A new outback home where she can become someone new—and maybe find a forever love? Rachel Meade is a woman with a past she wants to escape from. Finding herself in Mt Maria, a remote outback town in Western Australia, she thinks she’s found a place to stay. Before she knows it, Rachel is corralled into helping with the Tidy Town competition by the Dramatic Society widows who have a tendency to gossip and take charge. It’s not in her plan, but she finds herself allowing friendships to develop. She’s even more surprised by her growing attraction to the town’s engaging senior police officer. Ex-detective Senior Sergeant Luke Weston knows anything and everything happens in the country, and he’s seen it all—stolen chickens, pub fights and alleged cheating for the Tidy Town competition are only some of the puzzles Mt Maria offers Luke. He’s been playing for Rachel, thinking maybe she’s the one. Then he gets news that the Crime Squad are looking for her, and he’s ordered to get close and stay close. Is Rachael in trouble, or is she the trouble? Luke is fighting his attraction to a woman he might have to take into custody, and it looks like he’s going to be arresting more than one person before the end of the week. Luke needs to restore peace in his corner of the outback, but he knows he’s not going to get out of this without getting his heart busted. With her past catching up with her, Rachael has to decide whether it’s time to cut and run again, or whether this time she’s found the person—and the place—to finally heal her heart.

Can three misfits build a family in this remote Australian town? Jaxine Brown has made a good life for herself with her café and her animal rescue shelter in Western Australian outback town, Mt Maria. But the homecoming of her secret teenage daughter, Frances, changes everything. At only seventeen, Jax was coerced to give up the baby to Frances’s father and his wife. Finally, she has a chance to make it right for her resentful and awkward teenager, and hasn’t got time to think about the recently returned handsome former detective, who inexplicably disappeared in the middle of their only date last year. Detective Senior Sergeant Jack Maxwell arrives in Mt Maria, seemingly back in uniform as Officer In Charge, while his mate Senior Sergeant Luke Weston is on leave. But Jack’s real purpose is investigating suspicion of drug trafficking and the man they’re watching works in the closest mine to the town. He expects to have this case wrapped up in four weeks, and feels he can take his time, not only with the case but also with Jaxine Brown, the woman he hasn’t been able to get out of his mind. When graffiti and vandalism escalate in an issue involving stolen animals, Jax and Frances are unwittingly drawn into a mystery that suggests a connection to the same mine Jack has under surveillance. Can Jack get to the bottom of the furtive goings-on, and do whatever it takes to protect the would-be family that’s wound its way into his heart? A new outback romance from the bestselling author of The Swallow’s Fall series.