Cradled in Ice

The rain at her father's funeral did not bother Tova Neri; the mountain of illicit debt he left behind did. A brilliantly lazy restorer of antique clockwork who prefers napping to working, Tova sees only one exhausting way out: offering her womb to Henrik Vaner. The frigid CEO of a maritime shipping empire needs an heir to secure his family trust, and a transactional surrogacy seems perfectly devoid of emotion. But as Tova moves into his sprawling, silent manor, the icy arrangement melts. Henrik's cold demeanor shatters under a fierce biological imperative. Soon, he is obsessively monitoring her sleep cycles, wrapping her in blankets, and, during one midnight craving, carrying her to the kitchen to quietly bake pastries together in the dark. Yet a melancholic shadow hangs over their domestic cocoon. Dr. Kaspar Olin has secretly altered their medical bindings, and Henrik's head housekeeper is playing both sides of a corporate war. As Tova's pregnancy advances, fragmented memories begin to resurface. Why does Henrik's estate feel so familiar? And what will he do when they both realize Tova's forgotten past self orchestrated this entire "accidental" surrogacy from the start?