When Y/N inherits her father’s small Boston accounting firm, she expects overdue invoices and boring tax returns—not a ledger tied to one of the city’s most dangerous crime families. Then Nico Caruso shows up with an offer she can’t exactly refuse. Nico is ruthless, infuriating, and suddenly everywhere she turns. But the deeper Y/N gets into the family’s books, the harder it becomes to tell what’s more dangerous: the secrets hidden in the numbers, or the man she was never supposed to fall for.
Y/N has always loved the night shift—the chaos, the dark humor, and the strange little family forged under fluorescent lights at three in the morning. The only problem is Dr. Reid Keane: the brilliant, infuriating attending who expects perfection, argues with her like it’s a competitive sport, and somehow knows her better than anyone else in the ER. They’ve spent years insisting they’re just coworkers. But somewhere between trauma calls, stolen cups of coffee, and too many nights spent side by side, the line between irritation and attraction has gotten dangerously thin. And in a place where everything can change in a heartbeat, one bad night might be all it takes to finally cross it.
At twenty-two, Y/N spends her summers driving a drink cart around one of the nicest country clubs in town, selling overpriced beer to men with expensive clubs and more money than sense. Most are harmless—flirty, predictable, and generous with their tips. Nick Sutter is different. Forty-five, married, and a successful civil engineer, Nick has the kind of comfortable upper-middle-class life Y/N assumes is supposed to make a man content. Lately, though, he’s been playing more golf than ever. His friends think he’s finally getting his money’s worth out of his membership. His wife thinks he’s unwinding after long weeks at work. Neither knows Nick barely gives a shit about golf anymore. He keeps coming back because he knows eventually he’ll see Y/N rounding the bend in that little cart. Y/N notices him noticing her long before either of them crosses a line. Nick lingers when he buys a drink, tips too much, remembers everything she tells him, and somehow always needs another beer when she’s nearby. She knows about the wedding ring. He knows exactly how young she is. For months, that keeps whatever is happening between them confined to lingering looks and conversations that last a little too long—until one hot afternoon, it doesn’t. One reckless mistake becomes another, and soon they’re tangled in a torrid affair built around stolen afternoons, increasingly bad excuses, and jealousy neither of them has any right to feel. Y/N was supposed to be a temptation Nick would eventually get over. Instead, she becomes the reason he’s at the club four days a week—and the one thing in his carefully constructed life he can’t bring himself to give up. ——— Setting: Hawthorne Ridge Country Club in Waxhaw, North Carolina
After a breakup leaves her life in pieces, Y/N trades Seattle for a job on a Montana ranch she’s wildly unqualified for. She expects a fresh start. Cole Mercer expects her to last a week. Neither expects her temporary escape to start feeling like home—or for leaving to become the hardest part.
