Fearless

Synopsis

It took Beth Swan a year and a half to piece herself back together. After Jarek Nowak's betrayal, she fled to Italy on an Erasmus grant, a notebook full of rage and a promise never to trust another charming idiot with a Polish accent. There she found Giovanni D'Angelo, the mentor who became a friend and listened without asking for anything in return. When she finally returns to San Francisco with a promotion, her laughter restored and Giovanni in tow, the last thing she expects is to literally collide with Jarek at the airport baggage carousel. Jarek is not the same man either. A year in Poland, at his grandmother's house, taught him that no explanation can undo what he did. He has stopped chasing her, stopped demanding forgiveness; he simply stays close, willing to earn her trust again, without hurrying. And somehow, patient and undemanding, he is much harder to keep hating. Forced proximity—they live door to door, share a bathroom on a trip to Venice, sit side by side on every flight—obliges them to redefine what they are to each other. But not everyone wants to see them reconcile: Jarek's mother Anika threatens to contest the family inheritance unless her son returns to Poland and agrees to a marriage of convenience with Bianca, the ex who once tried to drive them apart. Bianca, for her part, has not finished playing her hand, and is ready to publicly humiliate Beth to reclaim what she believes is hers. Amid masquerade balls at the Villa D'Angelo in Venice, the wedding of two of their closest friends, an unexpected pregnancy in the group and the growing shadow of a third party—Giovanni, who has begun to feel far more than friendship—Beth must decide whether the love she felt for Jarek deserves a second chance. Because forgiving, in the end, turns out to be the easy part. What truly terrifies her is opening herself up completely and discovering, once again, that she can break.

Machine translation, pending review.