My Secret Life #21

Edith Tate steps into the role of the town's beloved schoolteacher, expected to become another Miss Brown—prim, proper, and devoted entirely to her job. But when a chance encounter with the charming Mike Donaro awakens her to what she's been missing, Edith faces an impossible choice between the respectable life the community demands and the chance to be herself again.

A twenty-four-year-old woman tired of her family's relentless matchmaking finally meets her match in Bert, her father's best friend's son—a charming visitor who's equally fed up with the same meddling. What starts as a prickly first impression and a fake romance for the folks' benefit becomes something neither of them expected when real feelings begin to surface.

A confirmed bachelor named Jess Vesey thinks he's perfectly content with his life until he meets the spirited Betty Dann, who sets her sights on him with an infectious mix of boldness and charm. When Jess keeps dodging her advances—convinced he's too busy for romance—Betty's pursuit becomes increasingly playful and creative, forcing him to confront what he's actually been avoiding. In the end, it takes losing her for Jess to realize exactly what he's been missing.

At a midnight masquerade party, Nella shares a magical kiss with a mysterious stranger—a phantom she's certain she'll never see again. When she reconnects with Ted, her friend Marie's brother-in-law, something about him feels oddly familiar, even though he seems nothing like the dashing figure from the night before. As Nella struggles between the memory of her phantom and her growing feelings for Ted, an unexpected moment of danger reveals a truth that transforms everything she thought she knew about both men.

A fashion designer who deliberately plays the bohemian to seem unconventional finds her cool-girl act tested when the stuffy businessman Harrison Drumm walks into her life—and discovers that beneath her studied casualness, there's something real worth fighting for. Vikki Doran learns that the bold impression you're trying to make might be hiding the vulnerable truth about who you actually are, and sometimes the person who sees past your armor is exactly who you've been waiting for.