Beautiful Redemption
(2026)(The third book in the Cowboys of Wild River, Montana series)
A novel by Nicola Hayes
My childhood best friend disappeared into the Army for twelve years. Now he's my next-door neighbour, sleeps in my bed, and apparently we're still pretending we're just friends.
I loved Ryder Ashford at fifteen.
He enlisted at eighteen, wrote twice, then vanished from my life.
Now he's home—scarred, broody, ridiculously hot—and living four feet from my bedroom.
It starts innocently enough.
Beer on the porch. Sunday football. His hands on my feet. A hike that ends with the kiss I've wondered about for half my life.
Then I find him freezing on his apartment floor during a blackout.
I climb under a blanket to warm him…and the man who barely sleeps passes out wrapped around me.
After that, pretending gets impossible.
He stocks my favourite chocolate. I wake up in his bed. He fixes my broken door, leaves a toothbrush beside mine, and somehow becomes the safest place I've ever had.
And somewhere in all that beautiful, terrifying domesticity, I fall completely in love with him.
Then the Army tells Ryder he's never going back.
And instead of choosing the life we've accidentally built, he starts disappearing from it.
So I finally tell my best friend the truth I've swallowed since I was fifteen.
I want him.
And he stands silently on the other side of a locked door while I beg him to stay.
Genre: Romance
I loved Ryder Ashford at fifteen.
He enlisted at eighteen, wrote twice, then vanished from my life.
Now he's home—scarred, broody, ridiculously hot—and living four feet from my bedroom.
It starts innocently enough.
Beer on the porch. Sunday football. His hands on my feet. A hike that ends with the kiss I've wondered about for half my life.
Then I find him freezing on his apartment floor during a blackout.
I climb under a blanket to warm him…and the man who barely sleeps passes out wrapped around me.
After that, pretending gets impossible.
He stocks my favourite chocolate. I wake up in his bed. He fixes my broken door, leaves a toothbrush beside mine, and somehow becomes the safest place I've ever had.
And somewhere in all that beautiful, terrifying domesticity, I fall completely in love with him.
Then the Army tells Ryder he's never going back.
And instead of choosing the life we've accidentally built, he starts disappearing from it.
So I finally tell my best friend the truth I've swallowed since I was fifteen.
I want him.
And he stands silently on the other side of a locked door while I beg him to stay.
Genre: Romance