Most Likely to Tempt Love by Mary Waterford

*Previously published as Most Likely to… Tempt Love (2022) by Mary Waterford. This Second Edition has been extensively revised and expanded from the original novella.*

Nate O’Hare is my brother’s best friend, my teenage obsession, and the man who saw 18 year old me naked.
Then he left our small town and I didn’t hear from him for ten years.
Now he’s back. Hotter, broodier, sleeping in my childhood bed at my parents’ house.
And when he looks at me with those searing blue eyes, every nerve ending catches fire.
He says he’s not staying, that starting something wouldn’t be fair.
I say that sounds like a him problem.
My friends say I need a plan.
They’re not wrong. Operation ‘Bang Nate’ is a go.
But the closer I get to him, the more I see what he’s hiding. The shadows he carries. The pain that he won’t let me see. And the quiet, stubborn belief that none of this is meant for him.
How do you fight for a future with someone who doesn’t believe he deserves to stay?