She Left With His Baby and His Lie

Eight years ago, Tamsin Ward asked the man she was going to marry, to his face, whether he was cheating. Wes Cole looked her in the eye and lied — smoothly, kindly, for weeks — until she found the proof she couldn't argue away. She left the same week, newly pregnant, and never told him about the baby. She built a quiet life in a lake town where his lies could never reach her daughter, planted a dogwood by the gate the spring she arrived, and raised Poppy alone. Now the dogwood is seven years tall, and Wes Cole is standing at the nursery gate. He came to Selby for a job, not a reckoning. He did not know he had a daughter. And in one blow he understands both — that the girl with his own eyes is his, and that the woman he lied out of her own life has been doing this by herself for seven years. Wes wants to be a father. He wants Tamsin back. But Tamsin has learned exactly how his charm works, because it worked on her once, and she will not hand her daughter to a man whose word meant nothing. She doesn't need him to love Poppy — Poppy is easy to love. She needs him to become the one thing his whole life has been built to avoid being: a man who tells the truth even when a kind lie would keep the peace, even when the truth detonates, even when it costs him everything. He can't grow back the seven years he missed. A tree can't be un-grown. But if he wants a place at the gate, he'll have to earn it one true word at a time, with no charm left to hide behind. An emotional, grounded second-chance secret-baby romance about the betrayal underneath the betrayal — being lied out of your own mind — and the slow, costly work of a word becoming trustworthy again. A real affair, a child raised alone, a hero who has to stop performing, and a heroine done doubting herself. Full-length novel with a guaranteed happily-ever-after.