New Release: The Careful Keeper

If you’ve been following my Unclaimed Hearts Series, you already know this is book three. When I was writing Luke’s story in book two, I knew some of the men around him had stories of their own waiting to be told. Tom was the obvious place to start.

He is Luke’s best friend, the steady one, the careful one, the man who thinks before he moves and tries very hard to do the right thing. But sometimes doing the “right” thing is really just fear wearing a nicer coat.

Tom and Calla have history. Messy history. Painful history. The kind neither of them has ever fully gotten over.

Six years ago, Calla’s engagement ended just two months before the wedding. Tom was there for her through all of it. He helped her cancel the wedding plans, pack up the pieces of the life she thought she was going to have, and move into a new apartment. He became her safe place at the exact moment she needed one most.

And then things between them changed.

The friendship caught fire. Tom kissed her like he wanted her, like he had been holding himself back for too long. But when the moment came to choose her, he stopped. He told himself he was protecting her. He told himself she was vulnerable, grieving, and not ready to know what she really wanted.

Calla told him he was wrong.

He did not believe her. And she never forgave him for it.

Now, six years later, they are thrown back together on a damaged construction site where nothing is as simple as it looks. Tom is the insurance broker tied to the claim. Calla is the independent investigator hired to uncover the truth. She expects rotted beams, missing records, and corporate lies.

She does not expect Tom. Still steady. Still controlled. Still capable of making her feel everything she has spent years trying not to feel.

As hidden repairs, falsified reports, and a dangerous cover-up force them into close quarters, late nights, and locked rooms, Tom and Calla have to face more than the mystery in front of them. They have to face the truth about what happened six years ago.

Tom has spent all this time believing he saved her from a mistake. But he did not save her. He ran.

And Calla does not want another careful apology. She wants a man brave enough to choose her.

The Careful Keeper is a steamy second-chance erotic romance about old wounds, unfinished desire, forced proximity, emotional grovel, and a careful man who has to learn that love is not something you manage from a safe distance.

It is romantic, messy, heated, and full of the kind of tension that comes from two people who know exactly how much they could hurt each other—and want each other anyway.

If Tom and Calla’s story sounds like your kind of heartbreak, heat, and healing, you can find The Careful Keeper on Amazon.