THE ASSET

A Grumpy Billionaire Fake Marriage Romance

By: Pippa Farthingale

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

He bought me to secure a contract. He didn't expect me to rewrite the terms.

Toren Cross is a "vulture capitalist." He sees the world as a series of cold equations and strips companies for parts. With four billion dollars on the line for a government defense contract, he’s missing only one variable: a wife with "Old World values" to clean up his predatory image.

He doesn't want a partner. He wants a prop.

Juna Hale deals in ghosts. A curator of rare books, she spends her life gluing broken spines back together. But when her brother’s debt threatens to destroy her library—her only sanctuary—she runs out of options. She needs a miracle. Instead, she gets a proposition.

The Deal:

• Ninety days of marriage.
• Five public appearances.
• Complete obedience.

In exchange, he clears the debt and saves her history. It should be a simple transaction. Juna is the Asset; Toren is the Operator.

But Toren didn't account for the chaos of a woman who refuses to be filed away. He didn't predict that her messy, analog warmth would crash his perfect digital world. And he certainly didn't calculate the way he’d unravel when he touches her.

Now, the man who destroys everything he touches is desperate to keep the one thing he can’t control. But when the contract ends, Toren has to make a choice: Protect the empire he built... or save the woman who taught him how to feel.

The Asset is a steamy, standalone contemporary romance novella. Expect a grumpy billionaire, a sunshine archivist, and a fake marriage that feels dangerously real. Guaranteed Happily Ever After.