The Beach House

A cheating husband. A secret second family. One impulsive purchase: a crumbling cottage on a South Carolina island.At forty-three, Julie Pike's twenty-one-year marriage ends with a confession she never saw coming. Her husband has a mistress in Boston and a six-month-old son. The dream home is sold. The life she built is gone. So Julie does the one reckless thing she's never done: she buys a beach cottage sight unseen on Seagrove Island, South Carolina.The cottage has holes in the floor. Her heart has worse.Dawson Lancaster is the local contractor hired to fix the house. He's quiet, capable, and carrying grief of his own. He lost his wife and newborn son years ago, and he's been hiding behind hard work and Southern hospitality ever since. Renovating Julie's cottage is just a job. Until it isn't.But rebuilding gets complicated fast. Julie's estranged sister shows up with secrets. Her overbearing mother isn't far behind. And when her ex-husband lands in a hospital begging for another chance, Julie discovers the man who shattered her life still hasn't stopped lying.She came to Seagrove to fix a house. She's going to have to rebuild her whole life instead.Sweet front-porch chemistry. A Lowcountry island that feels like home. Sisters who fight with paint cans and forgive with tears. A happily ever after that's earned, not handed out.Starting over after betrayalFixer-upper cottage (and fixer-upper heart)Sight-unseen house purchaseHandsome Southern contractorForced proximity — estranged sistersFound family in a small coastal townSlow-burn, closed-door romanceKarma for the cheating exMeddling Southern motherHeat Level: Just kisses Tone: Emotional & Light Series: Book 1, South Carolina Sunsets Ending: HEA POV: Third Person Clean romance, no explicit contentPerfect for fans of Debbie Macomber, Mary Alice Monroe, and small-town Southern fiction with heart.Start the South Carolina Sunsets series today.