Fated Beginnings Books 1-6

Passionate, Wholesome Sweet and Clean Romances with a bit of grit and intrigue.

If you enjoy a well written story, relatable, sweet and funny characters and a whole mess of tropes and twists, you might adore the romances occurring in the fictional Small Town of Fated, Missouri.

💖 Enemies-to-Lovers

💖 Workplace Romance

💖 Age Gap

💖 Marriage of Convenience

💖 Amnesia

💖 Friends-to-Lovers

💖 Royalty/Fairytale Retelling

💖 WITSEC

💖 Neighbor/Roommates

💖 Love(able) Love Triangle

💖 Forced Proximity

💖 Grumpy/Sunshine

..and more!

***💗***

Chewing on his lower lip, [Gavin] exhales his next words before he loses the nerve to let them fly. “So…you’re single now.”

When his gaze travels back up her face to meet her eyes, she’s studying him, too. And the look in her eyes is a heady mix of surprise and, he dares to think, unabashed curiosity.

The waiter arrives with their plates on a rolling tray, laying their meals down carefully before each of them. The bucket of ice bearing their champagne bottle is just as methodically situated at the end of their table, along with two glass flutes.

The server partially fills each of their glasses before departing; and Zahara is uncannily quiet as she slips the white linen napkin off the table and positions it upon her lap.

She doesn’t look at him as she busies herself with arranging her napkin.  “We’ve talked a lot about me, Gavin. I think it’s only fair you reciprocate. How long will you be in Fated? I’m assuming you have a girlfriend waiting for your return?”

Shaking his head slowly, he waits until she raises her eyes to meet his.

“Nope, Zahara,” Gavin responds, his lips stretching into a lopsided smile. “Tonight, I’m all yours.”

--- 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 "Lying Together" (an Age Gap Fake Relationship Small Town romance from the Fated Beginnings series)

***💗***

“You always order the second thing, Naomi. Every single time, when you’ve talked about what you’re thinking of getting, you get the second thing.”

He slides the menus back toward her. “And I’m hungry,” he adds. “So I figured I’d help us waste a little less time.”

Naomi narrows her eyes. Lips pressed together, she grabs her menu, settles herself back into her seat and ignores Arik until the waitress arrives.

Naomi sniffs and orders the Chicken and Waffles.

Later, when their plates arrive, Arik notes the look of longing she casts toward his meal.

Reaching forward, he grasps her plate and switches her meal for his.

She looks up at him, barely restraining her smirk, though her quarter-moon eyes tell the tale of her state of amusement.

“Whatever,” she huffs. “You’re messing with my process, Man,” she warns, her brow puckering even as she bows her head, extending her hand across the table.

Arik doesn’t restrain his smirk as he places his hand in hers. Bowing his head, as well, he listens to Naomi’s voice as she says grace over their meal.

She squeezes his hand before releasing it.

Looking up, Arik sees her regarding him, her lips curved into a soft smile.

“You want some of my lasagna?” she asks, flatly, eyeing him as she nudges forward the plate of food he’d sacrificed on her behalf.

“Sure, if you’ll take some of my chicken and waffles” he agrees, mirroring her offer by pushing forward his newly acquired meal.

“Deal,” she consents, allowing her full smile to shine through and melt Arik from the inside out.

As she busies herself with sawing off a generous portion of her meal to place upon his plate, she doesn’t notice him melting into a puddle before her.

But then, she never does.

--- 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 "Three Wrongs to Get Wright" (a Friends to Lovers Second Chance Small Town romance from the Fated Beginnings series)

***💗***

The person standing before her must be the most beautiful man ever created.

The few images that’d floated to the surface of Marlia’s mind had seemed too good to be true.

Now, she sees that they don’t even do him justice.

The way he’s staring at her, though, blue eyes cold and flat; it causes dread to pool in her stomach.

She does not want to go home with him.

“Uhm, Lucas?” she queries, dismay tugging her brow low.

“Yeah,” he croaks, then is seemingly nudged by one of the agents who had informed her of her husband being out of town and being on his way to check on her.

Somehow, Marlia doesn’t get the impression that he’s overly worried…or overjoyed to see her.

Her mouth goes dry.

So the only thing, the only person she remembers, is a husband who apparently cares so little for her?

Maybe her brain had decided it wanted to forget; maybe it’d been trying to give her a chance at a fresh start.

--- 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 "Forget About Faking It" (a Marriage of Convenience WITSEC Small Town romance from the Fated Beginnings series)

***💗***

“What was your favorite course?” Dominique asks.

“There was one on clinical mental health counseling that I really enjoyed.”

“Whoa. That’s a pretty intense course to just take on a whim.”

Rafael turns to her, a smirk on his face. “Not so much a whim. My town has a wellness retreat where I had the chance to intern with them my senior year in highschool, before starting college. I guess that time really impacted me.”

“Apparently. Have you thought about pursuing more studies in that area? And what do you think impacted you the most about the internship? Oh, and what did you like most about the class?”

He laughs. “That’s a lot of questions. Let me see.” Craning his head to one side, he begins to chew on his upper lip. “Okay, well, what I liked about the internship was the chance to meet a whole lot of different people with different stories. I really loved how the counselors were able to adjust their sessions according to the needs of the individuals they were helping. I liked that they were there to help them in the first place. I guess my family has always been kinda big on helping people, serving others. The class just gave me tools to understand some of the methods and approaches the counselors used.”

“So you were able to actually sit in on people’s sessions?”

“Not frequently or anything. With the clients’ permission I sat in on a handful of sessions. But they were all so different. And at the time the retreat was just really getting its sports physical therapy program going, so that was cool to be able to sit in on some of those sessions.” He looks her way, quickly clarifying, “Because the retreat also offers counseling in addition to the physical therapy.”

“Wow,” Dominique gapes. “What kind of place is this? It sounds really nice.”

“It is. It’s actually pretty well known in the wellness community but they only have so much room per year. I think I heard something about them considering expanding to offer services to more people. It’s called Fated Intensive Therapy Retreat. ‘FITR’, for short,” he says, pronouncing the acronym like the word, “fitter.”

“Have you worked there at all since your internship?”

“No, I, uhm—it’s complicated. A couple years later or so, uhm, some family obligations came up that kind of tied my hands. So...”

She grunts, nodding before turning back to her bricks.

This time, the silence feels much more weighty than it had in the past moments Rafael had shared with Dominique.

“Cuz it sure does sound to me,” she begins, quietly, “ that you have a clearer idea of what you’d like to pursue than even I do.”

He sets down the small pieces he has in hand, looking over at her, even as the weight of that fact settles like a boulder in the pit of his stomach.

“Maybe, I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,” he croaks.

She looks up at him. “Or maybe, sometimes, we all need a good nudge in the right direction.”

She turns back toward the table, rubbing her arm as she chuckles; though he can’t help but get the impression that there’s an inside joke he’s not a part of.

Oh, to be privy to whatever is going on in his mystery woman’s mind, right now.

“You know,” he says, lifting himself from his stool and taking a step toward her. “I never got your name.” Leaning his hip on the table just a few handspans away from her, he reaches over to her pile of lego and adds a piece to her build, letting it click into place before he continues. “I feel like I should at least have that before I ask for your number,” he continues, turning his attention to her.

She turns her heart-shaped face to his, her eyes wide, lips parted. The pulse at the base of her neck beating as rapidly as his own.

Rafael is certain, right then, that he’s not leaving this event until he’s secured an opportunity to see this mystery woman again.

Just as sure as he is that he’s found the woman he hadn’t even realized he’d been searching for.

His teeth involuntarily clench in response to the hum thrumming through his entire being, ringing out the same refrain:

Mine.


--- 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 "Nice After Five" (a Fairytale Retelling Small Town romance from the Fated Beginnings series)

***💗***

Well, hello most-gorgeous-specimen-of-man-Brenee-has-ever-seen-in-person. 

Put her behind a desk, in front of a tour group, or in any number of scenarios where she’s proficient and Brenee can pretend to be cool as a pint of ice cream, even under the most stressful of situations.

But put her in a nice dress with this man’s baritone voice tickling the spine of her exposed back, and she’s suddenly a puddle.

What’s that about?

“Sorry, again,” he goes on to say, his brows curling into an absolutely adorable expression of contrition. 

How can such a big ol’ man pull off adorable? Unbelievable. 

Noa Fuimaono hit the lottery in the gene department.

Her mouth plasters itself against her teeth in what probably looks like a very distressed smile.

Releasing her captive breath, Brenee wets her lips and inhales deeply. 

Finally, with a tilt of the head she averts her gaze, her smile relaxing.  “Well,” she begins, “Note to Noa,” she croaks, only managing as many words due to the strength of her annoyance at the situation—and at her own reaction toward this man. “Scaring women at a party is usually frowned upon.”

“You remember my name?” he muses, snatching Brenee’s curious gaze back to his..

His lips slant into an amused smirk as his expression transitions into one bearing a hint of astonishment. “I just figure you have so many clients—and I don’t get to visit as much as I’d like—well, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t recalled my face, let alone my name.”

Like she could forget anything about this man.

Or like she’s stupid enough to confess as much.

She won’t explain that the moment she’d set eyes on him she’d scoured his parents’ file to learn anything she could about him.

Nope. Brenee’s just going to keep all that stalker-vibe to herself.

--- 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 "Room for the Basics" (a Neighbor to Roommates to Lovers Small Town romance from the Fated Beginnings series)