Summer’s Heart (The McIntyres #2)
Releasing January 2026
Can love survive when a blizzard traps them with devastating secrets and impossible choices?
A young boy is brought into the clinic where nurse Summer McIntyre works barely alive, his body bearing the marks of a savage attack by a pack of dogs. He carries a wild story of being held captive and insists he must go back to rescue his little brother and Lucas.
The mention of her long-missing fifteen-year-old brother stops Summer cold. Could it really be her Lucas? Against all odds, the boy’s tale proves true—and for the first time in five years, she finally has a lead on Lucas’s whereabouts.
However, a fierce winter storm has buried the town under a foot of snow, cutting off any chance of rescue. Yet strangely enough, a mysterious woman and baby emerge from the whiteout, claiming Sheriff Dan Bodine, the very man Summer plans to wed, is the baby’s father.
Dan finds himself trapped by the raging blizzard between two determined women—and a love he may lose forever.
All the while, a vengeful madwoman beyond the snowbound hills holds Lucas’s life in her hands. Summer must decide whom to trust before the storm buries more than just the truth.
EXCERPT
Dan pulled the collar of his sheepskin coat up around his ears with gloved hands. The snow was coming down harder and already piling up in places. Few people were out. He passed the Dancing Goat and saw a closed sign on the door, so he headed to Doc Blanchard’s place to let Summer know their plans to rescue her little brother Lucas had been dashed by the weather.
This was an all-out snowstorm and not just flurries. No one was going anywhere much until this passed.
Dan turned the knob to the clinic, and a delicious warmth greeted him.
“Dan Bodine, my darling!” a woman screamed and flew into his arms. “I couldn’t wait to get here and tell you the news!”
The strange woman crushed her lips to his in a searing kiss, simultaneously throwing her arms around his neck.
The more he tried to extricate himself, the harder she clung. Beyond him in the doorway stood Summer, tapping her foot, her face several shades of anger.
He finally managed to push the strange woman aside. “Sorry, ma’am, but I’m not sure I know…” Then he got a good look at her. “Elsie?”
“Not anymore.” The woman pulled herself up straight. “Valentina,” she corrected in a concocted Spanish accent. “I changed my name to a more exotic one. Do you like it?”
As he struggled to comprehend what just happened, Summer came forward, scowling. “Do you know this woman, Dan?”
“I know her but only barely. This isn’t…she isn’t…I…” Dear Lord, he had to do something more than stutter to get out of this mess.
Elsie, or rather Valentina, took an infant from the girl behind her and thrust the child into his arms. When she next spoke, it was without the accent. “How’s this for ‘barely?’ Meet your son, Daniel.”
“A child too?” Summer asked as cold as ice. “Really, Dan? What other secrets will follow you?”
“Wait.” Anger and frustration rose that he’d been blindsided. “I didn’t father this child. You have to believe me. Elsie and I weren’t involved like that.”
“Valentina,” Elsie corrected angrily. “Flesh and blood don’t lie.”
The baby boy, probably little more than a month or two old, looked up at him and puckered his lip to cry. Dan didn’t blame the kid. He felt like crying too. He took a long look at the acquaintance he’d once known as Elsie. Same black-haired woman in a heavy purple brocade coat trimmed with some kind of strange feathers that was cut away in back to go around a rather enormous bustle. Summer wouldn’t be caught dead in such a garb. Her clothes were simple and unpretentious. Never any bustle at all.
Who on earth would want to enhance their rear-end and make it like a shelf you’d set something on?
Elsie took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. Her heavy perfume was cloying, and Dan couldn’t help but compare it to Summer’s soft fragrance. Suddenly a big whiff of perfume went up his nose and he sneezed.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten the night you were at my place alone and we drank a little too much…” Elsie glanced up at Dan and batted her wide gaze that belied innocence. She put a tremble in her voice that he didn’t buy for one second. “And we went into you-know-where and did you-know what and little Daniel was conceived. He’s the spitting image of his handsome daddy. You can’t deny that.”
Memory of anything like that escaped him. He glanced at the mousy girl standing silently with mud-brown hair that hung in braids. Her nose was red from blowing it. She suddenly coughed.
“Who’s the girl?” Dan asked gruffly.
“My darling niece Alice. I brought her along to help me.”
Alice appeared to be somewhere around ten years old and just a child herself. Too young to be a nanny to the infant, yet that seemed to be her role.
Still in the doorway, Summer’s face had turned to stone. “You have quite the little family, Dan.” Ice dripped from her words. “Don’t let me interfere with your…happy reunion.”
Before he could say anything, she shut the door to the hallway with a firm snap that projected her anger. He was left to deal with Elsie or Valentina or whatever ridiculous name she called herself.
And a sour stomach to boot.
Summer’s Heart releases January 12, 2026
