As Yet Untold Stories

They fell in love at 8. Made love at 15. Married at 18. Divorced at 29.

Now pushing 40, Nash Piper has abandoned the career that destroyed his marriage, longing for the woman he’s loved most of his life, for the child he’s never met who bears his face but not his name.

Dr. Melanie Merriwether wants nothing to do with the man who left her for superstardom, breaking her heart and every promise he ever made her. A cardiologist and the mother of the child she and Nash had struggled to have, Melanie has forced herself to move on.

Eight years later, long after the world has given him up for dead, Nash walks into Melanie’s Montana valley seemingly broke, homeless, starving—

—only to find out just how far Melanie has moved on.

Annie has a goal: Independent wealth and the freedom to travel the globe collecting cabana boys. Then her “brother” moves across the country (bastard), her fiancé falls in love with another woman (eh, whatever), and her boss offers her a promotion (hot damn). With no reason to stick around Chouteau County and one very big reason to leave it (her mother), she takes the promotion and moves to Omaha. No setback, no obstacle is so great that Annie can’t flow around it without a ripple—

—until a greasy tow truck driver shows up to tow her rattletrap Honda with a blown headgasket, and rebuffs her when she makes it perfectly clear she’d like to blow his gasket. He won’t even share his Fruit Stripe gum!

Two months later, after a nasty run-in with Rafferty’s mother and one bittersweet impromptu date with Rafferty, Annie quits her job and runs back to Chouteau County—in love and her plan meaningless. With nothing to do at home and no one who interests her, she takes the job of getting her ex-fiancé elected Missouri’s next governor.

The trouble starts when a tow truck driver catches up with her on the campaign trail to offer her a piece of his … Fruit Stripe gum.

Pilar Bautista is a graduate student in library science, archive management, and restoration who is vehemently anti-bullfight. There’s just one problem: Her (far) older brother is the best matador in Spain, whose wealth funds her lifestyle—and her causes. Her friends know she is somehow attached to “The Industry,” but they don’t know how attached she is to it.

Alejandro Molina is a young third-generation matador skating to the number one position on his family heritage, his looks, and his technical proficiency in the bullring. However, between his grandfather’s growing frustration with his technical proficiency and his number one rival’s contempt for his technical proficiency, being number one means nothing. He lacks It, whatever It is, that makes his rival a legend. He has no idea what It is or how to get It.

Pili and Sandro meet in a pastelería after her boyfriend storms out in a fit of anger, when Sandro and his compadres have no place to sit to discuss a business deal. Something about Pili piques their interest and instead of business, they spend their time getting her story and cheering her up.

It only takes another meeting at the pastelería for Pili and Sandro to fall in love, then promptly figure out who the other is. They mutually, sadly, decide to walk away before it gets any deeper. But then … then for no reason whatsoever, Pili gives Sandro the greatest gift he could ever imagine— It.

Now they have to decide who’s going to give up what if they want it to work.

Frankie is a bestselling author with the social skills of a nine-year-old, daddy issues, and a face that made her plastic surgeon famous. Rook is a weather-beaten divorced horse breeder and county sheriff with a few years of politicking behind him and one very troubled child still at home. They aren’t that far apart in age, but between Frankie’s naïve expectations and Rook’s world-weary cynicism, their romance is doomed from the start. They part bitterly, each going on with what they were doing before they ran into each other—

—until some months later when a stalker has ripped Frankie inside-out and outside-in again, and Frankie’s only support, a childhood friend, her Person, Knox Hilliard, calls Rook in a desperate bid to hide her until Knox can deal with her stalker in his trademark fashion. Rook hasn’t changed, but Frankie’s far less naïve, far more bitter, and after what her stalker did to her face, now looks normal and her age. Rook doesn’t have to fix her. He just has to protect her. After that, well … It’s anyone’s game, but now Frankie’s more than willing to play it—and win.