INK AND WATER: A Writers’ Romance

Inaya Larson came home to Clover Valley to lick her wounds, not to blow the lid off of anything. One quiet reporting job at the county paper, that was the plan. Cover the school board, the harvest festival, the occasional prize hog. Keep her head down. Stay sharp. Figure out who she is when nobody is watching. Then she starts pulling on a loose thread about the town’s water and the shiny new data center that everybody swears is going to save Clover County. The thread leads her somewhere unexpected, into the arms of her fellow reporter.

Denver Jacobs has a teenage son, twelve hard-won years of sobriety, and a very logical list of reasons to want the new girl gone. What he does not have is a good excuse for why he keeps migrating toward her. Or why her being right about the water makes him want to kiss her and throttle her in equal measure.

Inaya is sunshine with a press badge. Denver is a storm cloud who grows on you like a fungus. Put them in the same small town, hand them the same dangerous story, and something is going to catch fire.

Ink and Water is a slow-burn, small-town, opposites-attract romantic mystery that has teeth. If you love a grumpy single dad managing a custody arrangement, or a sharp-tongued heroine who refuses to be managed, or a nosy town full of people who mostly mean well... then come on in. Inaya and Denver are waiting for you.

Tropes: grumpy/sunshine, single dad, small-town return, slow burn, journalist hero and heroine, forced proximity, found family, opposites attract
Heat: open door, tasteful
Ending: happily ever after
Content notes: recovery and sobriety themes (the hero is twelve years sober); references to municipal corruption. Nothing graphic on the page.

Perfect for readers of Devney Perry, Lucy Score, and Susan Mallery who like their small-town romance with a side of trouble.