Mending His Vow

With his deep-sea fishing boat billowing smoke, ex-Navy man and treasure hunter, Adam Parker has lost his only source of income. Even worse, upon returning home to Liberty Cove, he’s served with divorce papers he never saw coming. Now he's desperate to come up with a plan to save his marriage before he loses the one good thing he has left—the love of his life.

Years of unsuccessful fertility treatments put a damper on Julia Parker’s dream of becoming a mother. But those dreams shattered completely when her husband suggested they stop the treatments to avoid financial ruin. Feelings of abandonment quickly settled in when Adam started spending all his time working at sea. With a new teaching job waiting for her in another town, she’s ready to close this chapter of her life and move on.

Unwilling to give up on his marriage, Adam proposes a deal to his wife: spend one month living with him and his foster dog on the boat. If she still wants to walk away after that, he’ll sign the papers. Julia agrees, leaving Adam hoping he has enough time to convince her that their love is worth fighting for.

When mundane days at sea turn into a hunt for the treasure Adam’s been looking for all his life, Julia finds unexpected glimmers of the man she fell in love with. Unsure if he’s really as committed to a childless marriage as he claims, she wonders if this treasure hunt will add to her heartache or if they’ll discover something even more valuable than pirate gold.


** A sweet, small-town, second chance, wounded warrior romance series where everyone finds their happily ever after... even the dogs! Read as veterans find their way home to their first loves with the help of determined rescue dogs and a lovable matchmaker.

“Tell me this isn’t happening,” Adam said, standing behind his wife, an icy, numbing sensation creeping up his arm from the divorce papers he still clutched in his hand.

Julia said nothing. Her shoulders were rounded, and her head hung low.

“Julia, please.” He reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Look at me.” Adam’s heart sank when she turned to face him. The rims around her eyes were red, and she was biting down hard on her lower lip. It was a look she’d sported all too often over the past few years. She’d been crying, and even now was fighting back her tears.

They stood in silence, facing each other in the sand for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, he held the papers out to her. “You can’t be serious about this.”

Julia wrapped her arms around herself, shrinking from the paperwork. “You might not be willing to admit it right now. But this is what you really want.”

“What I want?” Adam’s chest heaved, struggling to catch enough breath to keep up with his pounding heart. “How can you even think that?”

Julia avoided his gaze. “It’s time we faced the facts and stop pretending, Adam.”

“Stop pretending what?” He took a step closer, but she retreated, maintaining their distance.

“You need time to process what’s happening,” she said, gazing at the sand at his feet. “We should talk about this later.”

“No, Julia. I’m holding divorce papers in my hand now. There is no later. What is it that we’re supposed to have been pretending about?”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his. They flashed with hurt and anger like he’d never seen in them before. “It’s time to stop pretending that we’re going to be okay. We’re not okay. It’s been a very long time since we were.”

“So, we’ll work on it. This”—he waved the papers in the air—“isn’t the answer.”

The fire in her eyes was snuffed out as she fixed her gaze somewhere in the distance. “You gave up on me and walked out,” Julia said, her voice so low Adam strained to hear it. “What’s left to work on?”

“Julia,” he choked out her name past the painful lump forming in his throat. “I never walked out on you. Where is this even coming from?”

Her eyes flooded with tears. “Do you know how many nights you’ve spent at home over the past nine months?”

“I—I don’t know. That’s not the kind of thing someone marks on a calendar.”

“I did,” she whispered. She looked up at him and captured his gaze. “Twenty-one nights at home since we faced the fact that we’re never going to become parents. Twenty-one nights out of nine months.”

Only twenty-one nights at home in all that time? Could that be right? He stopped and thought back over his busy schedule and swallowed hard against the nausea gathering in his stomach. The jobs had piled up quickly. He’d been so focused on the financial problems they’d solve that he’d accepted every one of them, not paying attention to how much they’d kept him away from home.

“Okay, if filing for a divorce is your way of trying to get my attention, mission accomplished,” he said. “I’m listening. Forget the bills. I’ll stop working so much.”

“You’ve always been a hard worker, Adam; I’m not faulting you for that. But something changed this past year. It goes way beyond work. It’s more like… avoidance.”

An icy chill ran down Adam’s spine. Homelife had been rough lately. More than rough, actually. It had been downright hard. The ups and downs—mostly downs—of their attempts to start a family had taken their toll. Emotions were raw and right at the surface. Julia had gone through the whole gamut of emotions the doctors had told them to expect. But what Adam hadn’t expected was his inability to help her through the pain.

No matter what he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to ease it. There was no denying that the sea had been his calm in the middle of their storm. While there was nothing he could do to ease the emotional devastation they’d experienced, at least he could go to work and try to revive the financial shipwreck of their lives.

“Julia, I never…” The denial died on his lips as he searched his heart to see if there was any truth in her accusation. Had he been avoiding the harsher realities of the tension between them by accepting every job he could get? If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that there was a part of him that preferred leaving his troubles behind on shore.

But only the troubles—never Julia. He’d never run away from her. He wasn’t about to surrender to a few pieces of paper—no matter what was printed on them.

Divorce was a seven-letter word, but so was courage. Those divorce papers only held as much power as he gave them, and there was no way he was going to sign away his future with the only woman he’d ever loved.