Make Me Stay

There are exactly three things I hate about funerals. The casseroles. The suits. And finding out I have a son in front of seventy witnesses.

Nearly three and a half years ago, Sadie Wren left a note on my pillow with two words on it: I can’t. Then she disappeared out of my county like I was something she could outrun. I spent six months furious and the years after that on the other side of furious, which is worse, because there’s no dignity in the way I still checked the Rusty Spur window every single time I drove past it.

Then her mother died, and Sadie walked back into Bitterroot in a black dress with a little boy hiding behind it. Dark hair like hers. Her nose, her mouth. And a jaw that’s been in the Rafferty line since 1887.

She kept his existence from me for nearly three and a half years. Now she thinks we’re going to have reasonable conversations about custody schedules and co-parenting, all while she’s already mapping her exits, because that’s what Sadie does. She runs from anything that feels too big to lose.

But here’s the thing about me. I’m a rancher. I assess what I have, figure out what’s broken, and then I build, fence post by fence post, until what’s mine has every reason in the world to stay.

She can keep her exit plans.

I’m going to be the reason she burns them.

Make Me Stay is a steamy second-chance secret baby romance featuring a possessive cowboy who doesn’t ask twice, the woman he never got over, and the little boy with the blue plastic horse who brings them home. HEA guaranteed. Montana Second Chances, Book 2. Reads as a standalone.