Author Description

At eighteen years-old, Sam DeCastro moved to Tallahassee to lend her recently widowed brother a hand in caring for his two small children. Five years later, Sam is their sole caregiver, her troubled brother increasingly fades from their family picture. Not a mother to the children that she raises. Not a wife to the brother that she's shackled to. Not a daughter to the parents that hardly loved her as a kid. Not a cookie-cutter example of the perky PTA parent-not with her tattoos and penchant for heavy music, twenty-three year-old Sam has practically no social life, no college degree, and no room for love in her life. Jake Turner is the counselor at Canopy Hopes where Sam's niece and nephew attend school. Jake had Sam once, and then he lost her. Six months later, when they reunite for a parent-teacher conference, sparks reignite. With Jake back in the picture, Sam must decide what she wants for her own life: Stay trapped in a platonic marriage with an absent husband of a brother? Strike out on her own, leave the kids behind, and never look back? Jake isn't sure that Sam sees a happy medium, but he wants her to. He knows that, if she doesn't, there won't be any room for him in her life.