The Ex-Wife Across The Street

Sloane Hadley gave her husband everything. He took it, and then he took the rest.

For seven years Sloane stood behind the stove while Grant Pierce stood in front of the cameras. Her recipes built his restaurants. Her long nights paid his debts. When critics praised "Grant Pierce's kitchen," she smiled and kept cooking, because she believed they were building something together.

Then her father died.

While she was burying him, Grant had his lawyer slip one more paper into the stack she signed without reading. By the time she came home, her half of the business was his. So was the house. So were the recipes with her name in the margins.

A week later he filed for divorce.

Soon after, he announced his engagement to Margaux Kendall, the daughter of his biggest investor. He opened a glittering new flagship downtown, and the dish on the front of the menu was the one Sloane had built from her father's old diner recipe.

Sloane walked away with one suitcase, a set of knives and nothing else.

She made herself one promise: Grant Pierce would watch her rise.

With the money from her mother's ring and a lease nobody else wanted, she opens a tiny restaurant across the street from his flagship. Twelve tables. No investors. Her own name on the door.

That is where Lucien Castell finds her.

He is rich, calm and far too sure of himself. He orders the same dish three nights in a row and sends compliments to the chef until she comes out to tell him to stop. He offers to back her. She throws him out.

He comes back the next night and pays for his dinner like everyone else.

Sloane has no room for another man in her life. The last one taught her exactly what a smile and a promise are worth. But Lucien never asks for her trust. He is there the night a health inspector arrives on an anonymous tip. He knows which of her suppliers Grant has quietly bought. And he seems to know Grant Pierce a little too well.

Because their meeting was not an accident.

Years ago, Lucien's sister Delphine was engaged to Grant Pierce. Grant used her talent, her money and her name, then left her with nothing, the same way he left Sloane. Lucien has spent years waiting for the right moment to bring him down.

Sloane was supposed to be part of the plan.

She was never supposed to become the reason he forgot it.

Now Grant is suing her for stealing his recipes, his empire is cracking, Margaux is asking questions, and the proof that could destroy him is finally within reach. Sloane must decide what she really wants: to see Grant fall, or to build something so good that his fall no longer matters.

And when the truth about Lucien comes out, she has to answer the hardest question of all.

Can she trust a man who came into her life for revenge, when revenge is exactly what brought her this far?

She once gave a man everything. This time she will keep her own name, her own kitchen and her own heart, unless someone proves he deserves a place at her table.