CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES
Tiny Treats is a collection of holiday-themed micro-stories. These are tales that can be read in their entirety in only a handful of minutes. The stories are submitted by dozens of authors who set them in the larger worlds of their other books. My story is a visit back to Bluestone!
When you’re trying to stay below the radar in a small town that thrives on gossip, you probably don’t want to break up with your football coach boyfriend and fall in love with your best friend’s widower within the same month. And heaven help you if you befriend the psychic who’s just moved nearby and your AWOL mother returns after a fourteen-year absence.

Ellie Morgan is tired of playing second string to the football team coached by her boyfriend of three years. She ends their relationship, much to the dismay of the town’s citizens, who worry a heartbroken coach will ruin their chance for a championship team. Rumors of a romance with Noah Weston, her best friend’s widower, buzz when an accident on the beach causes him to bring her to the local clinic in his arms. The rumors disturb her, but also make her think about Noah in a way she hasn’t before. Even comments that she’s trying to slide into the void left by her best friend’s death can’t kill her fantasies, now as rampant as the rumor mill.

Noah Weston is emerging from his grief a year and a half after his wife’s death. Ellie Morgan draws him with her energy and positive attitude. As their friendship progresses, though, he wonders if he can risk loving and losing everything again, and she wonders if she can handle taking second place, this time to a ghost.
Lavender Prouty has always lived in the Texas town of Cascade. Everyone in her family fled the small town, leaving her with her ailing grandmother. She’s so accustomed to denying herself, she doesn’t know how to react when a handsome cowboy flirts with her during a field trip to the fairgrounds.

Taylor Craig hasn’t always been a steer wrestler, but he doesn’t talk about his past. He's made enough money to buy a spread near Big Bend, and he loves the cowboy life. Rodeoing answers his need to wander.

When he meets Lavender, those needs shift. He likes how she treats her class, likes her humor, is intrigued by her shyness. Women are always throwing themselves at him, but now he'll do the chasing.

Can Taylor’s charm lower Lavender’s defenses?
When an on-the-job incident sends her home to her family's Hill Country ranch, Detective Aubrey Cavanaugh wants to hide away with a good bottle of vodka to ease her mind and her guilt.

She doesn't want to deal with family, friends, and least of all her former lover, Erich Harlan, who is now the ranch foreman.

Erich Harlan has his hands full with overseeing the ranch while Aubrey's parents are away. But he can see she is hurting. He might be the last person she'd turn to, but he won't give up until he knows what's causing her pain and how to make it go away.

After a dozen years apart, will she be willing to find Sanctuary with the Cowboy?
Bailey Summers is very good at taking care of herself. So good, in fact, that she shuts others out with very little effort.

But when her brother and his partner want a child, she pushes out of her comfort zone and offers to be their surrogate. It’s just nine months out of her life, right?

Right.

Because of course when she’s struggling with morning sickness, she encounters the hottest man she’s ever met. To make matters worse, he’s the new bartender at her popular bar.

Rick Cassidy comes with his own complications. He’s a middle school teacher taking a summer job as a bartender to help out his brother’s family. His brother is in a rehab hospital after colliding with a drunk driver, and Rick is trying to help them make ends meet. He’s just out of a relationship himself, with a woman who couldn’t handle him spending so much time caring for his brother. So what’s he doing eyeballing his boss, the boss of a job he needs? 

But late nights, close quarters and second-trimester hormones overrule better judgement, and complications intertwine. This is definitely not what they were expecting.
Lori Cervantes would say she was pretty content with her life. But when her favorite getaway, a campground on the San Marcos River, is put up for sale, she begins to rethink her dreams. She’d brought her kids to the family-owned place after her divorce, and they’d spent countless weekends in the cabins, floating the river, sitting by the fire. But now the owners are retiring, and it may never be the same. Because of that, she is determined to spend as much time there as possible to soak up final memories, even if it means helping the owners’ eldest son fix up the place for the sale.

Justin Langston is glad his parents are finally retiring so they’ll have time for themselves after running the campground for decades. He couldn’t be happier to see the place go. The place was a drag on him when he was a kid. Not when they first bought it, when only the family had enjoyed it, but when they turned it into a business that ate up every weekend of his life until he left home. He’s working on a long list of tasks when a guest shows up despite her reservation being canceled—and insists on staying.

Maybe if she hadn’t been a cute single woman, he might have put up more of a fight. But now she’s here, willing to work, and helping him see the campground anew through her eyes. The more they work, the more appealing the place becomes. 

The more appealing she becomes.

But his parents deserve to retire, and Lori deserves to be happy.

How can he make all of their dreams come true—including his?
Had she misread the signs?

Briefly captivated by the idea of romance and pretty, shiny weddings, Willow Hawkins agreed to meet her potential boyfriend's family and quickly realized she'd made a mistake. Stranded in small-town Nowhere, Willow calls her best friend, Cameron Trask, for an escape.

Even though he'll miss an important job interview, Cam comes to her rescue. When Willow starts to see Cam with new eyes, she wonders how she's never made the connection from best friend to best lover. Willow has one chance to help the man she loves—join him on a cross-country road trip to get to the interview on time. On the way they'll face a jealous puppy, an unreliable automobile and weather that threatens to trap them alone...together.

The biggest roadblock she'll come up against? If Cam gets his dream job, Willow may lose him for good.

Going to his twenty-fifth reunion isn’t Sam Justiss’s idea. He’s an action movie hero who doesn’t need to reconnect with those who shunned him in high school. But his mother still teaches there and wants him to attend. She’s sacrificed so much for him, he can’t refuse. He drags his assistant Lorelei Dormer along.

Lorelei has been Sam’s assistant for three years, and in love with him approximately two years, eleven months and twenty-nine days. When he asks her to act as his girlfriend, hoping to deter flirty former classmates, Lorelei resists. She’s no actress and must guard her heart. But when he promises a vacation abroad for her down-on-her-luck sister, Lorelei can’t refuse. These things always end well, right?

The intimacy she’s thrust into destroys the crumbly wall she’s built around her heart. Is she willing to risk everything to tell him how she feels?