Power Play: Forbidden Love

They say some secrets are meant to stay buried.

I used to believe that too—until Roman Aldridge walked back into my life fifteen years later, no longer the broken thirteen-year-old boy I once held through his darkest nights, but a devastatingly handsome man who looked at me like I was his salvation and his damnation all at once.

"I've never stopped loving you, Vivian."

Those seven words shattered the carefully constructed walls I'd built around my heart. Because the truth? I'd never stopped loving him either.

Fifteen years ago, I was his dead mother's replacement—a twenty-three-year-old political advisor tasked with caring for a grieving child. I held him when he cried, watched him grow, and somewhere along the way, developed feelings that terrified me so much I fled Seattle like my life depended on it.

Now I'm back. Divorced, desperate, and apparently still weak enough to melt under those same dark eyes that once looked at me with innocent adoration but now burn with a man's desire.

The scandal writes itself: Governor Candidate's Son Seduces Former Caregiver. Or is it the other way around? Does it matter when the entire world thinks you're a predator who groomed the boy you were supposed to protect?

Roman doesn't care about the headlines. He doesn't care that loving me could destroy his political future, his relationship with his father, everything he's worked for. He says he'd rather burn the whole world down than live without me.

The problem is, I believe him.

And God help me, I think I might let him.

Because sometimes, the most forbidden love is the only one worth fighting for.

Even if it means that a woman falls in love with the child she once nurtured.