarah wants boundaries. But when a ruthless office rivalry turns the campaign into a high-stakes battlefield, late nights blur into stolen glances, old hurts flare into new temptation, and the chemistry she swore she buried comes roaring back. Then the sabotage begins. To protect her reputation, save the campaign, and stop Jake from taking the fall, Sarah will have to choose: risk trusting the man who once walked away… or walk away first this time, before her heart breaks all over again. Tropes: clean/closed-door, second-chance romance, boss & employee, small-town nostalgia, office rivals, slow-burn tension, office romance.
