Where Still Waters Ignite
(2026)(The fifth book in the Cowboys of Copper Creek series)
A novel by Nicola Hayes
My fake boyfriend kissed me in front of three hundred people and my entire nervous system was reorganised at a molecular level.
I was supposed to be faking it.
I came back to Copper Creek for a contract, not a cowboy. But I needed a fake boyfriend to keep the wrong man away — and the right man said yes before I finished asking. No hesitation. No questions. Just the silent one. The one who's known me since I was twelve. The one whose hands say everything his mouth won't — and whose patience is starting to feel like the filthiest kind of foreplay.
His hand on my back at dinner. His thumb tracing my pulse while he talks like he can't feel my heartbeat slamming against his fingertip. His mouth finding the spot below my ear in the dark — unhurried, precise, the focus of a man who builds things with his hands and brings that same devastating attention to my skin.
Every fake touch is a lit match. Every real touch is the gasoline.
He keeps travel books on a shelf he's never opened. Fifteen years of wanting he's never said out loud. His list matches mine — every city, every coastline, every dog-eared page.
I built a career on never staying. He built a life on never leaving.
And the man I've been running from? He hasn't gone anywhere. He's been watching. Waiting. And the night I finally let my guard down — the night I choose Hunter with my whole heart — he makes his move. And nothing in Copper Creek will ever be the same.
Standalone contemporary western romance. Happily ever after. No cheating. No cliffhanger.
Genre: Romance
I was supposed to be faking it.
I came back to Copper Creek for a contract, not a cowboy. But I needed a fake boyfriend to keep the wrong man away — and the right man said yes before I finished asking. No hesitation. No questions. Just the silent one. The one who's known me since I was twelve. The one whose hands say everything his mouth won't — and whose patience is starting to feel like the filthiest kind of foreplay.
His hand on my back at dinner. His thumb tracing my pulse while he talks like he can't feel my heartbeat slamming against his fingertip. His mouth finding the spot below my ear in the dark — unhurried, precise, the focus of a man who builds things with his hands and brings that same devastating attention to my skin.
Every fake touch is a lit match. Every real touch is the gasoline.
He keeps travel books on a shelf he's never opened. Fifteen years of wanting he's never said out loud. His list matches mine — every city, every coastline, every dog-eared page.
I built a career on never staying. He built a life on never leaving.
And the man I've been running from? He hasn't gone anywhere. He's been watching. Waiting. And the night I finally let my guard down — the night I choose Hunter with my whole heart — he makes his move. And nothing in Copper Creek will ever be the same.
Standalone contemporary western romance. Happily ever after. No cheating. No cliffhanger.
Genre: Romance