Between Commitment and Betrayal

BETWEEN COMMITMENT AND BETRAYAL SHAIN ROSE GREENE INK PUBLISHING Copyright © 2023 by Shain Rose All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or coincidental. Cover: Books and Moods Photograph: Wander Aguiar Editing: KDProofreading Created with Vellum CONTENTS Blurb Note on Content Warnings 1. Everly 2. Everly 3. Declan 4. Declan 5. Everly 6. Everly 7. Declan 8. Everly 9. Declan 10. Everly 11. Declan 12. Everly 13. Declan 14. Declan 15. Everly 16. Declan 17. Everly 18. Everly 19. Declan 20. Declan 21. Everly 22. Declan 23. Everly 24. Declan 25. Everly 26. Everly 27. Declan 28. Everly 29. Declan 30. Everly 31. Everly 32. Everly 33. Declan 34. Everly 35. Everly 36. Declan 37. Everly 38. Everly 39. Declan 40. Declan 41. Everly 42. Epilogue Also By Shain Rose About Shain Rose BLURB My father's business partner will do anything for the empire they built together … Even marry me. Declan Hardy, all-American heartthrob and retired NFL billionaire, is my complete opposite. He's commanding where I'm cooperative. Spontaneous while I am deliberate. Loud when I stay quiet. The only thing we have in common is that both our names are on my father's will. He'll inherit the fitness and hospitality empire and I'll keep the one thing I hold dear. As long as I marry him—with conditions. One year of a fake marriage. One year of living together. One year of pretending I belong in his luxury lifestyle. But stipulations are never that simple. Especially when I can't tell if his kisses are fake or if I'm pretending when I kiss him back. And as more conditions arise, it's clear there's a fine line between commitment and betrayal... and neither of us knows where that line falls. NOTE ON CONTENT WARNINGS As a reader who loves surprises, I enjoy going in blind with each book. Yet, I also want to give my readers the opportunity to know what sensitive content may be in my books. You will find the list of them here: https://www.shainrose.com/content-warnings 1 EVERLY “She won’t be coming over,” I heard from the doorway of the yoga studio room. The smile on my face dropped off like a ton of bricks. It’d been only two months of me living in sunny Florida with my estranged father, but it felt like two lifetimes. I met his blue-eyed gaze with my own. The color of them was about the only thing my father had handed down to me. “Carl, seriously?” I whispered. “Mr. Milton, don’t you think your daughter can make the decision herself?” Wes Bauer rolled up his yoga mat and stood up near me. “I can make that decision myself,” I pointed out, combing a hand through the waves of my hair that had succumbed to the rigorous workout. My father scoffed, his face turned beet red. “I agreed to you working here at the fitness center for us to build a relationship, Evie. This isn’t the way to do it.” I sighed, “Can we talk about this later, Carl?” “We’ll talk now.” He shook his finger at me. This was why I hadn’t seen him in eighteen years. Carl Milton was truly a baby, an only child that had inherited a fortune from grandparents I had never met. He’d gone on to live a life where no one defied him, leaving my mom and me when I was just six years old because we “weren’t good listeners.” He’d actually only agreed to have me come work for his fitness center after my mother guilted him into it. She’d said I needed to escape my hometown and start a new life away from the graduate school I’d dropped out of. She was right, of course. I knew that. I was drowning under a deep sea of pain that I couldn’t swim above. I’d planned to leave and start anew somewhere else, but I’d never wanted it to be here. Yet, Carl insisted. Said he was going into heart failure, that he should be getting to know his only biological daughter. I’d given in to the naive hope of the little girl still wanting her father’s love and relocated halfway across the country to Florida two months ago. Like an idiot. “If you go, I’ll call Declan.” Carl announced, and Wes groaned as he tightened the dark man bun on his head. “Call me for what?” Declan Hardy’s voice was always strong. Deep. Authoritative enough that it commanded all the attention in the room even as all six foot three of him leaned casually against the doorframe. With chiseled muscle and a famous, beautiful face, the retired NFL star had not a care in the world—even though he’d intruded on someone’s private conversation. My seething father huffed as he walked over to his business partner. “Evie thinks she’s going to a party at this asshat’s house again. Please, for my sake and our business, take care of it.” With that, he walked out, leaving me with that word again bouncing around in my head. Again. That was the real problem. This wasn’t the first time my father had intervened in my dating life. He’d called Declan a month ago and had him fly in to retrieve me from Wes’s house. Fly. Like in an airplane. And Declan had just gone along with it, knocked on Wes’s door, and demanded I leave. That was the world I was living in. To them, I was Carl’s precious daughter, breaking a cardinal rule. Wes chuckled and winked at me before he said, “I’ll swing by and pick you up at the end of your shift, Evie.” He stalked