The Favor (The Cost of Everything, #1)

Ethan Cole has spent years feeling like the disappointment in a family filled with success. His father built a thriving company, his brother became a respected surgeon, and his sister created a business of her own. Ethan has failures behind him, debt in front of him, and one final chance to prove that his commercial renovation company can become something real. Then he meets Grant Mercer. Grant is wealthy, confident, connected, and everything Ethan believes a successful man should be. More importantly, Grant sees potential in Ethan's work. A small project leads to another opportunity, then an introduction, then a contract large enough to pull Ethan's company back from the edge. For the first time in years, Ethan begins receiving the respect he has always wanted.

Then Grant meets Claire. Claire has believed in Ethan long before anyone else did. She supported him through uncertainty, failure, and the years when success existed only as something Ethan promised would eventually come. But Grant's attraction to her is difficult to miss, and Ethan notices something unsettling about his own reaction to it. He is jealous. He is curious. And he likes what Grant's attention seems to do for his business. What begins as lingering looks and harmless flirting slowly becomes private messages, intimate conversations, and invitations Ethan repeatedly encourages Claire to accept. Each time Claire questions whether they are getting too close to something dangerous, Ethan finds another reason why nothing needs to change. They are adults. He trusts her. Grant is a friend. The business relationship is too valuable to make awkward over harmless attraction.

Until the attraction is no longer harmless. When Claire finally crosses the first real boundary with Grant, she gives Ethan the chance to end everything before it goes further. Ethan finally has the clean exit he has claimed he would take if things ever became real. Instead, he looks at the company he saved, the respect he finally earned, and every door Grant has opened for him. Then he tells his wife it was just a kiss. The Favor is the first book in a dark psychological erotic trilogy about ambition, jealousy, temptation, marriage, and the dangerous difference between allowing something to happen and secretly wanting it to.