Live Again

He's exactly what she needs. She's everything he wants.
If she won't risk her heart, she'll break his.

Rebecca

Seven years. Even I know it's time to start living again.

But by living I mean taking my book to the coffee shop instead of curling up on the couch.
Reclaiming my place in the craft market scene.
Expanding my business.
Renovating my house.
Maybe I'll even adopt a furry companion! 
What I unequivocally do not mean is falling in love. I'm still licking my emotional wounds from the first time.

But when my new contractor shows up at my door, I'm suddenly thinking about licking something else.
Backlit by the sun like a fallen angel, jeans faded in all the right places, he looks like he fell off the cover of a romance novel. And those eyes? They light me up like the 4th of July.

That's my signal to run.
I can't go there.
I won't.

Rhys

She's tiny, but one wide-eyed look from those baby blues rips through me like a hurricane. She spins away just as quickly but I'm already caught in her storm. Out of all the women I've met since I lost my wife, why does my heart settle on the one I may not be able to hold?

I understand her suffering. Intimately.
If she lets me in, I'll take us both out of the dark.

Live Again is a small town, later in life, second chance, chosen family, single dad hybrid of steamy contemporary romance and deeply emotional women's fiction.
CW: loss of spouse, grief, depression.