Showing results by author "Rosalind James" in All Categories

When I'd taken Hope Sinclair and her sister to New Zealand to meet my grandfather, I'd known I'd be making the return journey as her husband. I hadn't reckoned, though, on the demons of my past coming back to threaten our future. And, as always, I hadn't reckoned on Hope. I had hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees to tell me I had better judgment and more self-discipline than most people, and neither my self-control nor anything else I possessed had been won the easy way.

Nic Wilkinson is a responsible, organized, disciplined rugby player at the top of his game. Emma Martens is a sometimes-scattered, often-emotional, and always-broke would-be designer with a big chip on her shoulder where Nic's concerned. They have no history together, except one perfect week. Nothing in common anymore, except the most important thing of all. Getting together again would be messy. Complicated. Scary. And, just maybe, worth every risk.

Hallie Cavanaugh's late father just left her millions of reasons to stay away from Jim Lawson, deputy sheriff of Paradise, Idaho, and the man who broke her heart fourteen years ago. Hallie has worked hard for independence, but she can't dismiss a massive inheritance, even if she has to follow her father's manipulative terms to get it. How hard can it be to spend six months back in Paradise - and not sleep with her old flame?

Rochelle Marks is working hard to build a name for herself that has nothing to do with her pinup-girl curves. She's made mistakes in the past, and now she's trying to stop her little sister, Stacy, from making worse ones. Rochelle's done with being nothing more than someone's good time. Even if that someone is the one-night stand who turned her life upside down before vanishing - and who's just arrived in Paradise, Idaho, looking to pick up where they left off.

There's that phrase, though. "How's that working out for you?" The answer, when it came to Hope Sinclair, was, "not so well". She might be little, she might be sweet, and she might be young, but if I'd thought she'd be compliant anywhere but in bed, I'd learned my lesson. To keep her, I had to let her go. To hold her, I had to turn her loose. To have her in my life, I had to accept that she was 9,000 miles away in New Zealand.

Being sentenced by a woman in a black robe is not a meet-cute. Quinn Jeffries follows the rules. A judge in small-town Sinful, Montana, doesn’t have much room for missteps, and when you spend your childhood training for the Olympics, you don’t have time for anything but discipline anyway. And, see? It’s worked! Her life is just fine. Of course, it doesn’t include any romance, but her new six-first-dates plan could fix that. She just has to be feminine and beguiling, or maybe marginally less take-charge. Too bad she doesn’t know how.

Breathe, smile, and move on. When you’re writing the next chapter in your rags-to-riches-to-rags story, you need about a million quotes like that. I might have been short on inspiration, but I had determination. That was it, except for a very young cousin and a very old campervan, but I was all about starting over. Nobody knew me in New Zealand other than a series of café and motel managers, and anonymity suited me fine. Manlessness suited me even finer.