Forbidden

The vow he swore did not say do not want her.

Calliope Marinos is twenty-three, sharp as broken glass, and the legal heir to twelve percent of a Greek shipping dynasty that does not let outsiders hold its shares. She has been summoned to Kalydon to sign the stock back. The man waiting at the dock is Theron Drakos — forty-two, silver-templed, the friend who closed her father's eyes thirteen years ago and swore on the body to keep her safe. He has kept the vow at a careful distance. Boarding schools. Lawyers. One birthday card a year.

He brought her to Kalydon to sign the shares back. He keeps her instead. The villa has a chapel with no priest, a seven-year-old daughter named Sophia who decides Calliope is hers by the second morning, and a balcony where Theron watches the sea like a man counting what he is willing to lose. The Kallis brothers are still circling the family — the same feud that killed his wife eight years ago is the same feud that will come for the girl now wearing his ring. The vow he swore to her dying father said protect her. It did not say do not want her. It is the second one he cannot keep.

Forbidden is dark, instalove guardian romance at its most honor-bound and its most possessive — a silver-fox single dad whose vow has held for thirteen years, and the dead-best-friend's daughter who undoes it in a single look. Kalydon's chapel. A virgin heroine in a cream-colored dress. A child who calls her koúkla mou. And a hero who finally says the words: Eísai dikí mou. You are mine.