Outside the Frame (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798190091205)

She creates beautiful images. He exposes what beauty can hide.

Food photographer Ava Sinclair's career never recovered after her work became part of a devastating restaurant scandal. She knew nothing about the deception behind the photographs-but Julian Cross, the uncompromising critic who uncovered it, allowed her reputation to become collateral damage.

Now Ava has been offered the assignment that could restore everything she lost.

Acclaimed Chicago chef Celia Marlow is closing her legendary restaurant after seven farewell dinners, and she wants Ava to document its final month. But Celia has also invited Julian to write the definitive account of Marlowe's history-and neither Ava nor Julian will receive access unless they agree to work together.

Through predawn markets, crowded kitchens, staff meals, and evenings filled with food and memory, their hostility slowly gives way to respect, attraction, and something neither of them expected to risk.

Then evidence emerges that Marlowe's celebrated history may have excluded one of the people who helped create it.

Ava believes beauty can reveal an emotional truth that facts alone cannot capture. Julian believes beautiful stories are often designed to conceal uncomfortable facts. As their relationship deepens, the same difference that draws them together threatens to divide them when they must decide who has the right to tell a buried story-and what honesty requires of the people who uncover it.

Outside the Frame is an emotionally mature, slow-burn contemporary romance about professional rivals, second chances, creative ambition, and two people learning that truth does not have to be cruel-and love does not have to look perfect to be real.