Book One · Out now
The Alpine Pitch
11 August
A snowbound chalet and a stolen rewrite. Maya and Julian begin here.
Read it ›The Cold Open Series · Book One
The Alpine Pitch
She protected the script. She didn't account for him.
He was hired to fix her third act. Not become it.
Dual POV · Slow Burn · Snowbound · Forced Proximity · Professional Rivals
Steamy, never explicit. Sensory, not anatomical. Every book in the series has one open-door love scene, written for feeling rather than detail.
Start reading
Chapter One, free, right now.
A producer's office, a bound script bleeding red ink, and a man who picks up her coffee cup without asking and never puts it back.
Read the opening chapter of The Alpine Pitch and decide for yourself whether you like the way this goes.
Check your inbox. Chapter One is on its way.
That did not go through. Please try again, or email hello@aylafoy.com and I will send it over myself.
Straight to your inbox. You'll also be first to know when the next book lands. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy policy.
“A charming winter read with plenty of warmth, chemistry, and emotional depth.”
Goodreads · Book One · ★★★★★“The chemistry and anticipation kept me turning the pages.”
Goodreads · Book Two · ★★★★★“A masterclass in slow-burn tension and earned intimacy.”
Early ARC reader · Book OneOut now
Book One
A snowbound chalet, a stolen rewrite, and six feet of table between two people who won't blink first. Maya and Julian's story continues in Book Two.
25,000 words. About two hours. Ends on a happy for now, with no cliffhanger. The full happily ever after arrives in Book Two.
The roadmap
The Cold Open Series
Four interconnected slow burns. One world. Each opens cold, and takes its time.
Book One · Out now
Book Two · Out now
The Quarantine Clause
8 September
The second half of Maya and Julian's duet. Best read after Book One, but it stands on its own feet.
Read it ›
Book Three · Pre-order
The Unlogged Variable
6 October
A 72-hour lockdown and one off-limits observer. A new couple in the same world.
Pre-order it ›
Book Four · Pre-order
The Exit Strategy
3 November
He came to end her career. He stayed to save it. The series closes here.
Pre-order it ›He read her script on the plane and bled red ink through her margins before he said a word to her.
Maya Heyes has spent six years protecting the one script that was ever entirely hers. When a prestige studio forces a co-writer on her mountain drama, she arrives at a snowbound Zermatt chalet prepared for a fight. She doesn't come prepared for Julian Vance: the industry's most in-demand script doctor, a man who reads the problem before anyone names it, and who has already bled red ink through her margins before saying a word to her.
No road out. No signal. One fire. Six feet of table between them that gets harder to hold with every freezing hour.
Told in both their voices. Chapter by chapter, what she's protecting and what he's risking, in the same room, at the same time.
He doesn't touch her pages without her in the room. She doesn't let the same mistake happen twice. Neither of them planned for a problem they couldn't fix by working harder.
A slow-burn, forced-proximity romance between professional rivals, where every silence is a confession, and the most dangerous thing in the room was never the script.
Out now
Book Two: The Quarantine Clause
A twelve-day travel advisory traps them in one apartment. A forty-eight-hour deadline threatens the one thing Julian has never told her about. She built her whole career keeping secrets safe. He was the one she couldn’t file away.
27,000 words. One open-door love scene. Ends on a complete, earned happily ever after.
Finished a book? The VIP Readers List
The Midnight Silence
The notebook was gone for twenty minutes. He counted.
You saw that night from Maya's side. The Midnight Silence is Julian's half of it: the blackout, twenty minutes on a kitchen floor hunting a notebook that wasn't his, and the line he wrote in his own margin and never showed her.
Check your inbox. The Midnight Silence is on its way.
That did not go through. Please try again, or email hello@aylafoy.com and I will send it over myself.
It arrives straight away, free. You join the VIP Readers List: cover reveals, release-day alerts and early looks at what is coming next in The Cold Open Series. No spam, and you can leave any time. Privacy policy.
Finished Maya and Julian's story?
Leave a review
Thank you for staying in the cold room with Maya and Julian until the end. Even a single sentence makes a profound difference in helping other readers find these books.
Why novellas
Complete, not shortened
Every book in The Cold Open Series is a complete story, not a shortened one. An afternoon's read, built with the same discipline as a tightly written feature: every scene earning its place, every glance meaning something. Slow burn doesn't need four hundred pages to be true. It needs precision.
If you read for the almost more than the kiss, the long looks, the loaded silences, the scene where nobody moves and everybody notices, this series was built for exactly that. A world that deepens with every release, characters worth returning for, and endings that feel earned because nothing on the page was there to pad the count.
About the author
Ayla Foy
Ayla Foy writes slow-burn contemporary romance for readers who want the tension to be earned: the long looks, the loaded silences, the payoff that finally lands because you waited for it. She believes the best love stories say the least when they feel the most.
Four novellas, one connected world, around two hours each. Books One and Two are Maya and Julian's story, from the first argument to the happily ever after. Books Three and Four belong to new couples in the same world.