The One I Left Behind: A Second-Chance Small-Town Romantic Comedy (Cider Falls Steamy Rom Com Series Book 2)
About
Clause one of the Sparky Protocol: do not fall for the firefighter who walked into your clinic carrying a half-drowned puppy and thirteen years of history.
Reader, I violated clause one. Also two through nine.
I left Sam Whitaker for vet school when we were eighteen, and I built an excellent life about it — my own clinic, a 401(k), a steam mop with a setting for grout. Then he came home to Cider Falls: widowed, broad, infuriatingly patient, with a seven-year-old who asks felony-grade questions like “Do you like my dad?” and a rescue pup whose treatment plan puts that man in my doorway twice a week. For eight weeks. Forced proximity, medically required.
So I drafted rules. An actual document, in the clinic policy binder, with tabs. Which would be working fine if he hadn’t found it — and initialed it. And if the entire town weren’t running a betting pool on us (there are envelopes; the bakery is a front; my own mother has a position). And if the man I left behind didn’t keep taking me apart with that slow firefighter patience, one appointment at a time, until “open-door policy” means something very different after hours.
I do not need anybody. I have documentation. Somebody please tell my pulse — it stopped reading the file weeks ago.
Tropes
- Second-chance romance (first love, thirteen years later)
- Single dad firefighter hero
- Small-town romance
- Forced proximity
- Kid & dog matchmakers
- Found family / town full of meddlers (and one betting pool)
- He never stopped loving her
- Steamy open-door romance
Cider Falls, Book Two. A steamy second-chance, single-dad-firefighter, small-town romcom with forced proximity, a kid-and-dog wrecking crew, one unauthorized goat, and a guaranteed HEA. Reads as a standalone.