Sawdust And Sparks

Grace Ellis has been the only vet in the district for eleven years. She has never once asked anybody for help.

Lucy Doyle arrives in Juniper Ridge in June with a borrowed toolbox, a twelve-month placement, and one rule she has never said out loud: be useful before anyone asks, and never mistake a good thing for a thing you get to keep.

Her first job is six weeks on Grace Ellis's land, building the barn Grace has been putting off for years.

Grace is thirty-nine. She takes every call at every hour, she has spent six years making sure this town never has to think about her at all, and she does not need a twenty-six-year-old carpenter in her field at seven every morning with her sleeves pushed up, getting everything right.

The barn goes up anyway.

So does the temperature.

But Lucy's placement runs out in June, and neither of them will say so out loud. And when a reference Lucy never asked for opens a door out of Juniper Ridge, both women have to work out whether staying is something you are given or something you choose.

All Lucy has ever wanted is for somebody to phone her at two in the morning and not apologise for it.

All Grace has to do is ask.

A slow-burn, age-gap sapphic romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Book Two in the Women of Juniper Ridge series. Fully standalone.

Age gap · forced proximity · small-town found family · competence and slow-burn tension · one very stubborn llama · explicit, consent-led heat