I caught her staring at me from across the quad, eyes fixed on the football jersey stretched across my wide chest. And if I flexed my muscles, showing off the strength of a defensive tackle, it was just to see her blush. And then she did, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Her wide eyes. The freckles on her cheeks. I needed to know her. The girl who scampered away every time we bumped into each other—by accident and by design.

Sharing a summer house with a hot-as-hell roommate should be a dream come true, right? Not when it’s Justin…the only person I’d ever loved…who now hates me. When my grandmother died and left me half of the house on Aquidneck Island, there was a catch: the other half would go to the boy she helped raise. The same boy who turned into the teenager whose heart I broke years ago.

I’ve got a list of people I absolutely don’t ever want to be stuck with on a boat, or a plane, or a train, and it starts and ends with the broody, grumpy, too-sexy-for-my-own good Axel Huxley. Also known as this romance novelist’s number one nemesis. The man is legendary for his mighty pen and his even mightier scowl. I tried to work together with the cocky thriller writer once upon a time, but the two of us are like vodka and good decisions. We don’t play well together.

It all started with an unexpected phone call. Two years after my fiancé passed away in an accident, his father died suddenly, leaving Brad’s adult special-needs brother with no one to care for him. The next thing I knew, I was on a cross-country drive to New Hampshire where I’d be moving in to look after Scottie until I could get him into a group home. The last thing I ever expected? I wouldn’t be taking care of him alone.

It started out like any other Tuesday. I spent 12 hours writing algorithms for one of the largest companies in the world and then came home to work on a pet project of mine—feeding facts about the men I knew into a formula to find my perfect match before my twenties came barreling to a close.