Real Love #44

Janine Bassett has spent her life seeking attention through gossip—a habit born from her childhood split between divorced parents—but when the charming new office manager Alec Haynes arrives, she finally finds something real to hope for, and he falls for her. As their romance deepens and an engagement looms, Janine faces a reckoning: her old need to be the center of attention through spreading information threatens the very relationship that has given her life meaning, forcing her to confront whether she can change who she's become.

Jacinta Perry works a hardscrabble Texas ranch with her mother, determined to escape the cycle of poverty that claimed her father—but Lander Farson, the cowpuncher she loves, keeps pulling her toward a future she fears will echo her parents' struggles. When Jacinta secretly takes a job at a gambling establishment to earn escape money, the truth threatens to unravel everything she's planned. As Lander learns where she's working and takes drastic action, Jacinta finds herself caught between the security she's chasing and the man who refuses to let her go.

Kirstie Colman has always hidden her family's poverty behind a veil of pretense, and when she runs into old schoolmates, she finds herself spinning an elaborate story about knowing the wealthy Dan McKay—heir to the local candy fortune where she works. When Dan actually intervenes to save her job, her chance encounter becomes the foundation for a dangerous web of lies that threatens to unravel at a party she's been pressured to attend. Caught between her dreams of escaping poverty and the consequences of her own deceptions, Kirstie must confront what her pride has cost her.

A shy secretary who bankrolls her boyfriend's lavish dates discovers her feelings may not be returned when the boss's son arrives at the office and sees through her carefully composed exterior. As Ainsley struggles with doubt about Carson's true intentions, she finds herself drawn to the perceptive and bold Ricky Kenner—a man who challenges everything she thought she knew about herself and what she deserves.