The Understudy

Five years ago, Wren Ashby disappeared.

Not into a grave — into a name. Della Monroe doesn't flinch at loud noises anymore, doesn't check the locks three times before bed, doesn't dream about ledgers with numbers that don't add up to anything except other people's ruin. Della restores old houses on the coast of Maine. Della bakes bread for the harbor market on Saturdays. Della has a life so small and so quiet that nothing can find it.

Until a boat goes missing off Ember Hollow's point, and the man who pulls its owner out of the water is the same man who's been slowly, carefully, unforgivably teaching Della how to want things again.

Cormac Doyle runs harbor patrol and doesn't trust easily — not since the job that ended his career in Coast Guard Investigations, and not since the new woman in town started flinching at strangers and lying about her past with the smooth, practiced ease of someone who's done it for a living. He should walk away. Instead, when the first "accident" turns out to be sabotage, and the second one nearly kills her, he does the opposite.

Della's testimony once put away the men running one of the largest laundering operations on the Eastern Seaboard — testimony that was supposed to disappear with her. Now someone has found the paper trail she thought she'd destroyed, and the only way to survive long enough to see her real name cleared is to trust the one man in Ember Hollow smart enough to notice all her secrets — and stubborn enough to stay after he learns what they cost.

The Understudy is a fast-paced, twisty small-town suspense about the lies we tell to survive, the people who see through them anyway, and how far you'll run before you finally let someone catch you.

Tropes: Hidden Identity, Small-Town Suspense, Fresh Start, Forced Proximity, Slow Burn, Protector Romance