Romantic Secrets #44

Cara Stuart has spent her life yearning for love—first as a lonely orphan, then as a working woman with only solitude to show for her dreams—until she meets the charming Al Hopkins at a friend's party and is swept into a dazzling world of nightclubs and romance. But when the truth about Al's shadowy past comes to light, Cara must confront what her heart really wants versus what love has blinded her to seeing.

A young widow named Nancy struggles to hold her life together after her husband Joe's death, working tirelessly to keep a roof over her head and her four-year-old son Bobby's while fighting off the crushing loneliness that creeps in each night. When a car accident brings her face-to-face with Jim Ryden, a widowed automobile dealer raising his own daughter Ginny, the two find unexpected solace in each other's company—and something deeper begins to take root. As Nancy discovers what it means to have someone to lean on again, she learns that sometimes healing comes not from erasing the past, but from letting someone new into her heart.

A young woman meets Joe Haley at a party and feels an instant connection, but his strange behavior—ignoring her on the street, then suddenly pursuing her—leaves her confused and hurt. As their romance deepens that winter, she senses he's hiding something weighing heavily on him, and when she finally demands answers, he prepares to reveal a secret that could change everything between them.

Laura Rogers can't stand Kyle Edwards—the surly claims supervisor who fixed her tire without a smile, then rebuffed her at a party—until fate keeps throwing them together around town. When a car accident puts them both in contact with the stubborn, powerful men who run the insurance company, something shifts between them, and Kyle suddenly admits he's been thinking about her for weeks. As their walls begin to crack, both discover they've been nursing old wounds that have made them wary of love itself.