Her daddy ran him off the property before he ever knew she was pregnant. Now he’s back — not as hired help, but as the man who just inherited the neighboring ranch. And he’s got five years of missed time to collect.
DAMIEN
Five years ago, Harper Sloane crossed a ranch yard in the dark and chose me, even knowing I was the hired hand her father would never accept. By sunrise, Hollis Sloane had a check in one hand, a folder full of manufactured charges in the other, and my dying mother’s future balanced between them.
I took the money, left without a word, and spent five years believing Harper would hate me clean enough to heal.
Then a dead rancher leaves me the Cooper home place, a sealed letter reveals the bloodline my mother hid, and my first wrong turn back into Crooked Creek puts me in a school pickup line staring at a little boy with my cowlick, my hands, and a toolbelt strapped around his waist.
Harper never stopped being mine.
I just didn’t know she had raised my son alone.
HARPER
My father told me Damien named his price and disappeared before breakfast, and five years of silence taught me to believe him. I built a life in Missoula, raised Maddox without asking anyone to save us, and came home only when the Sloane ranch needed me.
Then Damien returns with land, money, and five years of grief written across his face, and the lie holding my whole life together collapses in a school parking lot.
Now the man I never stopped loving is fixing gates beside our son, claiming every stolen inch of daylight, and uncovering the real reason my father drove him away: Damien is Silas Cooper’s hidden heir, and our child stands to inherit the land old men have fought over for generations.
But the last Cooper left outside the will is not surrendering quietly. He has our debts, our secrets, and enough gasoline to turn a family feud into ashes.
Damien says nobody will ever run him off his family again.
This time, I believe him.
MARK ME, DADDY is a high-heat small-town cowboy romance featuring a secret baby, second chances, possessive Daddy energy, family betrayal, hard-won trust, and one little foreman who knows every crooked frame can be fixed if the right man holds the shim.
