Caught in the Axe (Maine Lumberjacks, #1)

by Daphne Elliot

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t do small towns. Personal growth in a small town is impossible. A person’s childhood indiscretions will haunt them forever, and people make judgments based on the actions of past generations.

I’d learned at a young age that the world always blamed the woman.

How could I grow and evolve when my mother, along with everyone else in this damn town, wanted to keep me stuck? They’d be content to stick me in the pretty girl box and never let me do anything. Because finding a rich husband and being a kept woman whose job it was to fuss over her man and please him while denying myself all of my own dreams was, to them, a goal I should be striving for. To me, a life like that was akin to living in a cage.

I’d spent decades living a careful, controlled life. Being strategic and always planning ahead. But this woman had taken all of my careful constraint, my strategy, and patience, and she’d ripped it all to shreds. With her, I was reduced to nothing but a beating heart. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.