By Design

Olivia Carter has spent years fighting to save buildings that remember what they used to be. When a Manhattan venture group kills her skyscraper restoration on a technicality, she walks away from the firm, the city, and the sharp-tongued attorney who beat her. An independent contract on a fading Atlantic City casino-hotel is supposed to be a clean start. Historic bones, a hard deadline, and no one from New York in the building.Thomas Wright is sent to the same hotel to disappear. Burned out on corporate trials and out of patience with his own partners, he wants ten quiet days and a locked door. Instead he finds Olivia on the boardwalk, already deep in the job he's just been ordered to forget.The rivalry doesn't cool. It changes shape. Forced into the same halls, they trade drawings, deeds, and a hunger neither of them can deny for long. Olivia has never pretended to want only one kind of lover, and Thomas doesn't ask her to shrink who she is. What he asks for is honesty. What she asks for is a man who won't use her work as leverage.Then his old firm comes for the property with research he built before he ever packed a bag. Trust breaks. The restoration hangs on a single filing. Thomas has to decide whether his partnership is worth more than the woman who made him want a different life, and Olivia has to decide whether desire is enough when the blueprints are on the line.By Design is a steamy enemies-to-lovers contemporary romance about rivalry, restoration, and a relationship built in the open, with a bisexual heroine and a happy ending. Intended for adult readers. All characters are consenting adults.