Bought at the Auction, Broken by the Ride

Sloane Whitaker runs her late aunt's yarn shop in Silver Plume, Colorado, is twenty-nine, and has never let a man past the register. When the Flatirons MC's charity auction needs a coordinator, her best friend volunteers her — and her mother wins the club's enforcer, Wade Devers, for four thousand dollars. Wade is six months out of two years in Colorado DOC, wants a shop and a dog and a woman who never has to ask where he is, and he is willing to go as slow as Sloane needs. It takes her six weeks to let him upstairs. It takes Wade's club brother Hackett one phone call to ruin it: a photo of Wade in a Denver motel room with the Flatirons' bookkeeper, posted to the whole chapter. Sloane doesn't cry in front of anyone. She closes the shop, moves to Boulder, and teaches knitting. Fourteen months later Wade walks into her co-op with a keycard log, his parole paperwork, and a statement proving the motel was a meeting with an off-books parole officer. Sloane believes him. She gives him six Sundays. On the sixth, she tells him what she wants.