Merritt Point series

A runaway bride. A grumpy lobsterman. And the second chance neither of them planned for.

I left Merritt Point once without looking back.

Now, I’m stranded on the side of the road in a wedding dress, rain pouring down, my vintage Charger dead. And the man who pulls up to rescue me is the one I left behind.

Twelve years ago, Ethan Murphy was everything to me. Now he’s Merritt Point’s broody lobsterman, splitting his time between the boat and his parents’ struggling seafood shack. He has every reason to send me packing.

Instead, he offers me his couch.

And somehow that’s worse, because slipping back into his life feels easy. His grandmother still hugs me like I never stopped belonging. His dog curls up at my feet. Every morning, there’s an iced coffee waiting, made exactly how I used to take it.

Ethan isn’t big on words. He doesn’t have to be. The tension between us is loud enough. It’s in the way his hands flex when I brush past him. The way his gaze drops to my mouth mid-sentence. The quiet that settles between us in the kitchen after midnight, heavy as the humid New England air.

We both know what happens if we stop pretending this is temporary.

I only meant to stay long enough to catch my breath and figure out my next move.

But Merritt Point has always felt like home. And Ethan Murphy has always been my undoing.

Sooner or later, I’ll have to decide. Run again, or stay and risk everything.

A one-night stand. A rundown farmhouse. And the man I never forgot.

A year ago, I punched a handsy man in a Merritt Point dive bar, went home with the kind stranger who rescued me instead, and left before he woke up. Never even got his name.

I never expected to see him again. Hell, I was never supposed to be back in town.

But here I am, and my to-do list looks like a cry for help: survive my ER shifts as a single mom, finalize a divorce I should’ve filed years ago, and help my aunt gut her old farmhouse so I can take the profits and finally build a life of my own. What I didn’t plan for was my aunt’s contractor turning out to be the man from that night.

Nolan Murphy is an injured smokejumper stuck in Massachusetts while he waits for medical clearance to return to Montana before fire season starts. Unfortunately for me, he’s also built like a mountain and somehow makes that mustache work. Taking the contracting gig wasn’t part of his plan, but it’s better than spending one more night under his parents’ roof. So when I offer him the spare room to make both our lives easier, he agrees to every rule I set, including the one where we never speak of that night again.

Except living with your one-night stand is exactly as awkward as it sounds. It’s worse when your daughter decides he’s her favorite person within a week, when he keeps showing up exactly when I need him most, and when I catch a glimpse of the soft heart he works very hard to hide.

I try to keep my walls up. Turns out the man is criminally good with his hands, in every sense of the word, and somewhere along the way, I stop counting down to spring. But sooner or later, one of us is going to have to choose between the lives we were trying to leave behind and the one we never meant to build by staying.