Some rules are made to be broken. 

Mara Ellis was a good reporter. Then a story she wasn’t allowed to finish cost her the job, her reputation, and every callback in the city. Three months later she’s in the lobby of Harrington Capital, interviewing to be an assistant, while the receptionist warns her that the boss is a robot. 

Cole Harrington isn’t a robot. He’s worse. He’s the first person in months who reads what she writes and takes it seriously. 

Eleven assistants in four years didn’t survive him. Mara does better than survive. She catches what his deal team misses, tells him when he’s wrong, and stays late without being asked, because the work is the best thing in her life and, lately, so is the man across the desk. 

Then one night in Charleston, they stop pretending. By morning, Cole has decided it was a mistake. 

He’s her boss. He controls her salary, her hours, whether she has a job at all. Mara knows exactly why he’s pulling back, and knowing doesn’t make it hurt less. What she won’t do is spend the rest of her career sitting twenty feet from a man who refuses to say what he wants. 

Cole Harrington built his life on rules. Mara is about to find out which one he’ll break for her. 

The Exception Clause is a standalone boss-employee romance novella from Marlee Finn: a sharp, sensual, slow-burn workplace romance with a heroine who asks the hard questions and a hero who finally learns to answer them. Complete story. Happy ending. About an hour’s read.