Cramming your life with work was the best way to keep one’s mind off the affair with a man still in love with his dead fiancée.

Dana Van Diver let this thought run unhindered through her mind for a change. It was something rational to cling to. After all, she was fond of admitting she chose emotionally unavailable men on purpose. The usual requirement was that they were still stuck on an old flame, or too immature to commit, or at the very least, one of those guys who just needed a stand-in, until something better came along.

There were problems with this usual method of protecting one’s heart this time, however. Jake Jessup didn’t even compare to the men in her past. He was the polar opposite to the five physical relationships she’d had in her thirty years; she’d had none in the last five.

Regardless of his emotional ties to the love of his life, who had died almost six years ago, Jake was still the most incredible man she’d ever met—he was everything she thought didn’t exist in the male species and more. Which was what made it so hard to play the role of friend, the only role available to her where he was concerned now.

Dana thought about the jokes she’d made before she’d actually met him, about sleeping with the sexy man in the pictures her cousin had taken for the town page at Jessup Farms. It was something way bigger than mere attraction when she’d finally met him in person.

But Dana’s relationship with Jake Jessup, however limited, was beyond complex, thanks to a tangled past between the Van Diver women and her corrupt uncle. The present was equally complicated now that her cousins Charlie and Mason had relationships with the Jessups.

Dana’s parents had divorced when she was a toddler; her Uncle James had been the cause of the break-up. A diary found after Bonnie’s death had disclosed that she’d had an affair with James. The corrupt mayor who’d killed himself when his devious past had caught up with him.

Before she’d wed, Bonnie had aborted a child by James. Unfortunately, the result of all this secrecy was that she’d distanced herself emotionally from everyone—and screwed up Dana’s life too.

It was in the aftermath of the scandal with Charlie’s dad that the Jessups came into the picture—it was her Uncle James’ fault Jake Sr. had died in prison.

Unlike Charlie, who’d grown up the pampered princess in the formal Van Diver home, Dana had lived in an apartment in Ohio and not here in this southern Virginia town where the secrets had played out between the Jessups and Uncle James. As a child forgotten in a bitter divorce—Dana’s own dad hadn’t been around much and her mother had kept her distance—she had eventually stopped going home to an empty house. At sixteen she had quit school, taken a GED, and gone to work at a warehouse, then a bar, usually living with friends.

Now residing here in Laurel Vayle, living in the carriage house at the old Van Diver estate—though she could have lived in the big house—Dana worked with Mason Aldrich, Charlie’s half brother, at the youth center he’d come back and opened, now called unity Hall. They were healing, the cousins, and trying to build a life and not carry the mistakes of the past with them.

Dana had recently become close to Rain Jessup, Jake’s sister. They had hit it off, finding much of their background in common. However, since Mason had confessed to all that he was the father of Rain’s eight-year-old son Elijah, a shock that was still resonating, Dana was trying to wade through that and Charlie’s marriage to Beau Jessup—and deal with her own overpowering attraction to the big, brawny, older Jessup brother.

The brothers Jessup had made sacrifices, raised their sister and worked two and three jobs to put money into their farm. Jake was still grieving his fiancée, and who could blame him? Naomi, he’d told Dana, was cultured and beautiful, just one of those caring and special people.

Dana had faced the fact that between Beau Jessup and her cousin Charlie Aldrich getting married and Mason’s connection to Rain, the chances were she and Jake would inevitably see a lot of each other. It was just one of the most stupid impulses she’d ever followed in her life—sleeping with him—as if there wasn’t enough of a tangled web between the families without her just diving in the middle of it.

She’d hoped she’d be able to follow her own self-imposed rules about Jake, because her body sure didn’t recognize him as just a friend. She’d heard people describe Jake Jessup; a good man, salt of the earth, the strong silent one. He was deceptively quiet, with a kind of strength men just didn’t laugh off if they crossed him. He’d knocked out a reporter back when Charlie was missing, a kidnapping instigated by Beau’s ex wife Candy and Rain’s then boyfriend Zane. Beau would say that Jake was like that, he didn’t run his mouth...he didn’t need to.