Have you ever had stuff happen where you think, “This is it. This is where it all falls apart.” Maybe it’s simple stuff like… the third light bulb in a row burns out and you remember that the new bulbs are in the storage closet without a window… which is also where the flashlight is… and which also has a burned out bulb.

Or maybe it’s more complicated stuff like painful relationships, illness, career setbacks. We all face things throughout our lives that lead to moments of panic and discouragement. That’s life, right? But if we’ve developed some resilience, we know that everything is temporary. “A body can get used to anything,” as the saying goes. “Even hanging.” 

Dark but true.

In The Maverick’s Surprise Family, Lucas Landry has already faced a lot of obstacles in his life. Born with mild cerebral palsy, he’s had to work hard at a lot of basic things the rest of us take for granted. But he had good parents who did everything right and helped him reach his potential. 

Then, someone gets hurt, badly, on one of his outdoor adventure tours. He gets blamed—unfairly—but when someone’s looking to place blame, anyone will do. The business and the reputation he’s spent all this time and effort and passion developing is headed for ruin.

Then he finds out that he has biological siblings out in the world he never knew he had. Adopted as an infant, it never occurred to him to look. (Also, he’s a guy and guys, well… sometimes they’re not super dialed-in to the relational stuff.) But his mom pushes him to meet them. If nothing else, it’ll keep him from obsessing about his upcoming lawsuit, right? 

And that’s when he meets Bayleigh Sutherland… who knows and loves the siblings in question. She doesn’t care about his CP, she’s protective of her friends and has no time for his self-pity and yeah, in a shocking twist… she’s into him. As in, instant chemistry. Sorry, Mom, Lucas thinks, but she’s a much better distraction.

So, they have a brief fling, clear parameters, no strings. Easy-peasy. Everything will work out right?

Nope. His lawsuit ramps up. His siblings are a handful. And then he discovers that Bayleigh—who has a grown son already, who has been infertile for years—is pregnant. And she didn’t tell him. Because she’s never letting a man be in charge of her again.

“This is it,” Lucas thinks. “This is where it all falls apart.”

But you know what? You can’t bounce back until you hit bottom. 

I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the midst of All the Stuff, I don’t generally remember to feel optimistic about bouncing back. I’m more the whining “I’LL DIE IN THE DARK AND THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY” kind of person in that stage. 

Fortunately, the universe looks after us, even when we can’t see it. 

Lucas and Bayleigh both have to change and grow before they find their happy ending, but they do. And isn’t that why we read? To see someone else go through all the rough stuff, to watch them struggle and fail and keep going anyway and eventually find their way through and triumph. We can cheer for them and then maybe we can tuck a bit of that triumph away for ourselves. 

Infinite ways to live, infinite kinds of problems, and infinite ways of overcoming… that’s what stories give us, a reminder that we can triumph in the end. 

And we don’t even have to leave our couches. 

About the Author

Born under a Scorpio moon, raised in a little house on the prairie, USA Today Bestselling Author Roxanne Snopek said “as you wish” to her Alpha Farm Boy and followed him to the mountain air and ocean breezes of British Columbia. There, while healing creatures great and small and raising three warrior-princesses, they found their real-life happily-ever-after. After also establishing a successful freelance and non-fiction career, Roxanne began writing what she most loved to read: romance. Her small-town stories quickly became fan favorites; print editions of her latest series were recently launched in France.