Amy Daws
On Sale Date: June 17, 2025
9781335475862
Hardcover
$30.00 USD
384 pages
ABOUT THE BOOK:
"Deliciously funny and spicy." -Elsie Silver, New York Times bestselling author
Alone and Looking to Bone!
Loudmouthed Mountain Man Seeks Fiery Woman to Grow Old With.
I might look like a tall, tattooed, bearded neanderthal...but like an onion, I have layers. Swipe right if you like a proud cat daddy who catches feelings after direct eye contact.
All I wanted was a casual plus-one to my brother's destination wedding, but those idiots on my family tree hacked my dating profile and sabotaged my quest for the perfect weekend fling. Now I'm stuck on a tropical vacation with only my hand to keep me company.
Until I’m forced to share a room with the bane of my existence: my sister-in-law’s best friend.
Dakota has hated me for the past seven years. I wasn’t losing much sleep over her screaming rants because she was some other guy’s problem. Or she was, until she got divorced.
Being stuck in paradise with a woman who loathes your very existence doesn't sound hot, but after an unexpected moment in our shared palapa, she starts screaming at me in a different way.
What happens in paradise stays in paradise. That is, until Dakota shows up on my mountain with a proposition: be her wingman to help her regain her pre-divorce confidence.
Suddenly, Dakota’s not just the
person I love to fight with. She’s the
woman I want everything with.
Perfect for fans of:
●
Enemies
to Lovers
●
Small
Town Romance / Vacation Romances
●
Quirky
Animals
●
Meddling
family
● Meghan Quinn and Tessa Bailey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
National bestselling author Amy Daws writes
spicy love stories that take place in America, as well as across the pond. When
Amy is not writing, she’s likely making charcuterie boards from her home in
South Dakota, where she lives with her daughter and husband.
SOCIAL LINKS:
Author website: https://amydawsauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amydawsauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amydawsauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amydawsauthor/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/amydawsauthor/
BUY LINKS:
HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/seven-year-itch-amy-daws?variant=43171232415778
Bookshop.org:
https://bookshop.org/a/397/9781335081612
B&N:
http://aps.harpercollins.com/hc?isbn=9781335081612&retailer=barnesandnoble
Books A Million:
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/9781335081612
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9781335081612&tag=hcg-02-20
Prologue
ALONE AND LOOKING TO BONE!
LOUDMOUTHED MOUNTAIN MAN
SEEKS FIERY
FEMALE TO STEAM UP HIS LOG
CABIN
Calder, 35 years
old
🎓 Fletcher
Mountain University
💼 Full-time
cat daddy with a side-hustle in screwing and nailing
📍 14 miles
away
Height: 6'3"
at the doctor, 6'5" at the bar
Eyes: Blue and Full
of Feelings
Body: Toned and
overly inked to conceal my real personality
Personality: My mom
says I’m great
🍆 Size: Not
as big as my brother Luke’s but honorable mention
What
I do on a typical day: Mountainside strolls with my cat strapped to my chest.
Self-summary:
I might be tall,
tattooed, bearded, and all the classic things one might look for in a rugged
mountain man . . . but like an onion plucked from the soil, you must peel back the
dirty layers to see the moist inner belly that shows my true essence.
I’m not a “go with
the flow” kind of guy. I catch feelings with direct eye contact. If you don’t
text me back within an hour, I’ll probably cry a little before showing up to
your house to see if you’re cheating on me.
I once had a girl
hold the door open for me, and afterward I asked her, “What are we?”
The other day, a
bartender poured me the wrong beer and let me drink it for free . . . it was a
weird way for him to propose, but I said yes.
If you like the
taste of my potent onion, swipe right and let’s giggle and make some soup
together.
Chapter 1
CAT DADDY
Calder
“What the actual fuck,” I state out loud, and my cat, Milkshake, lets out a
high-pitched meow from where she sits on my naked chest. I sit up, clutching
her black-and-white fur to me for comfort as I use my free hand to scroll
through my Tinder account. “Have I been hacked?”
My eyes scan over
the contents of my dating profile, knowing damn well I didn’t write a single
word of this. Catch feelings with direct
eye contact? I don’t catch feelings. I catch boners with a light breeze. I
catch ladies’ attention with my tattoos and muscles.
Feelings? Fuck
feelings!
“Can Tinder
profiles get hacked?” I ask Milkshake who tips her head up to me and drags her
sandpaper tongue over my beard. “Who gives a fuck about someone’s dating life
enough to mess with their profiles? There has to be way cooler things to hack.”
I quickly check my
other hookup apps that I keep armed and ready at all times and see the same
long-term relationship bullshit spewing out of every one of them. Make some soup together? My God. This is
the complete opposite of what I look for in these apps. I’m very clear about
that. Who the hell did this?
I reread the
penis-size line, and my eyes narrow. “Fucking
Luke,” I growl and stand up from the sofa to stomp across the knotty pine
flooring of my small cabin. I glance out the window that faces uphill to see if
his truck is here as I drop a soft kiss to my cat’s ear. “Someone’s gonna die
today,” I coo in a saccharine voice to my girl.
Without putting a
shirt on, I throw the baby carrier on my chest and stuff Milkshake inside. That
was the only part of the hacked profile that was true, but dammit, little fuzz
loves being outside. And there’s way too much wildlife around here to let her
run free. So when my future sister-in-law, Trista, gave me a cat carrier to
help Milkshake enjoy the great outdoors safely, that meant I turned into a big,
tatted mountain man who wears a cat more often than not.
Come at me.
Fuzz gets to enjoy
the fresh air and mountain scenery, and I get to sleep at night, not worrying
she’s going to get eaten by the coyotes that roam the dense forest surrounding
us.
Milkshake secure, I
storm out in the bristly early March temperatures, the cool air doing its best
to cool down my fiery temper as I make my way to Luke’s to tear him a new asshole,
but an errant thought stops me in my tracks. I pivot to look downhill at the
cabin on the other side of my place. Maybe the Luke dick-size comparison on my
profile was a diversion to get me off my older brother Wyatt’s trail. I
certainly have payback coming from Wyatt after posting a Help Wanted ad for him
last year at the local bar when he was looking for a baby mama.
But I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.
The fucker is
probably tucked inside his architecturally obnoxious cabin cuddling his fiancée
and their nearly three-month-old daughter, Stevie, in front of his stone
fireplace, watching the snow melt outside the window.
Gives me the ick.
My brother went
from never wanting a wife so much that he was looking for a surrogate to have a
baby for him to now preparing to fly us all to Mexico so we can watch him marry
his incubator-turned-fiancée in a couple of weeks.
It’s enough to make
a guy puke.
Not that I dislike
Trista. She’s cool, and I’m low-key obsessed with my niece that she gave birth
to a few months ago. The two of them are fine additions to Fletcher Mountain
along with the pick-and-mix assortment of farm animals that keep showing up in
the red barn located down the drive.
But my two brothers
and I made a pact nearly a decade ago: us three and this mountain. No one else.
Now we have a
soon-to-be wife for Wyatt, a baby niece who has us all wrapped around her
finger, eighteen random animals including a horse with a tongue deformity, and
probably a fucking partridge in a pear tree somewhere in that barn.
Wyatt is a sellout.
My eyes shift to
movement in the distance, and I see Trista emerge from the Dutch doors of the
barn. She has a baby carrier strapped to her chest, and I decide to let Wyatt
live for a few more minutes while I investigate.
Feeling Milkshake
purr against my chest, I beeline straight to the barn, my boots crunching over
melted snow as I intercept Trista walking back up toward her and Wyatt’s cabin.
“What do you know?”
I bark, my eyes narrowing on my brother’s woman.
Trista smiles as
she glances down at my pussy. “I knew Milkshake would love that cat carrier,
for one.”
I dig my calloused
fingers into Milkshake’s cheek, and her purr quickens as she nuzzles into my
chest. “This isn’t about my cat, and you know it.”
Trista’s smile
drops, and she hits me with a scolding look. “Calder, it’s barely nine in the
morning. I had this feral little animal on my tits four times last night.
You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“My dating profiles
have all been fucked with, and I want to know who did it. My guess is your
soon-to-be husband.”
“What does it say?”
she asks, her eyes narrowing curiously.
I pull my phone out
of my pocket to show her the proof, and her face lights up as laughter bubbles
out of her. “This definitely looks like payback from Wyatt.”
“That’s what I
thought,” I grind out as I turn toward my brother’s house. He must pay for his
crime. “Sorry, Stevie. Your dad is going to be out of commission for a while.”
“Although you know
who else it could have been . . .” Trista’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I
turn on my heel with a frown as she adds, “Your niece.”
“Stevie’s too damn
young to be on Tinder,” I exclaim, my eyes dropping down to the mound of
chestnut curls sticking out from her little stocking cap. Her hair is wild and
unruly just like Trista’s.
“Not this niece,
you moron,” Trista bites back a bit too comfortably. She’s definitely not the
type of sister-in-law you can fuck with. She puts me and my brother Luke in our
place whenever the mood strikes her. I kind of love that about her.
She pats her
daughter’s back and adds, “I’m talking about Everly.”
My brows furrow.
“Everly is at college in Ireland.”
“They have the
internet there, Calder.”
My mind races with
this new possibility I hadn’t considered. How did my nineteen-year-old niece
hack my dating profiles? In fairness, my password might be easy to guess. Milkshake1234 isn’t exactly a
high-security option. And Everly was the one with the idea to do the baby mama
Help Wanted ad for Wyatt last year when he was looking for a surrogate. I just
helped her jazz it up a bit.
I shake my head and
refocus. “But why would she sabotage my dating profiles?”
“Maybe she wants
you to find a nice girl to bring to
the wedding, not some rando from Tinder? I mean . . . we all have to hang with
whoever you and Luke bring to this villa we’re staying at in Mexico. Not to
mention Stevie will be there, your mother, and your eight-year-old nephew,
Ethan. A random Tinder hookup doesn’t sound super family-friendly.”
“Trust me, whoever
I find won’t be there for the family vibes.” I waggle my brows suggestively.
Trista rolls her
eyes and rubs Stevie’s bottom. “Can you not speak that way in front of my
daughter, please?”
“My daughter
doesn’t mind one bit.” I match Trista’s protective stance with my own fur baby.
I move closer to lean in and whisper into my sleeping niece’s ear. “It’s best
you learn young, lil Stevemeister, that your uncle Calder is a stallion.”
Trista groans and
makes her way up toward their house. “Calder, I don’t know who messed with your
profiles, but if you have to go to Tinder to find someone to bring to our
wedding, maybe you don’t really need to bring anyone at all.”
My eyes narrow on
my retreating future sister-in-law. She might have a point about Tinder not
being the right place for me to find a date for a destination wedding. But
she’s wrong about me not bringing a date. Luke already has his plus-one lined
up, and our oldest brother Max down in Boulder has been wifed up for years.
Wyatt will be busy being a groom. If I don’t bring a plus-one, that means I’ll
be my mother’s date, and as much as I love my dear mother . . . I can’t stomach
the idea of dancing with her or my niece all night long. I need to find someone
to bring with me on this damn trip.
I turn and gaze at
the tiny mountain town that rests at the bottom of our long and winding gravel
lane. Perhaps Tinder is casting too wide a net. Maybe it’s time to look a bit
closer to home. Jamestown ain’t much to look at. It’s a little hamlet of
Boulder—an isolated and somewhat dilapidated sanctuary for weirdos who want to
stay weird. It’s full of loners. Trailblazers. People who don’t want to be
found and don’t mind a bit of inconvenience—be that limited grocery supplies,
weather that snows us in for a week, or cell service that goes in and out.
Jamestown is our sanctuary. And it’s the place Wyatt, Luke, and I have called
home for over a decade now.
Unfortunately, the
population doesn’t even hit three hundred souls, so the pickings are slim. My
brothers and I learned that quickly when we first moved out here. Things ended
real messy back then, and the three of us made a pact to not test the waters in
Jamestown ever again . . . but surely enough time has passed now. I mean hell,
Wyatt’s on his way to getting married anyways. Maybe it’s time to shop local
again.
Excerpted from SEVEN YEAR ITCH by Amy
Daws. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Daws. Published by Canary Street Press, an
imprint of HarperCollins.
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