Outrageous in Orchid — Sandra Sookoo

At times a second chance at love and friendship is tangled in grief until one learns to forgive. Ex-spy and Home Office agent Elliott Thorne—Viscount Aldridge and newly minted Earl of Foxborough—is still a bachelor at the age of forty-one. Now that he's finally gotten his sister married off, he can turn his attention to perhaps entering the same state for himself, but oddly enough, he doesn't know how, so a harvest ball at his country estate seems like a good start. Now that Lavinia Greenwich's period of mourning her husband is over, she is finally free to find the man who was responsible for his eventual death—his best friend. Widowed at one and thirty isn't where she wished to be at this point in her life, but there is nothing for it. When an unexpected invitation arrives for a house party from the very man she's wished revenge upon, she accepts with alacrity. Recognition sparks and desire flares the moment the pair meets during a walking party, but old hurts and secrets cause instant animosity. Each hold the other responsible for the death of the man who binds them together, until one startling afternoon in a sun-drenched meadow when vulnerability leads to something unexpected and hopeful. If they wish to grasp at a romance for the ages, they need to practice forgiveness and trust—of each other and themselves.