Dear Maeve

Contemporary romance with something to lose

Contemporary romance follows love in a recognisable present-day world. In our collection, the pressure can come from a friendship, a family loyalty, work or a different idea of the future. The question is what these two particular people are willing to choose for each other.

For immediate attraction across an honest disagreement, try Where the River Narrows. For later-life desire complicated by an adult son’s friendship, choose What We Keep for Ourselves. Both are Steamy. For Warm romance, The Plus-One Clause offers a witty pretend relationship, while Before We Call It Love follows longtime friends facing a departure.

Warm stories fade to black; Steamy stories keep more sensual and emotional detail on the page without graphic description. The comparisons below explain how each book differs, with content notes on its story page and a direct link to chapter 1. Every chapter of each novel is free.

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The Quiet Consort

Completed · 15 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want a royal romance in which the heroine keeps her own work and her own voice.

Interpreter Talia Novak corrects Crown Prince Edvard's treaty speech when a single changed word could weaken protections for port workers. He returns to ask what she heard, and their growing attraction makes public duty feel suddenly personal.

A Steamy romance about language and power, with a professional boundary that both leads take seriously. Unlike the workplace rivals here, Talia and Edvard begin by trying to make the same agreement honest; the question is whether they can choose each other without making her disappear into his role.

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The Empty Place Beside Me

Completed · 18 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want desire to complicate a friendship the heroine cannot simply leave behind.

Adela hosts an annual supper for the friends who miss Sennen. Oswin, the man she promised Sennen to exclude, arrives with an invitation from Sennen's mother and a chair of his own. He remembers what Adela dislikes. When she asks where he would choose to sit, his answer is beside her.

A tender, physically charged coastal romance about wanting a place in your own life. Unlike the longtime friends in Before We Call It Love, these two begin across a promise made after a breakup. Steamy, with grief and non-graphic recollections of serious illness.

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The Other Half of the Dance

Completed · 18 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want two people in their forties finding room for desire in a life already full of other people.

Coralia is a print finisher who helps run the Friday Rooms. Gethin schedules buses and has opened a rival Sunday dance. He remembers the biscuits she gave away and asks her to dance while her closest friend is still pinning on their club badge.

A community romance about being wanted for your company, with a valued friendship caught in the middle. Where The Empty Place Beside Me carries a promise to a lost friend, this book makes a living friendship part of every difficult choice. Steamy, with sustained non-graphic intimacy.

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The Long Con

Completed · 18 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want two investigators whose attraction threatens opposing assignments.

Delilah is investigating a recovery firm for seven customers. Ash is there to find the employee passing information outside it. They start by refusing the same false promise, without knowing what the other has been paid to do.

Private jokes become a dangerous kind of trust in a contemporary romance about who gets to know the truth, and who gets to choose what happens next.

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The Boardroom Truce

Completed · 16 chapters · Warm
Every chapter free

Read this if you want rivals, a deadline and a grudge with a date on it.

A turnaround consultant who never takes a client with history is requested by name by the CEO who tore her work apart in front of eleven partners when she was twenty-one. She has six weeks inside his company.

The sharpest of the rivals books: boardroom argument as flirtation, with the company's survival on the table.

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Everything We Left in Edinburgh

Completed · 18 chapters · Warm
Every chapter free

Read this if you want the one who walked away to be the one telling it.

Ten years after she left him waiting in the chapel, she is the negotiator sent to buy his family's estate, and he will not talk terms until she has stayed the week.

Told entirely from her side, on the East Lothian coast, with a merger deadline and the whole house watching.

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Harmony in Secret

Completed · 18 chapters · Warm
Every chapter free

Read this if you want a love song that was always true.

Two songwriters have sung the same love song side by side to sold-out arenas for three years; on night fifty-eight of the tour it stops being a performance, and they disagree about who keeping quiet protects.

Set on the road with a five-piece folk band, a label recording the last show, and twelve thousand people singing the last line back.

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The Court We Choose

Completed · 19 chapters · Warm
Every chapter free

Read this if you want two women who can anticipate a shot but cannot yet name what they need.

Saskia and Mara start as doubles partners. An injury takes Saskia out of their next match, and another player offers Mara a place on court.

The collection's sports romance, told in Saskia's voice; its real contest is how to choose freely when a team is no longer guaranteed.

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Before We Call It Love

Completed · 18 chapters · Warm
Every chapter free

Read this if you want longtime friends who finally name what they want.

Nina is leaving London for six months of conservation work. Felix has been the person she calls when something breaks for eleven years, and neither can keep pretending the closeness is simple friendship.

A quieter, physically charged book about two self-employed adults who must choose time together without giving up the work that makes them themselves.

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What We Keep for Ourselves

Completed · 18 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want later-life desire with room for family, humour and a life of her own.

Retired optician Tressa wants an evening beside Elian that has nothing to do with looking after her adult son. Elian is that son's friend. At the swimming pool and along the coast, their private jokes become dates neither can pretend are simply exercise.

A contemporary romance with an older heroine of sixty-two and a hero of forty-nine. Both have independent lives; attraction complicates existing loyalties rather than rescuing either from loneliness. Steamy, with sensual and emotional intimacy; divorce and adult family conflict are discussed.

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Where the River Narrows

Completed · 18 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want desire between two adults who cannot agree about the place they love.

Fishing skipper Veda wants Roscoe, a furniture restorer campaigning for a no-fishing area on her working grounds. An invited kiss becomes a date away from both their groups, then an evening in his workshop. Their attraction is mutual; their public positions remain opposed.

Set beside a fictional English estuary, with a heroine of forty-six and a hero of forty-four. The work is practical, the humour dry and the wanting direct. Steamy, with sustained non-graphic intimacy; no financial or professional authority binds the lovers.

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The Months Between Us

Completed · 15 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want immediate attraction between two adults who want different kinds of ordinary life.

Anouk is a book indexer with six weeks on the coast and an autumn abroad already booked. Orson teaches pottery and wants someone beside him on unremarkable days. A picnic, an imperfect bowl and supper in her rented flat make leaving a date they can no longer treat casually.

Anouk is forty and Orson forty-three, with independent homes and incomes. Unlike the longtime friends in Before We Call It Love, they are discovering each other for the first time. Steamy, with shared humour, chosen travel and discussion of a past divorce.

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Before the Last Bell

Completed · 20 chapters · Steamy
Every chapter free

Read this if you want attraction held at a real boundary, then tested by the life beyond it.

Lavinia moves a chair aside so Hugo can hear why she stays late at the centre. He has six weeks left in his temporary vows, and both refuse to make their longing into a secret affair or an argument for his future.

A contemporary romance of independent adults in their thirties, told through humour, restraint and what they choose after a valued religious commitment ends. Steamy, with sustained non-graphic intimacy.

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