Where the Ground Holds

A clean later-in-life romance about second chances in a small coastal town, and the slow, stubborn pull between a woman who won't ask for help and the man who won't stop offering it.

She's spent fifteen years proving she doesn't need anyone. He keeps showing up anyway.

I've built a life that answers to me and me alone. Forty acres, a daughter who works the rows before school, and a routine that doesn't require me to explain myself or apologize for the years I got wrong. If I can hold this land without help, maybe I deserve to be standing on it.

Then Garrett Holt walks onto my property in the wrong shoes and tells me he can help me keep it.

He's a land rights attorney - precise where I'm instinctive, steady where I'm stubborn, and so careful with his words that I want to shake the real ones loose. I set my terms: produce from the market, every week, valued at cost. He writes it into the engagement letter without arguing, and the ease of his agreement irritates me more than a fight would have.

He doesn't push. He just stays. Argues with me about irrigation like it matters to him personally. Stands in my field at dusk like a man who's forgotten he has somewhere else to be.

The problem isn't that he's helping me fight for the farm. The problem is I'm starting to need the man, not the help - and if I let someone stand beside me on this ground, I have to stop pretending that fifteen years of doing it alone was strength and not just fear.

What happens when standing your ground means letting someone stand beside you?

A heartwarming novella you can finish in one sitting. Perfect for readers of June Woods and fans of Virgin River and the small-town warmth of Jessie Gussman and Elana Johnson. No explicit content. Guaranteed HEA.