© Ron and Patty Thomas Photography
No one ever said rebuilding a life—or falling in love—would be easy.
Thirteen years after being drugged and attacked in a derelict house by her best friend’s older brother, Johanna Watterman returns to her hometown in Southern California’s San Bernardino mountains for the first time. Now an OB-GYN, she’s determined to buy the house that’s haunted her for so long and turn it into a women’s clinic and rape crisis center.
Unfortunately, her childhood best friend, Nathan George, has been waiting several years for the house to come onto the market so he can restore it to its Victorian splendor and use it to expand his contracting business. When he discovers the girl who publicly humiliated him by choosing his older brother also wants his dream house, he’ll do anything to ensure she doesn’t get it.
But after accidentally humiliating her himself, Nate learns the truth about Johanna’s painful past. While he devotes everything to earning her forgiveness—and her love—Johanna fights to protect her heart, to build a new life for herself, and to keep a decade-old secret that threatens to reduce her hopes for the future to a pile of ash.
First in a planned series about three small-town California women rebuilding their lives after betrayal.
Winner:
Golden Pen
Ignite the Flame
Between the Sheets