Summer Return — Elise K. Ackers

He'll never come back to stay, unless someone asks him to...

Funerals can bring people together who are best kept apart. Ethan Foster, home to mourn his sisterâ€"inâ€"law, finds himself as unwelcome as ever in the town that once meant the world to him. For more than a decade he's been saddled with a bad reputation â€" a drunk, a deserter â€" and he's lived with it, will keep living with it, because the only way to clear his name is to share his secrets. But the secrets are not his to tell and their telling would destroy the family he loves and the woman he's never forgiven himself for leaving behind.

Samantha O'Hara once loved freely, but now she doesn't. Now she leaves before she's left and keeps her vulnerabilities tucked away. But when Ethan Foster walks back into town, finally looking at her the way she always wanted him to, she finds her hardâ€"won armour developing chinks. She can't â€" won't â€" have anything to do with any reinvention Ethan is going through. But maybe this isn't a new Ethan... Maybe he's the same Ethan she fell in love with all those years ago.

And maybe, just maybe, this time their love will be strong enough to make him stay.

*Originally published as Ask Me To Stay. Expanded and revised edition.