She came back after finding herself. She didn't expect to find him waiting.

Claire St. Martin left her small New Mexico town at twenty-nine, heartbroken, done with a man who never deserved her, and determined to build something better somewhere else. Seven years later, she’s back on her own terms: a veterinary practice to run, a father to come home to, and not a single complication she isn’t ready for.

Except Duke D’Amato.

At fifty, Duke is everything his son never was: steady, deliberate, and quietly certain of what he wants. He’s wanted Claire since the moment he met her, buried it because she was off-limits, and spent seven years not thinking about her with the particular discipline of a man who knows exactly what he’s refusing to think about.

She’s not off-limits anymore.

What starts as professional courtesy, the new vet, the largest ranch in the valley, a reason to be in the same room, becomes something neither of them can pretend is anything other than what it is. Duke doesn’t do things halfway. Claire doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know what she wants. And what they want is each other, with the full, honest, unmanaged desire of two people who have been circling this for a decade and are finally done being careful.

But Claire is his son’s ex. And his son is coming home.

The Better Man is a slow-burn, high-heat, deeply cozy romance about a woman who came home to her own life and found the right man already in it, and a man who waited long enough to know, without any doubt, that she was worth every year of the wait.

He doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t walk away from things worth having. And he has been waiting for her, in the particular patient way of a man who always knew exactly what he was waiting for.