Rose Miller has been told her entire life that girls of a certain age must marry. Despite this, she is more passionate about painting and wants to make the most of her time before settling down. So when her father tries to force her into an arranged marriage with the town’s most infamous bachelor, she refuses to go along with it. Desperate to escape a grim future, she approaches her childhood rival with a most unusual proposal… one that will put her heart to the test. When unexpected feelings towards him start rising to the surface, will she manage to stick to her plan, or is her predetermined fate truly inevitable?
James Clark cannot step out into town without being chased by mothers hoping to marry off their daughters. Yet tying his happiness to another person is not in his plans. So when his father informs him that he will be cut off if he doesn’t get married soon, James finds himself in a tight spot. At that moment, his childhood arch-enemy, Rose, comes to him with a peculiar plan that could solve both of their problems… a pretend courtship. Only he never imagined that feigning affection for her would come so naturally, and before long the line between pretense and truth becomes blurred. Will he manage to make Rose see that she is the one who truly owns his heart?
A fabricated relationship appears to Rose and James as an easy solution for their troubles. What neither of them realized was that the heart often has a plan of its own… For all that, when fate brings another shocking twist, Rose must decide whether her loyalty lies with her family or with her heart. In the end, will Rose and James break the barriers that are keeping them apart, or was their love only ever meant to be a facade?