Secondhand Secrets

Blurb:
 
 Agathe Santos made a vow. To love her child until the very last heartbeat. Hers. Not theirs…Four years after her daughter's death, Agathe knows that hope is for losers and so is love. Work has become her greatest escape. But even the world’s loneliest woman can’t hide forever…Reluctant CEO Luke Tindall wants a wife, a family, a love that will last. He might have hired Agathe to save his company and deal with his goofy brother, but from the very first meeting, he has desired far more than her sharp wit and tireless work ethic. If only her past wasn’t such a big secret. If only that secret wasn’t a wound she didn’t want healed. Maybe then she’d share more with him than her body.But even as Agathe can no longer deny her feelings for Luke, love is not something she thinks she deserves. Now she is left with an impossible choice: lose Luke forever, or lose the one thing that makes her life worth living.*Book One in the “Love At Last” Series, however can still be read as a standalone.
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 The Last Heartbeat:Oh, God. This is it. I’m going to die in this paddock.
 Agathe Santos snapped her clouded gaze to the arrow lodged in the gum tree behind her, nock still quivering. Her heart squeezed. She wanted to be sick. Holy hell! This wasn’t how her night was supposed to end! As medieval and whimsical as death by arrow point sounded, she wanted to stay firmly alive in modern times.
 She spun around, panting and blood coursing through her; the smell of midnight damp rose from the ground. A high-pitched whoosh had skimmed past her ear, followed by a small gust of air, which could only mean one thing. The freaking arrow had only just missed her head.
 A sudden chill shuddered through her veins. The loss of her contact lenses meant she couldn’t see shit, all because she’d been forced to rub smoke from her eyes due to the mismanaged fire pit at Uncle Raymond’s annual family reunion. A family reunion she would have gladly missed for the fifth year running.
 “Who’s there?” Her voice cracked.
 Despite her squinting, no one stepped through the night, and her active imagination conjured thoughts of a vigilante marksman with lunatic tendencies, a person searching isolated fields for someone to murder at arrow point. That someone being her.
 Her stomach clenched, threatening to spill her half-digested pinot from the party. If only she could see properly. If only she hadn’t been so eager to earn another four years of freedom from her family’s sympathetic looks and their questions about her well-being…
 And sure, her Argentinean relatives meant well, but unlike them, she wasn’t in a hurry to forget.
 Why on earth hadn’t she just stayed in Melbourne? This was exactly what she got for leaving the office. For traipsing out to the sticks and listening to people who complained about her long work hours. What the hell did they know? They weren’t the ones getting shot at.
 The sleepy town of Roseford sure as heck was no place for a city-loving woman like her.
 If only she’d just freaking ignored them and hadn’t misplaced her cabin key, then she wouldn’t be this poor sap fumbling about on a near-freezing autumn night, with some crazy lurking nearby, now would she?
 A silhouette appeared in the farthest reaches of her vision. A man bounding toward her. She unlocked her knees, ready to fall. Ready to plead for her life.
 “Are you okay?” The voice echoed toward her. A deep voice. A strong voice. One that held a refined English accent and rumbled across the electrified surface of her nerves.
 Her world froze, but she forced a shaky nod. She couldn’t appear weak. Refined accent or not, the silhouette’s verbal show of concern didn’t lull her.
 The backs of her eyes ached, and she squinted for more detail. Pale skin glowed through her defective vision. Thick, espresso-dark waves curled over a square hairline. An archery bow dangled from the tips of long, brawny fingers.
 Her muscles turned to loose jelly. She waited for an apology, some sign he wouldn’t hurt her. All she got was the crunch of leaves under his feet, and Pale Man moving closer.
 “What the hell are you doing out here?” His rough tone halted her breath; his full, dark brows furrowed. She had near-perfect detail now, and bottle-green eyes glinted in the moonlight.
 “Keys.” She waved her tiny handbag with so much vigor, the entire contents clanged to the ground. She offered a cutesy cringe, vying for mercy, while a cold sensation ran through her body. “I lost my keys during a walk out here earlier today, and now I’m locked out of my cabin.”
 The hollowness in her voice sent an imaginary fire through her chest, awakening her natural tendency for defense. She’d spent four years wishing she were anything but alive, so now that her existence seemed at risk, maybe she had room to push her luck. She jutted out her chin and threw down her challenge. “And what the hell are you doing out here?”
 She stared him down, or more precisely up, since her five-feet-seven inches didn’t compete with his six-foot-plus build.
 He returned a heated glare, one she imagined could set water to fire if he concentrated hard enough, and he blinked. One. Two. Three times before his attention flicked over her body.
 She went numb.
 Maybe she shouldn’t have tested this madman’s conviction.
 Maybe she did want to live after all.
 Though even having that desire added churning to her queasy belly.
 “I own the main house across the paddock.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “That makes me your weekend host.” The main house was, in fact, in that direction. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came out here for a walk and some archery.”
 Her shoulders drew back, and she turned toward the arrow-pierced tree. Archery? Who in