Emergency department nurse Sophia Mitchell has survived a toxic marriage, a brutal divorce, and single motherhood in one of the country's busiest ERs. She's built walls around her heart that could stop a trauma team, and she has exactly zero interest in letting anyone past them. Especially not the charming New Zealand paramedic whose radio flirtations are making her question everything she knows about keeping men at a safe distance.
Jack McKenzie wasn't supposed to be more than another EMT dropping off patients at Metro General. But his coffee deliveries, his easy way with her fifteen-year-old daughter Madison, and an accent that does dangerous things to her pulse are slowly dismantling every defense she's built. When he invites them to New Zealand for spring break, Sophia takes the biggest leap of faith since signing her divorce papers.
What she discovers halfway around the world changes everything.
Jack isn't just a paramedic with perfect coffee skills-he's Jackson Charles McKenzie, heir to a wine empire and owner of a vineyard estate that belongs in a travel magazine. Standing in his family's mansion, watching his mother assess her like a lab specimen, Sophia realizes she's made the same mistake twice: falling for a man who's been playing a carefully edited version of himself.
But when her toxic ex-husband escalates his campaign of psychological warfare, Sophia discovers Jack has been quietly protecting Madison from threats she never knew existed. Now she faces an impossible choice: trust the man who deceived her, or lose the only person who's ever made her feel truly seen.
From Metro General's controlled chaos to Central Otago's breathtaking vineyards, this is a story about second chances, the courage to trust again, and discovering that sometimes the biggest risk is letting someone see all of you-scars, walls, and all.
Cari Blake is a former firefighter and EMT turned emergency room nurse, with a weakness for strong coffee, stubborn heroines, and fiery love stories with a pulse. After years of witnessing chaos, heartbreak, and moments of raw humanity in the ER, she started writing the kind of stories she wished she saw more of: honest, hopeful romances grounded in the real world.She never planned to be an author-until her husband (also an ER nurse and an aspiring sci-fi writer) tried to write a romance scene for his novel. It... wasn't great. When he jokingly challenged her to "do better," she did. Much better. The result became Under Southern Stars, Book One of her Code Blue Hearts series.When she's not writing or saving lives, Cari is usually drinking strong coffee, wrangling family life, or walking with her loyal sidekick, Sunny the dog. Every story she writes is a promise: heat, heart, and a happy ending worth believing in.
