Healing Beau

B&B owner Christian Cauthen Hambrick thinks she probably fell in love with Beau Beauford when their mothers first put them down for a nap in the same crib-and it's been a study in pain ever since. In high school, he was the good-looking charmer who never failed and she was his awkward friend he never saved a dance for. But now, after ten years as an Army Ranger, Beau returns home injured and deflated. Claiming he needs some distance from Beauford Bend and his family, he asks Christian if he can stay at Firefly Hall. No was never going to be part of that conversation-but it never has been where Beau was concerned.

For all his sports trophies, high test scores, and military medals, Beau Beauford has never been anything but a screw up. If he hadn't sneaked out of the beach house to camp with his brothers twenty years ago, his parents would have gotten out of the burning beach house instead of searching for him. If he had been honest about his intent to join the military instead of letting his brother think he was going to college, he wouldn't have been such a disappointment. If he hadn't landed wrong when he jumped out of that plane, he wouldn't have ruined his back and his career. And now, he's really done it-he has impregnated his best and oldest friend. He'll marry her, of course, and do the best he can, which isn't saying anything.

Christian might have to take on the whole Beauford clan when she wages full-scale war on the past, but she won't stop until sees Beau at peace and free to love or destroys any chance they have for happiness. And that's all right because, as far as Christian is concerned, there is no in between.