Read and Swoon

Rule #1: Don’t fall for your boss. Rule #2: Don’t let him find out you’re the girl this town erased.

I come back to Briar Glen with a plan: keep my head down, finish my psych internship, and ignore the blank spaces where my childhood memories should be.

I don’t plan on Dr. Grant Mercer.

Forty-one. Silver-fox psychiatrist. Single dad. The kind of man who speaks in that low, measured voice that makes me forget every rule I’ve ever followed. He’s also my supervising physician — and he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want me here.

The feeling is mutual. Mostly.

He doesn’t do messy. He doesn’t do scandal. And he definitely doesn’t do interns — especially ones who show up mid-crisis, handle it better than his staff, and then look at him like they’re daring him to be impressed.

But when the hospital board pressures him to bring a date to the annual gala or let the town’s most ruthless socialite stake her claim, I make him an offer he should refuse:

Take me. Fake date. One night. She backs off, and I stay out of your way.

One night becomes stolen touches in empty hallways. Fake smiles that turn into real ones. A practice kiss that neither of us stops.

And then I start remembering.

Flashes of water. Sirens. His voice — from years before we were supposed to have met. Someone in Briar Glen stole my past, and the man I’m falling for might be the only one who knows why.

Now the town that buried my secrets is watching me fall for the one man who could dig them up. And the woman who wants him for herself will burn my career to the ground before she lets an intern take what she considers hers.