Don't Date Him

She was enraptured by the man they called Romeo the moment that he turned those butterscotch-colored eyes her way. What wasn’t to love about a big, burly, plaid-wearing lumberjack? He was tall, gorgeous, and knew how to wield a chainsaw better than Leatherface. He could fell a tree in seconds, had thighs that were as thick as said trees, filled out a pair of Wranglers better than any cowboy ever, and didn’t care that she could operate heavy machinery better than him. He was everything a girl like Mable could ask for. The caveat?

All Birdee Calvert wanted was to be normal. She wanted the parents who didn’t divorce when she was a kid and make her life a living nightmare. She wanted the sisters who actually liked her. She wanted to live in a town where everyone loved her and didn’t have a single bad thing to say about her. That was not the life Birdee was given. She had the exact opposite life. The kind of life where she slunk through the grocery store with a hoodie on so no one would recognize her. The kind of life where men like Creed Daugherty didn’t give her a second look.

Edith “Eddy” Wheeler was having a bad day. A no good, very bad day. It’s understandable, really. I mean, there didn’t seem to be anything worse than walking in on your elderly parents doing things no child should ever see. Add into that their proclivities, and Eddy is disgusted and disturbed. So of course, after seeing the atrocious things her parents—the pastor and pastor’s wife that are supposed to be holy and a teacher of faith—are into, she makes it her life goal to expose them to their masses.

I blame getting pregnant on my sister getting mauled by a bear. If she hadn’t been attacked that day, I wouldn’t have come home to check on her. I wouldn’t have run into Boone Windsor at that bar. I wouldn’t have gone home with him, ready to drown my sorrows in a different, more satisfying way. I wouldn’t have given him that second chance. Not after he’d so badly burned the first chance. I would’ve gone back to work half the country away, and I would’ve kept my head in the sand where Boone was involved.

Holly Lorena Cain, formerly known as Georgina Lorena Cain, was well acquainted with rock bottom. She’s coasted along its rocky shores for years. It all started when her mother left her when she was barely old enough to understand. For years, her and her dad struggled to make ends meet. A dying cattle farm can’t run itself, and with her dad having cancer, it got harder and harder to hang on to land that’s been in her family for generations. Just as she thinks that she’s finally made it, her father passes away and leaves every single thing he owns to their neighbor.

Everyone talks about finding the one that makes their heart skip a beat. Personally, I’m not looking to develop any heart problems. I definitely don’t have to worry about developing any when it comes to the one man who knows how to get on my every nerve. Odin Mayer is the most offensive, black-hearted, no-good, very-bad, surliest man I’d ever met. He was Grumpy with a capital G, a biker to boot, and never missed a chance to make me see red. Just as I’m convinced there’s no good side to Odin, he shows me differently, saving me when I didn’t ask him to.

Gentry found Sage on the worst day of her life. He saves her from a fate worse than hell, and in return, she ruins his life. Not on purpose, though. No, the men who think to rule her life don’t like that she has a champion on her side and realize the best way to get back at her is to go through him. They find a really great way to do it, too. They frame him for a crime he didn’t intentionally commit and sentence him to spend thirteen years in prison. As an added bonus, they take his child—the one thing that matters most to him—just to remind him that they hold all the power.

Huxley Hosea was at the lowest of the lows. Exhausted—both mentally and physically—he could barely put one foot in front of the other. Tired to the bone due to a never-ending war. He was desperate to find a new every day that didn’t revolve around getting shot at by kids that could barely hold a rifle steady. War had broken his soul, and the last thing he wanted to do was go home and pretend that he was just a normal citizen. But then he sees her, also at her lowest of lows, for the first time, and his soul latches on. Bernice, his salvation.

A one-night stand, agreed on by both parties, was supposed to be just that. One night. The next day, when Magnolia Baker walked in to the first practice for her last season of professional soccer with the Cowgirls, she expected it to go pretty smoothly. She was a veteran player, nothing surprised her anymore. At least, until her one night stand walks through the door. Her new boss, Beaufort Vanderbilt.

The first time Courtland Navarro saw Charleigh Lynn Kensington, she was yelling at her old boss about a yeast infection. Court didn’t know that his heart could even beat after the loss of his late wife, but in that moment, when she was yelling about a bladder infection from hell, he realized that maybe he hadn’t died inside after all. The second time he saw her, he was protecting her from herself.