A. R. Williams

Riley Callahan has plans to finally reveal his secret feelings for his best friend (who just happens to be his brother’s ex). But tragedy strikes and derails his plans. Watching the love of his life fall for his brother was enough to send Riley straight to boot camp. But over a year later, he's officially a marine, and Beau and Paige are no longer an item. When Riley's tour in Afghanistan is up, he intends to confess his feelings to Paige and win his best friend's heart once and for all.

Recently widowed Annalisa Werner has the feeling her husband was murdered but can't prove it. Alone with her young daughter in 1881 Michigan, she has six months left to finish raising the money needed to pay back the land contract her husband purchased, and the land is difficult to toil by herself. She needs a husband. With unmarried men scarce, her father sends a letter to his brother in the Old Country, asking him to find Annalisa a groom.

Men are optional. That's the credo Emma Chandler's suffragette aunts preached and why she started a successful women's colony in Harper's Station, Texas. But when an unknown assailant tries repeatedly to drive them out, Emma admits they might need a man after all. A man who can fight - and she knows just the one.