Then Came You

After witnessing his parents’ doomed love affair, serial playboy Ash Younger decided long ago that love was not meant for him. With his charm and good looks, he’s never lacked for beautiful women. He may push numbers as an accountant by day, but by night, he’s only interested in having a woman in his bed.

Yet the night he encounters a mysterious—and gorgeous—widow who doesn’t immediately fall under his seductive spell, Ash realizes he wants her more than he’s ever wanted another woman.

Following the loss of her husband two years ago, Violet Fielding wants to focus on two things: her jewelry business and beginning her life anew in the small town of Fair Haven, Washington. She doesn’t have time for men or romance, and she certainly doesn’t have time for a man who’s a well-known playboy and younger than her.

Violet already found the love of her life in her husband, and after his death, she knew she could never love anyone again.

But when Ash kisses her, all of her plans and promises are turned upside down. A passion stronger than either Ash or Violet could imagine envelops them both one night—and that night changes everything.

As old heartbreaks threaten to tear the couple apart, both must find the courage to see that, of all things, love is worth a second chance.

“Hi there. I’m Violet.”

Violet held out her hand to the man to her right.
He muttered something under his breath at whatever he saw on his phone before looking up at her.

“Hi, I’m Eddy. You go to things like this often? I can never find any women worth talking to.”


Okay. “You know, I’m going to get a drink. Want anything?”


“I don’t drink.”


Rolling her eyes, she pushed through the crowd to the bar. If she was going to stay, she needed booze. The strongest they had, preferably.


“I’ll have a gin and tonic,” she told the bartender. “With extra gin.”


The bartender was a man who seemed barely older than a high school student, yet his bartending skills were clearly those of a man who’d been in the business for years. Violet gave him an extra-large tip after he successfully tossed the bottle of gin into the air and caught it just as smoothly.


She drank her gin and tonic, savoring the coldness of the alcohol. People chatted and laughed all around her. She knew she should return to Amber and try talking to another single man, but she didn’t have the heart for it.

What was so wrong about being single? This wasn’t Jane Austen: she wouldn’t starve if she didn’t find her own Mr. Darcy.


She turned and found herself with a perfect view of the birthday party. The baby, she realized, wasn’t so much a baby as a toddler, and she seemed entranced by the giant pink birthday cake in front of her.

A bunch of adults laughed when she tried to imitate the woman next to her by blowing out the candles—her mother, Violet presumed. A blond man with tattoos on his arms stood behind the toddler and helped her finish blowing out her second candle.


The adults all clapped and cheered. Another man with reddish-gold hair laughed, his teeth flashing in the dim light, when the toddler grabbed at her piece of cake with both hands and smeared her face with the pink frosting.

The toddler squealed something that sounded like, “Cake!” in between pushing fistfuls of the cake and frosting into her mouth.


“Good one, Bea,” the man said with a chuckle. “That’s how to enjoy your birthday.”


When the man turned toward her in profile, she couldn’t help but find herself arrested by him. He had a square jaw, his nose aquiline, and she’d never seen hair quite that color. It was almost berry-colored, she thought.

Her heart started pounding, especially when the man caught her staring and sent her a slow grin that she felt all the way to her toes.
She whirled around on her barstool and took such a deep drink of her gin and tonic that she started coughing. How awkward! Now that man would think she was a total weirdo who just stared at people for no reason.


“Can I get a glass of water?” she asked the bartender, her eyes watering. 


As if he knew that her life was a mess, he looked sympathetic as he pushed a glass toward her. “Don’t drink it too fast,” he admonished.


I’m probably old enough to be your mother, she thought in irritation. Drinking the water, she dabbed at her eyes and hoped to God that the man hadn’t seen her sputtering like a stopped-up chimney.


“What are you drinking? Gin and tonic?” Eddy slid in next to her and motioned at the bartender. “I’ve never liked gin and tonic. Bartender, can I get a Coke?”


The bartender rolled his eyes when Eddy wasn’t looking, causing Violet to stifle laughter.


“Oh, no ice. Sorry. Hurts my teeth.” Eddy pushed the Coke back toward the bartender. “Are you having fun?” he asked Violet.


“Oh, loads.”


“That’s surprising. I never have fun at these things. They’re always rather dull.”


She had to bite her tongue in half from saying something snarky. When Eddy received his Coke sans ice and started drinking it through a tiny straw, though, she almost started choking from trying to hold back her laughter.


“Sorry, man, but this is my date,” a rumbling voice said over Violet’s shoulder. “Could you move?”


Eddy’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, but when the man moved toward him with a determined look, Eddy scrambled down and scuttled away.


To Violet’s surprise, the man she’d been staring at slid in next to her and grinned, a grin that surely had to be illegal in all fifty states.


“I’m Ash Younger,” he said, smooth as silk. “How is it I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as you here before?”