Undertow of Secrets

She buried her name to survive. The tide just brought her past back to shore.Three years ago, Mara Kessler arrived in the quiet coastal town of Sable Cove carrying nothing but a stranger's careful instructions and a name that wasn't hers. She built a life out of flour and butter and small, ordinary mercies - a bakery the whole town loves, a Sunday pew four rows from the back, close enough to belong and far enough to run. She told herself it was enough. She told herself she was safe.Then a storm brings a body ashore, and Detective Sam Calloway - steady, grieving, and far too observant for Mara's comfort - starts asking the kind of quiet, patient questions that have a way of unraveling four years of careful lies. The dead man carried no ID. He carried a scrap of paper with this town's name on it, and a secret only one woman alive can explain.As Sam's investigation closes in, so does something far more dangerous: the man Mara testified against, the empire he never stopped protecting, and the enforcer he's sent to finish what should have ended in a parking garage four years ago. Every question Sam asks pulls her closer to exposure. Every answer she refuses pulls him closer to the truth about the woman he's falling for.What's Inside:¿ A hidden-identity heroine with a past dangerous enough to have killed the one man who knew it¿ A methodical, honorable detective hero who won't stop digging - even when the truth costs him his heart¿ A small town that turns out to be sturdier, and more loving, than any hiding place ever was¿ A slow-burn, fade-to-black clean romance grounded in trust rather than temptation¿ A faith thread carried by community and quiet conviction, never preached¿ A storm-lashed lighthouse climax where the past finally catches up - for good or for ruinPerfect for readers of clean, faith-affirming romantic suspense who love a coastal small-town setting, a heroine who is stronger than her fear, and a hero worth trusting with the truth. A satisfying, fully wrapped standalone with no cliffhanger - just secrets, sacrifice, and the kind of love that shows up and stays.