Always Mine

Vivi Thomas is single for the first time since she was sixteen, and she wants to learn what she has been missing. She knows who she wants to teach her: Niko West, who has been her closest friend since they were in kindergarten together.

Niko works as a firefighter in Honey Mountain, a small town where everyone likes him, and he steers clear of commitment. He has always held that the one thing he can count on is his friendship with Vivi. He agrees to her proposal only with reluctance, and the arrangement stops being casual much sooner than either of them expects.

As friendship turns into something physical and emotional, Vivi has to decide whether staying friends can still satisfy her. Niko has his own problem. He has kept his painful past from her, including a strained relationship with his family and the return of his father.

The book is a small-town, friends-to-lovers contemporary romance with open-door sex scenes, and it opens the Honey Mountain series, which goes on to give each of Vivi's sisters a book. Content includes child abuse, an alcoholic parent and teen pregnancy. The open question is whether Niko will let Vivi all the way in.