HIGH WATER

A damaged coastal barrier. A decade-old secret. Two people who cannot afford to trust each other.

Ash Harbor has learned to live with the sea. It has also learned to live with the consequences of a failure no one has ever fully explained.

When coastal flood engineer Mara Ellison Vane arrives to oversee the reconstruction of the Vance Point Tidal Barrier, she expects technical challenges, difficult decisions, and pressure from officials who want the project completed without unsettling the town.

What she does not expect is a trail of missing records, contradictory reports, and a commissioning certificate that appears to rely on documentation no one can produce.

At the center of the investigation stands Dominic "Nico" Kestrel, a site engineer whose signature appears on the original certificate. Ten years earlier, the barrier failed, leaving lasting damage and unanswered questions. Nico knows more about that history than he has admitted, but the truth is complicated by family loyalty, professional consequences, and the silence he chose when speaking up mattered most.

As Mara follows the paper trail through incomplete technical submissions, restricted correspondence, and unresolved inspection records, each discovery raises a more difficult question. Was the barrier formally approved? Did the responsible authorities ever close the outstanding technical issues? And why did the records remain incomplete long after the failure?

The deeper Mara investigates, the more dangerous it becomes to separate professional responsibility from personal betrayal.

Working beside Nico forces her to confront an uncomfortable contradiction: the man whose past decisions may have helped obscure the truth is also the man who understands the construction site better than almost anyone else. Their growing attraction complicates every conversation, every discovery, and every fragile step toward honesty.

But attraction is not accountability, and remorse cannot restore trust on its own.

With Ash Harbor demanding answers and the reconstruction moving forward, Mara must determine what the surviving evidence actually proves before pressure, fear, or old loyalties turn uncertainty into another convenient explanation.

HIGH WATER is the first volume in the three-book ASH HARBOR series, blending contemporary romance, slow-burn emotional tension, romantic suspense, and a coastal engineering mystery. It is a story about buried truths, professional integrity, damaged reputations, and the difficult difference between keeping a promise and doing what is right.

In Ash Harbor, the past has not disappeared. It has simply been waiting for the tide to turn.