For the last two years, high school senior Ruby has been her own rock and solace. She has learned to depend only on herself and hides her family's issues by keeping herself somewhat unnoticeable. Despite her isolation, Ruby has intrigued the affections of someone unexpected. Finding herself loving life once again as his persistence sparks a romance awakening a well-protected heart. While Ruby’s relationship with her father is constantly teetering, her new-found affection continues to blossom into something more than she ever thought possible. Soon, Ruby comes to realize that opening up your heart means being susceptible to love and disappointment.YA-M: This book contains mature content including profanity, drug/alcohol use, and sexual situations/language.

    When the most difficult decision of Laurie Baker’s life needed to be made, she took off for a weekend alone to weigh her pros and cons and consider all her options.What she didn’t expect was to run face first into one more complication her life didn’t need.Distracting, sexy, and British, Liam Parker offered Laurie exactly what she needed when she was desperate for attention.One night of pleasure.She wanted it.She craved it.She took it.And when the sunlight dawned and the lusty haze of one night of passion disappeared and reality revealed itself…Laurie returned home knowing that everything she had once believed, everything she had once loved and desired, was about to be tossed upside down and shaken in a way she could never imagine.

    Expecting to lay low until she can figure out what else to do with her life, she finds herself in the arms of her high school sweetheart, the boy who represents everything from the past she tried to leave behind.Looking for an escape, she instead finds a way back to the girl she almost forgot existed and a future she never dreamed possible.

    He broke her heart to save his own.As an elite police diver tormented by her father's fatal drowning accident, Piper Harland is forced back to the one place she'd sworn never to return. Her tiny hometown on New Zealand’s isolated Stewart Island hasn’t much changed in the nine years she’s been gone. But she soon comes face to face with everything she ran from — grief, regret, and the scalding pain of a love lost.The one place Ryan "West" Westlake belongs is a hundred feet below Stewart Island’s dangerous waters with one breath of air and only a line to guide him to the surface. Down deep he can forget his mentor’s death. Down deep he can forget the one woman who seared his heart when she left. Only now she’s back, and as it turns out, he hasn’t forgotten a thing.Desire and tempers flare when West and Piper cross paths again. Can they face their past and be together? Two hearts. A second chance. Everything on the line...IN TOO DEEP is the first story in Tracey Alvarez's best-selling Stewart Island books set against the stunning backdrop of Aotearoa, New Zealand. If you like heartwarming, sexy and sweet small town romances with a touch of comedy, you'll love sharing the journey with these authentic men and women struggling to find their special someone.Intended for mature 18+ aged readers who enjoy their feel good romance on the steamier side.

     Unfortunately, he just sees her as his friend's little sister. Desperate and infatuated, Emily resorts to lies and deception. She only needs one night with Paul, to finally get over this obsessive crush. But Fate has other ideas. . .

    Oops. Trent Salway is one of San Francisco’s hot up-and-coming-under-thirty bachelors. A highly successful mutual fund portfolio manager, a workaholic, and a ladies’ man, he’s got everything he could possibly want… except one thing. Physical therapist Kelsey Quaid dumped her ex-fiancé six months ago because she was tired of not even being a distant second to his career. Which is why despite secretly crushing on her big brother’s best friend for as long as she can remember, there’s no way Kelsey can go there. One workaholic in her life is more than enough, thank you very much. Before Kelsey’s brother leaves on his Navy SEAL mission, he asks Trent one simple request: make sure Kelsey isn’t dating any assholes while he’s away. As Trent does his best to do just this, he and Kelsey spend more and more time together. Sparks fly, as do a few items of clothing, and the next thing they know things are getting physical between them. Now, Trent has to decide what to do about the woman he’s falling for — the one whose brother would take him down faster than he takes down the enemy. And Kelsey will have to decide if Trent is just another workaholic or if he’s decidedly off limits. Warning: Contains naughty uses for silk ties, forbidden sex, and enough profanities to make a sailor proud.

    Now ex-military, tattooed, and still sexy as hell, Finn is a complication Ellie doesn’t need—she needs to concentrate on saving her family business.Finn’s entire life, Ellie was there, going head-to-head with him in every class, bee, and test. So it’s no surprise she’d show up just as he was about to take over her father's struggling business. It is a surprise, though, that his attraction to her is even more explosive than it had been. Acting on their attraction is one thing, but Finn has to turn a profit to save his own family, and nothing—not even love—will get in his way.

    Last minute. Who doesn't already have plans on the busiest date night of the year.But, so far the best part of the search for a great date has been the cute café I found and the geeky-hot owner who keeps rescuing me from these crazy eLove.com dates. This should be easy-peasy. The internet is the home of all your hopes and needs, right?Spoiler Alert: it isn't.Between the bromance date and the crazed single dad who needs to hire a nanny and housekeeper, not get a date, I'm running out of options. If only a certain cutey didn't have a phone call with "sweetheart" every day.The weirder things get, the more I think just going solo is very I Am Woman, blah blah blah. Forget about the fact that my heart keeps bringing me back to a certain café even when I don't need to be there...I mean, my heart doesn't always get what it wants, does it?

    Tired of being the quiet baby sister, and in no hurry to settle into a boring existence in surburbia, she escapes from home at the first opportunity. When she settles in London for a year of post-graduate studies, Lizzie is sure she’ll be able to start a whole new life. Immerse herself in the books she loves. Explore a new country. Work on her dream of writing a novel. She might even be able to find a little bit of excitement for once. But falling unexpectedly in love with up-and-coming actor Thomas Harper causes Lizzie to re-think… everything. Just as she’s convinced herself this small-town girl from the Midwest can handle this great adventure, Thomas’s career suddenly explodes to superstar levels, and Lizzie finds herself forced to navigate the fame game of red carpets, catty co-stars, gossip magazines, and paparazzi. When she wished for a new life, she had no idea it would be anything like this! Lizzie must now determine if her love—and her confidence—are strong enough to get her through the complications of dating a movie star. Even if she and Thomas are able to pull through before she has to leave London, how will she deal with the inevitability of returning to a life at home that no longer feels like her own? Will she follow her family’s wishes or follow her heart? Will the Lizzie she discovered in London be strong enough to help her pursue her dreams?

    He's spent years living in the shadows, but Dr. Michaela Roarke awakened a passion inside him he'd buried years ago.He never expected the woman would turn out to be the governor's daughter...and his next assignment. The governor blackmails Jackson to secretly watch over Michaela and protect her from a stalker, or kiss his dream job at the FBI good-bye. Swearing to keep things strictly professional, Jackson moves in with Michaela. Too bad his heart can't keep the same promise.But when the stalker's attacks quickly escalate beyond mere photographs to bodily harm, Jackson must race to save Michaela's life. And he'll have to figure out how to keep her once she discovers his lie.

    The words I would soon say again, in a moment that didn’t involve bridges, but something much more fragile: my heart.He held onto me for three weeks, in a time when I needed to be held. Needed to connect to someone who understood how loss tunneled unrepentantly through the fabric of your soul.Although he said he'd stay, we both knew he wouldn't. I had already survived one loss—I didn't know if I'd survive another.-Ames-She spun into my life like a tornado of smiles and chatter and everything else I'd long avoided, with a persistence that I admired, albeit begrudgingly. She broke down each neat wall I’d constructed without even trying. Her presence alone caused me to remember what it felt like to smile, to look forward to what the day would bring.But it was only supposed to last three weeks.“Don’t let go,” she’d pleaded.I’d promised her I wouldn’t—but I would. I didn't have a choice.

    Dating one of the hottest guys in the biggest fraternity? Done. Failing out of College? Oops... When Libby Gentry's parents receive the letter that she's failed out of school, Libby is forced to pack her Prada bag and head to work for her great aunt in rural Louisiana. Nothing about tiny Elsbury, Louisiana, entices her until she locks eyes with the southern charmer, Blaine Crabtree. Libby is used to getting what she wants and Blaine is no exception, but as the two grow closer, bigger problems arise. Libby doesn't know how much more pain her already paper-thin heart can take and when new opportunities in Chicago pop up she is presented with a difficult situation: wait for her redneck Romeo, or move on.

    After a horrendous crash killed her parents, an abusive relationship was all she needed to calcify her broken heart to stone. So when Lily’s boss comes to her with a challenge most girls would balk at, she knows there isn't much left in this world to be afraid of. The target: Jonas Crane, a brooding business mogul who hasn't smiled once since his very public divorce. Dark, dangerous and mouthwatering, Crane has written a book about life in the fast lane and with the recent publicity, Lily's boss wants the rights. Problem is, Crane won't return a phone call, let alone agree to a meeting. But if a pretty publishing assistant happens to run into him at the Waldorf, with a business card and a smile...what could go wrong? A lot, it seems. Lily thinks she's going to meet a rich jerk, or worse, a playboy, but the truth is way more disturbing. Jonas Crane is smart, engaging...and devastatingly out of her league. This Romantic Erotica contains some dark elements/situations.

    But now her uncle's heart is failing and she has to convince him that surgery will save his life. She never dreamed the first thing she'd see when she stepped off the plane would be her biggest nightmare...the one man she'd never stopped loving.Beau Gentry had the fever for two things: the rodeo and Mandy Morgan. But for Beau, loving Mandy was complicated by his father's vendetta against her uncle. This led him to make the hardest decision of his life and he can still see the bitterness and hurt on Mandy's face. All these years it has killed him to think Mandy had forgotten him and moved as far away as possible from him. But now they're back in Texas, and he's going to do all he can to win back her love.

    But a delayed flight and a hot one-night stand with a stranger changed her mind, putting her firmly on track to a coveted position at a New York fashion magazine.When the irresistible stranger from that one incredible night turns out to be her new boss – billionaire and publishing magnate Neil Elwood – Sophie can’t resist the chance to rekindle the spark between them… and the opportunity to explore her submissive side with the most Dominant man she’s ever known.Neil is the only man who has ever understood Sophie’s need to submit in the bedroom, and the only man who has ever satisfied those desires. When their scorching, no-strings-attached sexual relationship becomes something more, Sophie must choose between her career and heart… or risk losing them both.