The Pact: A Small-Town, Enemies-to-Lovers Forbidden Romance

A small-town baker mixes business with pleasure when she falls for her best friend's ex.

Ava Lancaster wants one thing: to convince her best friends to move back to their hometown of Cedar Springs.

Luckily for Ava, the five girls made a pact their senior year of high school-if they all turned thirty without getting married, they would return to Cedar Springs, buy the abandoned Victorian manor on Main Street, and open a bed and breakfast together. And, because sometimes good things do happen to good people, the manor goes up for sale the same weekend Ava turns thirty. Everything is falling into place.

Until it isn't.

Between running her bakery without help, convincing two of the girls that friendship is worth the effort of a big move, and dealing with Benjamin McKinley the Traitor (who of course is the real estate agent selling the property), Ava starts to worry that her lifelong dream is crumbling around her.

Ben McKinley believes in putting the past behind him, a mentality that's served him well so far. Unfortunately for Ben, past mistakes that he'd hoped were long gone rear their ugly heads in the form of Ava Lancaster and her friends.

Did he break up with her best friend on prom night? Yes. Did he think it was a decision that would haunt him into adulthood? Absolutely not. Yet here he is, somehow struggling with the same problem he had fifteen years ago.

Normally, he'd just put as much distance between himself and the women as possible. Normally, he'd continue stuffing his inconvenient crush on Ava back out of reach where it belonged.

But Ben is a realtor and the manor belonged to his grandmother.

Which means that Ben is about to spend a lot of time pretending he hasn't always been in love with Ava.