Sweet Forgiveness

Forgiveness. Second chances…and secrets.

Resort manager Zoe Ward has spent the past year throwing her broken heart into rescuing abandoned pets and ensuring vacationing couples have the trip of their dreams. She even helps engaged couples create their happily ever afters, something she’d believed she was going to have with Ashton Wallace before he left with barely a word about why. But now he’s back and looking for a second chance.

Ashton can’t stop thinking about Zoe. He knows all she wants is marriage and a family, and he was certain he could provide it. However, when his past life came crashing in before he could pop the question, he left Indigo Bay in order to protect Zoe. But now that things have settled out again, he’s back and looking to turn his biggest regret into a happy ending.

Will Zoe find room in her heart for forgiveness? And can Ashton prove that this time he’s here to stay? Because he’s been keeping secrets that could ruin everything…and Zoe knows it.



NOTE: This edition contains five bonus scenes!

Zoe stopped on the sidewalk in front of her house to check on the flood repairs.

But there in her front yard was Ashton, covered in dirt, shovel in hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Keeping my promise.” He leaned against the shovel, casual and handsome.

The half-dead front hedge that she’d always meant to do something about had been entirely removed. A pickup truck she recognized as belonging to Dallas was piled high with brush and branches.

Of all Ashton’s promises, this wasn’t the one Zoe had set her heart on him keeping.

“Remember our plan?” Ashton pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket, marking the paper with grubby fingerprints. He unfolded the landscaping plan they’d mapped out at her kitchen table the year before.

“You’re going to make me a gazebo, create a rosebush front hedge and a stone walkway?” she asked in disbelief.
He nodded.

She waved toward her damaged house. “I can’t afford it.”
And you left me, making all your promises a moot point.
Ashton tucked the piece of paper into his back pocket once again. “Then we’ll wait on the gazebo. I can afford the rest.”
She wanted to reject him outright, send him away, but she held her tongue until the first wave of anger had passed. “You have no right to do this. You are no longer a part of my life, my world.” Her palms hurt, and she realized she’d squeezed her hands into fists, her nails digging into her own flesh.

“I want to do this.”

“What if I don’t want you buying me roses?” Roses felt romantic, and his gesture was too big, too kind. It was difficult to remain as angry as she wanted to be when he was being so careful, so…Ashton.

“I figured as much. I thought you might prefer camellias, as they’re evergreen, hardy, and bloom while everything else has gone dormant.”

Of course he’d thought out all the angles.

Dejectedly, Zoe stared at her home. The plan for the garden had been to create a haven for her to read in after work, a nice place to eat together when it wasn’t too hot outside. But then they’d started talking about moving in together, choosing a bigger house so they could start a family via fostering or adopting children since she was past her prime childbearing years.

And then he’d left. Married someone else.

A power saw screeched and workers chucked yet more of her home’s interior into the trash bin on the lawn.

How did Ashton believe this was a good time to rip up the one part of her life that wasn’t in shambles? Every time she looked at her house she wanted to cry, and having a ditch where her hedge used to be wasn’t helping.

She shook her head and turned, walking back toward work. He’d left her, left this dream behind. And him taking it up right now only seemed to rub in the fact that she would always live alone in this small bungalow and never a large and boisterous family home.

This wasn’t supposed to be her life. This wasn’t where she’d been hoping to be at age forty-one.

Ashton’s footsteps echoed on the sidewalk as he hurried to catch up with her. She hugged her arms tighter around her torso, bent her head and walked faster.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was afraid you were going to say no if I asked.”

“And why would I ever say yes?” She spun to face him.
“Don’t you get it? You left me. You walked out on us—on you and me. You chose someone else despite everything we’d talked about.”

He had dirt on his nose, and his eyes were filled with such remorse that she didn’t know whether to shout or cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Quit apologizing.”

“I will when I stop screwing up.”

“You’re going to be underfoot until I say I forgive you, aren’t you?”

“I was stupid to leave you.”

“Then why did you? Why did you—” She caught herself and took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

“I missed out on something special when I…” He paused, lifting the toe of his shoe where he’d been drawing lines in the beach sand that had blown across the sidewalk. He peeked up at her, his hazel eyes sincere. “I made the wrong choice even though I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Why? Was she pregnant?” Zoe scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head. “No, I don’t want to know.”

The less she knew, the less she had as ammo for torturing herself with what-if’s.

Ashton’s throat was working as though he was struggling to remember how to breathe or talk, and his emotion made her angrier.

“This isn’t going to cause me to forgive you,” she said, gesturing toward her destroyed yard. “Finish what you started by the time I move back in two weeks, and don’t you dare leave me with a mess. This time, Ash, follow through on your promises. Every one of them.”