Vexed with the Viscount is out! This is the third book in my Reluctant Hearts series, and it features Brendan Cavanaugh, Farren’s “older” brother.
“American-born ne’er-do-well Brendan Cavanaugh never wanted a title, a child, or a wife. So he does what he’s always done under pressure: runs.
A brief escape to the Scottish Highlands is just what he needs…until one impulsive encounter with a sharp-eyed, headstrong beauty upends his plans.
Callista Ainsworth once believed in love. But after betrayal shatters her hopes, she’s done with fantasy. Determined to reclaim her dignity in the Highlands, she never expected to risk her heart again-least of all for a rakish stranger with secrets in his eyes.
Callie demands honesty, even when it hurts, while Bren hides behind half-truths and charm. But secrets once unearthed demand reckoning… and a love worth risking all.”
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Set against the wild beauty of the Scottish Highlands, this third book in the Reluctant Hearts series explores what happens when charm is no longer enough — and truth becomes the only path forward.
If you love emotionally layered romance, wounded hearts, sharp dialogue, and a love story that feels earned, this is your next escape!
Available at:
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Excerpt:
Chapter One
The Scottish Highlands, near Abernathy
Late March 1868
Dad burn nag!
Brendan Cavanaugh slipped from the horse and carefully checked its back left hock.
Yep, lame.
He knew he’d been flirting with disaster by hiring ol’ Verlan. But he hadn’t had much choice. The gelding was the only hack on offer in the tiny village of Abernathy. Should have stayed on, had a few more pints and convinced the barmaid, Jean, to spend the night with him. Not that much convincing would’ve been needed, not if that welcoming look in the gal’s eye was anything to go on. By jingo, he would’ve been right home now, nuzzled into her ripe bosom, hands cradled around her lush bum, tasting her plump lips. But his itch to move on had been greater than his other itch.
Dang.
Verlan nipped at Bren’s shoulder as if to say, “What about me?”
Having a lame horse wasn’t the end of the world. Not unless a body felt like he was at the end of the world. Below him nothing but fields of heather. Beautiful enough, but beneath that beauty lay possible death, treacherous bogs that could swallow man and horse quicker than you could say Jack Rabbit. He’d been steadily ascending a rutted trail for a while now. The path getting steeper and wilder as the light faded.
Godforsaken Scotland. Why the hell had he decided to hie off to this wilderness?
He knew the answer. Fool that he was.
The sun was slipping fast. This far north you could count on light until nigh on nine. But once night came, it came quick as cream on a chill day. And as if the bogs weren’t enough, fog could roll in so’s a body couldn’t see a hand square in front of its face.
The Black Hills had nothing on these Scottish mountains.
Only an hour or so ago, Orin Fraser, innkeeper at The Black Swan, had squinted through his pipe smoke, sipping the whisky Bren had stood him while he spun tales of ghosts and mysterious fairies who lured unsuspecting souls into life-sucking fens.
If he’d had the sense God gave a goat, he would’ve listened to the man. But he’d been eyeing bonny Jean, a’ course, and the tapster’s advice had gone in one ear and out the other.
One of these days he might actually learn a thing or two.
“Eeeooow!”
The wail like a disembodied spirit, rose out of the fog.
Verlan shied, nearly jerking Bren off his feet.
“Whoa, there ol’ boy,” he whispered, his pistol now heavy in his hand.
Fog churned and danced through the trees. Their branches thrust upwards, caught in silver shrouds of finely spun webs. He had heard tell of these raft spiders doing their eerie work. The moon, just rising, striped the overgrown trail in shadow. Now he’d only to spy fairy folk or hobgoblins dancing under the stars at their nightly revels.
Hell, he should have seen the Belcher farm by now.
Bren had no wish to be caught on this mountain after nightfall. Should he try and get back to the pub?
He gathered up Verlan’s reins tighter and glanced back down the steep, rocky path. Traipsing up a mountain with a lame horse might be bad, but trying to retrace his steps would be suicide.
“Eeeooow!”
“Sh-i-i-t!” He leveled his pistol at the sound.
Something streaked by his feet. Verlan swung his huge head this time, knocking Bren sideways.
Then he saw it. A light.
A ghost? A wicked fairy?
Or salvation?
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Callista Ainsworth raised her lantern as she stood in the doorway of her Highland cottage. The dratted cat always snuck out just as darkness was falling. But Gulliver could not resist the feral felines that hid in these woods. Well, he would return home when he grew hungry, scratching at the door, making a fuss.
After all, he was male.
It would serve him right to miss dinner.
Callie pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders and stepped back into the cottage, closing the door behind her. She poked up the fire and then returned to the letter she’d been reading—or rather re-reading—for the fifth time. She didn’t receive many letters here in her highland exile. And when she did, she either wanted to revisit them over and over, or heave them into the fire. Not much middle ground. This missive, however, had her feeling a mix of the two.
Her little sister Helena, who, after her initial greetings, reported that the till-now-elusive Viscount Clifford, rumored to finally be in the country and ready to take up residence as the Ainsworth’s neighbor, would be ripe for the picking. Next year might be too late to snare him. So, her father and stepmother had decided to launch Helena this season:
Please, you must come back to England! I cannot face entering society without you by my side to give me your steady guidance. I will make a hash of things! You know I will. And besides, I am already in love, with my dear Martin!
Martin? Callie shook her head. Her last letter extolled the young curate, Mr. Henry Dobbins, as being the most handsome man, she’d ever beheld!
Callie’s hand drifted to her neckline, her fingers tracing the gold oval-shaped locket, feeling the familiar coolness and the nearly-worn-away chasing etched into the gold. Only True Love. Her mother’s talisman.
Oh, but how could one ever be sure?
Certainly, Callie was no authority, given her past. But she’d been lucky enough to escape a loveless marriage.
She’d be damned if her sister would now have to pay for Callie’s abdication.
A second letter—this one from her step-mother—lay on the table, likely conveying the same news as Helena’s, but surely directing Callie to stay put in Scotland.
Damn, Hermione! It’s too soon! Helena’s only just seventeen…
Callie pushed the letter aside. She’d open it when she needed kindling for the fire.
“Eeeooow!”
She smiled at the eerie, but familiar screech. Gully, now ready for his dinner, no doubt.
A scratch at the door confirmed her suspicion.
She pushed back from the table, rose, and crossed to the door. “Ready for your dinner now that you’ve done with your whoring? I should banish you to the barn for your appetites.” Callie opened the door ready to give the shadow tabby a playful swat. But instead, her gaze encountered two muddy boots. Before she could raise her eyes, Gulliver snaked between the footwear then turned, letting out another loud yowl, this one less of hunger and more of protest.
Her gaze tracked upwards to buff-colored trousers spattered with more mud, then to a coat oddly trimmed in leather fringe and beads. Not the coat of an Englishman or a Scot.
Her gaze jumped to the stranger’s face. A low-crowned hat shaded his eyes but didn’t hide his thoroughly scruffy beard, which covered the lower half of his face.
Panic hit her belly, and Gully let out a hiss.
Why hadn’t she taken a moment to grab her pistol?
Easy. Breathe.
The stranger smiled, exposing very white teeth—or perhaps they only appeared so white because of his dark beard?
He raised his hand and she leaped back, found the pistol which she kept primed and ready on the small table by the door, then leveled it at his breast.
“Whoa, gal, I was only going to remove my hat.”
American.
“Who are you?” No one came to her door in the broad daylight, much less after dark.
“No one you need to shoot, ma’am. I can assure you of that.”
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