Coming in 2026.

BLURB

Some perimeters were never meant to hold.

Beth Ghattas has everything money can buy—except a life that feels like her own.

Two years after walking away from the Seattle tech empire she quietly co‑built with her cheating ex-husband, the Ice Queen has reengineered herself as a novelist and vanished into a six‑month sabbatical in Atlanta. On paper, it’s the perfect Second Act: a palatial Buckhead estate, three completed manuscripts awaiting edits, and a loyal bodyguard, Matthew, who maintains the perimeter.

But as the Georgia heat rises, the wall between client and protector begins to melt. Matthew is a man of protocol and cold restraint, yet beneath his clinical mask lies a simmering intensity that Beth can’t stop testing and that Matthew is finding increasingly difficult to ignore.

Outside the gates, the city hums with a different kind of risk and temptation. In dive bars and grimy back rooms, Beth falls into a web of sensual entanglements: Raed, the soulful younger musician who plays his guitar like a confession; William, the polished English developer with impeccable manners and a dangerous blind spot; and Bennett “Dirty Harry” Harrison, a legendary, volatile guitarist whose chaos feels like oxygen.

As lust and old ghosts collide, Beth realizes that the most difficult revisions aren’t on the page. To claim her slightly reckless Second Act, she must decide what—and who—is worth breaking the rules for.