What do you do when the only person you've ever loved is the person you hate the most? Love doesn't warm my heart. It doesn't fill my spirit with joy. It infests me like a plague and try as I might, I can't find the damn cure. All my life I've loved one girl, Gia Jeffries. Once we were friends-- best friends. And then one day we weren't. Since then I've loved her from afar, admired, fantasized, lurked behind every corner, followed her to college and waited for the day she'd look deep into my eyes and know what I've known all along--we belong together. But I'm a fool. She's not mine and she never will be. And for that, I hate her. I hate her for casting me aside. I loathe her for never loving me. She consumes my thoughts, my dreams and inspires every work of art I paint. But every day she looks right past me. Until, one day I get everything I've every wanted. How the hell do I keep from ruining everything? Carter "The Beast" Jameson is past his expiration date. Ten years into his hockey career as the Philadelphia Furies number one Enforcer, he's had enough fights and confrontations to last a lifetime. He wants peace. He wants joy. And more than anything, he's ready to settle down with the right woman and start his family. He's just bought the house of his dreams and started renovating it for the perfect girl. But there's no girl. Not yet. That's only a technicality. He's asked the universe to send him the right woman and he's open to receive her as soon as she shows up. Stella Franklin is a children's librarian who once vowed she'd wait until marriage before diving into the sheets. She was wrong. She's twenty-two and time's up. Stella needs a man. But she wants the right one. Thanks to bickering parents, her family life is a mess. She'll do better and choose wisely. She couldn't possibly choose Carter Jameson. He's too tall, too big and people call him The Beast. His relentless stalking infuriates her as much as it turns her on. He swears she's the one and won't take no for an answer. What's a girl to do when one of the hottest guys in Philadelphia swears you're his soul mate and wants to fulfill every dream you've ever had? MAKE. HIM. BEG : Lucius Fox has a problem. His mother. Mildred "Muffin" Fox still holds the purse strings to his multi-billion-dollar inheritance. And Muffin wants grandchildren. Fed up with her only son's dawdling, she gives him an ultimatum. Marry her best friend's eldest daughter or lose everything--his money, his company, his life's work. With so much on the line, he gives in. He's 42 and hasn't dated in over a decade. One woman is as good as any other. Ruby Wilder's world is crashing down around her. Her eldest sister and nemesis just accepted an arranged proposal with the only man she's ever loved--- Lucius Fox. She must stop it. A life without Lucius is hard enough to bear but watching him marry her horrible sister is unacceptable. She attends their wedding weekend with plans to object at just the right moment, but fate intervenes. When Rebecca refuses him, 19-year-old Ruby volunteers as tribute and steals the man of her dreams. Lucius believes they'll have a marriage of convenience, but Ruby has other plans. She'll do whatever it takes to make him fall head over heels in love with her. And Ruby always gets what she wants.