For Auld Lang Syne

At the ripe old age of thirty-six, Clay Wooten is tired of his law career and his insane, meddling family. Between constantly having to rescue his younger sister from her life-and-death antics and his parents' high-handed belief that they can manage his life better than he can, he wants out. At the very least, he wants to escape long enough to figure out on his own which direction to follow for his future. Harper Marasek had spent her teenage years wanting nothing more than to escape the stifling, suffocating small town she was born and raised in. When the charming and much-too-old-for-her Clay Wooten passed through Amethyst when she was fifteen years old, she found herself smitten...and a few years later she headed to New York to start college and learn how to be an independent woman. Harper secretly hoped to meet up with Clay and, though for the years she was in college they shared an off-and-on intimacy that could never be enough for her, she unfathomably finds after getting her degree that she misses Amethyst, her family and old friends, and the small town values she'd dismissed as old-fashioned when she was younger. With the offer of a job waiting for her in her hometown...and a marriage proposal from her high school boyfriend...Harper contacts Clay to say goodbye forever. Clay has spent a lifetime unwilling to allow himself to be shackled by anyone or anything except his family. Women have merely been a means to an end and unfettered pleasure for him. But, realizing he's losing Harper, he suddenly wants nothing more than to hold on tight to the best part of his life. On the pretense of getting away from his family, he suggests to Harper that they take a road trip, to end in Amethyst, for auld lang syne. Harper has resigned herself to never capturing Clay's heart, but she's loved him for as long as she can remember. How can she refuse his offer when her happiest moments have been spent with this man?