Knead You Now

<p><strong>She needed a lawyer. He needed a girlfriend. Neither planned on falling.</strong></p><p>Dorothea has built her whole life around Knead the Dough Bakery.</p><p>From the pink storefront to the warm pastries. The apartment above the shop and the regulars who know exactly what they want before they reach the counter. It is more than a bakery. It is her sanctuary her livelihood and the only place she has ever truly felt safe.</p><p>Then a property dispute threatens to take it all away. Dottie needs a lawyer. Unfortunately the best lawyer in Coral Cove is Lorenzo Moretti.</p><p>Lorenzo is sharp successful impossible to ignore and rumored to be just as dangerous in a relationship as he is in a courtroom. He is the kind of man who makes people nervous when he walks into a room and Dottie has been nervous around him since the first time he ordered coffee and made her forget how hands work.</p><p>But Lorenzo has problems of his own. His domineering father is coming to town determined to prove Lorenzo has wasted his life by building a practice in Coral Cove instead of chasing power in the city. Lorenzo needs a date for a wedding a family dinner and several very public performances of respectability.</p><p>So he makes Dottie an offer. He will fight to save her bakery if she will pretend to be his girlfriend. It is practical. Temporary. Mutually beneficial.</p><p>Completely fake.</p><p>At least that is what Dottie keeps telling herself. But fake relationships have a way of rising when the heat is right. Lorenzo's protective streak starts feeling less like performance. Dottie's carefully guarded heart begins to soften. And somewhere between legal documents wedding dates late-night bakery visits and the kind of kisses no one can fake their arrangement becomes the one thing neither of them knows how to walk away from.</p><p>Dottie is terrified that needing someone will cost her everything. Lorenzo is terrified he will fail the people he loves. Together they will have to decide whether love is too dangerous to trust or whether some things are worth the risk of falling.</p><p><strong>Knead You Now</strong> is a steamy small-town romance featuring fake dating opposites attract a shy virgin bakery owner a feared lawyer hero forced proximity protective MMC energy bakery magic Coral Cove found family and a slow burn that finally catches fire.</p><p><strong>Edition Note:</strong> This book was originally published in a much shorter form and has been substantially revised and expanded into a full-length novel with significant new material throughout. Readers who previously purchased the original Kindle edition may check their Kindle library or Amazon's Manage Your Content and Devices page for available updates. Readers who prefer the original short-story version can still find it in the paperback collection <em>Coral Cove Books 1-4.</em></p>