Love is rarely played more beautifully than to the heartfelt strings of sacrifice...

Lachlan is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who's just bought a beautiful but neglected house on the sea. Words are his life; imagination his playground. But he's never known love as more than a meeting of hungry bodies in the night.

Heath is a landscape architect whose every moment is spent fighting for custody of his little brother. The work that pays for this legal battle is Heath's life, giving his brother the future he deserves is his calling. Heath's never known true love as more than a common prelude to a common divorce.

When Lachlan hires Heath to renovate his beachfront property, a passion fierce and playful is alighted and a romance true and embattled is born.

Theirs is a story of irony, a story of when surrendering to the odds is love's only hope of survival.

Theirs is a tale of a sacrifice made and kept. Theirs is a song of hope and happy endings.

Join Mercer and Saul from the novel Hard Wood, Soft Heart in a standalone Valentine's Day novella that will bring heat, tears and laughter to your cold winter days.

Mercer Braun is a former baseball player whose career was stolen from him by a chronic heart condition. Saul Tidewater is a heart surgeon who moved to Las Vegas to escape a bitter divorce and the tragedy at the break-up's core.

They've only known each other for nine months, but their love pulses strong and their passion burns magnificently. But when a secret is kept on Valentine's Day not only is the strength of their relationship put to the test, but their very lives are put at risk.

This is a story of how timeless love can rise up out of the ashes of tragedy. This is the story of how eternal love is born and kept.

It's Christmas night in Hellesgate, Kansas and all the world is bright.

Former New York real estate mogul Matthew Archer and injured war hero Cane Summerfield are enjoying their first holiday season together with their adopted daughter, Sahara. While the men had endured many hardships on their paths to discovering one another, their lives had finally grown peaceful while their love had only grown more vibrant...

But when you have everything, you have everything to lose.

An estranged family member with a heart of ice, a buried past that lives in a murderer's hungry gaze, memories born of sweet violence and delicious pain... all must be met and overcome for Matthew and Cane to keep the lives and the love for which they have fought so fiercely.

However... when the path is darkest, it takes only the smallest shafts of light to lead a man home again.

"Happily ever afters" rarely came to men like these...

Joey Ballios was a cop. For ten years his life had been little more than long foot chases through the cold Detroit snow, piles of paperwork, and forty hour shifts.

Laird Fox climbed mountains. He was a mountain guide in Alaska, a man who spent his days taking strangers to the top of the world, fulfilling their dreams while ignoring his own.

The two men's lives should never have touched, their worlds never have crossed, but when three gunshots ring out in a sweltering summer night, some lives are cursed while others are saved...

Sometimes Fate arrives on tragedy's tail, a post-script that begins with "Once upon a time."

This is a story of Las Vegas... of a one-night stand turned life-long love... of one man running so hard from his past that he runs headfirst into a man running just as hard away from his future.

A brilliant cardiologist scarred by a bitter divorce, Saul Tidewater has left the memories of his past behind and started a new life in Las Vegas. Dark and dashing, he must fight his surprising lack of self confidence when his long-held and hidden desire to make love to a man will no longer be denied.

Mercer Braun is the man everyone wants. Devilishly handsome with a blinding love for life, the former baseball player could have any man or woman that he wants... but Mercer only wants Saul. A bleak future awaits Mercer, however, and he must fight for his right to meet it on his own terms.

This is the story of two men who have lost their way, a city that gives them the courage to vanquish a past while blazing a future.

This is a story of true love.

Welcome back to Hellesgate.

Three years have passed since New York real estate mogul Matthew Archer met and fell in love with Iraqi war veteran Cane Summerfield. Having survived a deranged arsonist, a wispy, green-eyed stalker and a revenge-fueled brother, the men have settled down to small town life in Hellesgate, Kansas.

Life is good.

Every day, their love grows.

Every day, their wedding nears.

But when a love is borne of fire, the future is often shaped by hell.

When two strangers arrive in town, the horrors of Cane's war-torn past return wearing fresh faces and harboring mysterious hate. Greed, envy and lust combine to form an enemy unseen until the very end.

The battle is one for Cane's scarred peace of mind.

The battle is one Matthew will risk everything to win.

With the eccentric citizens of Hellesgate by their side, the men must fight a war that will leave one thing branded indelibly on all their hearts...

While war is hell, love is forever its phoenix.