I'd always been a loner, the label of "bad boy" always following me around because I was tattooed and pierced—although, it wasn't like anyone ever saw my piercing. People saw me as some kind of delinquent, when I was anything but, and they were too afraid or wary to try to get to know me. And as the years went on, I accepted that was my reality... until I had enough.

So, with nothing else to lose, no family or friends, I decided to make a change. I packed up, moved to the Colorado mountain town of Sweetheart, and started my own business as a tattoo artist.

Seemed like the perfect distraction, the ideal way to reinvent myself. And it was working out for the last three years.

I'd been content with what I had and never wanted more than that. That was until I saw her, and I realized exactly what I'd been missing in my life.

Because she wasn't in it.

Flora Harrison, owner of the brand-new coffee shop that opened up right across from my tattoo parlor, was everything I didn't know I needed in my life. And I couldn't stop from inserting myself into hers until there was no doubt that I was meant to be there.

That she was meant to be mine.

If nothing else, I was persistent, and no one and nothing would dissuade me from claiming the woman of my dreams. Not even her.