Between Love and Loathing (the Hardy Billionaire Brothers, #2)

The second installment in the Hardy Billionaires series, this contemporary romance follows Clara Milton, a baker in her late twenties, and Dominic Hardy, an architectural engineer, as a fake dating arrangement forces them together and tests the boundaries between obligation and genuine feeling.

Clara receives a diagnosis of lupus, an autoimmune disease without a cure, on the same day she attends the will reading of her deceased stepfather, Carl Milton. Carl co-owned the HEAT hospitality empire with the Hardy brothers, and his will leaves the Pacific Coast Resort in California to Dominic on one condition: Clara's bakery must be included within it. The will requires that they mutually approve the bakery's design. Dominic, a perfectionist who built the resort around a sleek black-and-white aesthetic, objects immediately. Clara's existing Florida bakery transfers to her mother Melinda's management, making the California location Clara's first independent venture. That same evening, Melinda and Clara's older sister, Anastasia, berate Clara, and Melinda strikes her across the face. Clara signs the will anyway, viewing the bakery as her escape.

Over the following months, Dominic and his interior designer, Rita, systematically reject Clara's colorful design preferences. Clara moves to LA, adopts two stray kittens she names Sugar and Spice, and befriends Paloma, who owns a boutique on the resort's commercial strip. Clara's stepsister Evie, Carl's biological daughter who married Dominic's brother Declan, encourages Clara to stand out rather than conform. When Clara arrives at the resort for a staff meeting, she discovers that even the pink seating she believed had been approved has been replaced with black leather. Dominic asks her honest opinion of the resort. She calls it a sterile hospital. He tells her to own what she wants and fight for it.

That evening at a staff party, Clara defends Paloma when Rita publicly mocks Paloma's store name. Emboldened, Clara sneaks into her bakery with pink paint and creates an accent wall. Dominic discovers her and is furious. She challenges him to bake a cupcake as good as hers; he fails. When she feeds him a lavender-infused chocolate cupcake, his reaction surprises them both, and the tension escalates into a sexual encounter in the bakery kitchen.

Later, Dominic carries a tipsy Clara to the resort's penthouse after her shoes and purse are lost to the ocean. She asks him to sleep with her, but he refuses because she has been drinking. Meanwhile, his siblings pressure him to deal with his ex-girlfriend, Natya Fitch, an international entrepreneur publicly implying they are still together, threatening HEAT business partnerships. Dominic proposes a deal: Clara fake dates him for five months to push Natya away, and in exchange she receives five design changes to her bakery. He also introduces Clara to Valentino, a world-renowned chef who runs the resort's top-floor restaurant, framing the arrangement as a way to attract Valentino's romantic interest through jealousy. Clara negotiates terms and agrees.

As the fake relationship takes shape, their colleagues believe it is real. When Natya appears at a dress boutique, Clara refuses to be intimidated. At the register, Dominic tells the saleswoman to keep his card on file for his "future wife," and tabloids run the story. His possessiveness intensifies: When Clara's longtime friend Noah Romero, a National Hockey League player, visits, Dominic declares Clara is his. At a club, when a stranger grabs at Clara, Dominic pins the man by his throat.

After discovering Clara's apartment is plagued by mold and disrepair, Dominic orchestrates the building's remediation and moves her belongings to his house without permission. Clara is furious, feeling he has destroyed the first home she built on her own, mirroring how her family controlled her life. She confronts him and establishes terms for cohabitation. They have sex for the first time that night, and Clara tries to reassert that the relationship is fake. Despite sleeping in separate rooms, Dominic notices her nightly medication, shoulder pain, and the rashes she hides with concealer. Clara gradually transforms his colorless house with a garden, a reorganized kitchen, and romance novels lining his bookshelves.

Clara confides in Paloma about her lupus and the fake relationship. After her mother calls to belittle her baking, Clara spends over half a million dollars on Dominic's credit card for floral ceiling arrangements and a custom oven. He confronts her but admires her boldness. Clara proposes adding subtle color accents throughout the resort, and Dominic implements the idea, recognizing it as the element his design was missing. When Paloma accidentally reveals Clara's lupus in front of Dominic, he is devastated she hid it. That night, he shares the full story of Natya: She faked a pregnancy to keep him, and the betrayal broke something in him.

At the resort's gala, Sugar and Spice Bakery has a triumphant opening. Dominic gives a speech publicly crediting Clara for changing the resort and his life. On the beach afterward, he confesses he does not think he can love anyone the way he loved the idea of what he had with Natya. Clara tells him she deserves someone who loves loving her, not someone who sees her as an obligation. She confesses her love but says his inability to commit is not enough. After they sleep together, Dominic secretly calls Natya, threatening to expose her money laundering if she ever interferes with Clara again.

Clara overhears only fragments of the call: "Of course I used her" and "I'd never love like that again." She misses the context in which Dominic says his love for Clara is far more consuming and the only love he wants. She packs and leaves before dawn. Her mother and Anastasia arrive at her new apartment, revealing they only wanted Clara to leverage her connection to Dominic for access and influence within the HEAT empire. Melinda strikes Clara again. Evie arrives and restrains Melinda. Dominic appears, reveals that Clara is now a major HEAT shareholder through Carl's will, and has Melinda and Anastasia removed by security.

After a week apart, Dominic finds Clara dining at Valentino's restaurant. He clears the restaurant and explains what she missed on the phone call: His love for Clara is far more consuming than anything he felt for Natya, and it is the only love he wants. Clara pushes back, saying she does not want to be molded into someone's idea of perfection. They reconnect physically, but she remains uncertain.

Dominic takes Clara to the mountains to scout a potential resort site. She runs into the snow, overjoyed, but her fingers lose color due to Raynaud's syndrome, a circulation condition associated with lupus, and she collapses. At the hospital, she is diagnosed with lupus nephritis, a form of kidney disease that could lead to organ failure. Dominic immediately requests donor testing.

He brings Clara home to a transformed house: gold petals on the floors, a wall of framed photographs of them together, a mural of her freckles, and bookshelves filled with romance novels in rainbow order. He confesses he loathes how much he loves her and cannot live without the color she brought into his life. Clara says she loathes loving him too. When he asks if she will loathe saying yes to his proposal, she accepts.

Three months later, Clara needs a kidney transplant, and Dominic has already signed on as her donor. They undergo surgery together. After recovery, Clara returns to a thriving Sugar and Spice Bakery and begins expanding the brand nationally. In a bonus scene, they marry at a Las Vegas casino resort, with Sugar and Spice the kittens carrying the wedding rings on their collars.