Colin Westwood

Sally Preston knows damaged things can be restored. She has built her life around proving it at Preston Antiquities, the San Francisco shop she inherited from her father. Her romantic prospects, however, may be beyond repair.

After a disastrous date with a funeral director who sizes her up for a bamboo casket, Sally collides with Jace Carpenter in the pouring rain. He is charming, considerate, ridiculously handsome, and armed with an umbrella at precisely the right moment. Before long, he has worked his way into her shop, her apartment, and her heart.

Then Bobby, Sally’s eccentric restoration expert, discovers that an ugly painting from an estate clearance may be a lost masterpiece worth millions. At the same time, cracks begin appearing in Jace’s carefully constructed life. His apartment looks staged. His work history does not exist. Even his name belongs to somebody else.

Their meeting was no accident.

With a suspected art thief sleeping in her bed and watching the painting’s restoration, Sally must pretend she still trusts him while a gruff detective prepares a trap. Keeping the devil convinced she remains thoroughly deceived will require the performance of her life, especially when some of what passed between them felt painfully real.

But Sally has spent years uncovering what lies beneath a convincing surface, and this time, she refuses to be the fragile thing in need of rescue.