She built her reputation on saying no to men like him. His scandal said yes for her anyway.

Maya Ward advises companies on doing the right thing when it costs them something, and she has learned to recognize men who talk about values but only mean optics. Callum Voss runs Voss Capital on hostile acquisitions and a reputation he has never bothered to soften. One brief conversation with him at an industry event should have meant nothing. Then a leaked memo blows up his firm days later, and the financial press decides Maya was standing closer to the fire than she ever admitted.

She writes the denial herself. Every word of it is true. What she doesn’t put in the statement is that Callum Voss is the first man in years who has made her want to stay in the room instead of walking out of it.

Her sister’s marriage taught Maya that a hard man can become a safe one. It didn’t teach her what to do when the hard man in question is under public fire, has never once apologized for how he built his fortune, and keeps asking her for the one thing she has never given a client: the truth, unmanaged.

Hostile Desire is Book Four in Glamour, Power & Devotion, a series about the marriages, legacies, and reputations that hold one powerful family together, and the loves that test every one of them.