Sunlight

Sun Light is a contemporary romance in Devney Perry's Haven River Ranch series, set in small-town Montana.

Sasha Vaughn's first day in Big Timber, Montana, begins with a confrontation over a grocery store shopping cart. Unable to carry her bags home, she tries to borrow the cart until a charming stranger intervenes, depositing 300 dollars as collateral and escorting it three blocks to her house. During the walk, he initiates a flirtatious game of trading lies and secrets. Sasha is on the verge of accepting his dinner invitation when he introduces himself as Jax Haven, co-owner of Haven River Ranch resort. Her face drains of color, and she declines without giving her name: She is about to start working at his resort. The next morning, Jax's sister-in-law Indya Haven, who co-owns the resort with her husband, West Haven, and Jax, introduces Sasha as the new resort manager. Both pretend they have never met.

Three months in, Sasha is miserable. Her rental has unreliable plumbing, and each morning she white-knuckles a 45-minute commute on icy roads. She clings to the job because it pays nearly double her previous salary. She periodically calls a therapist named Micah to ask about her younger brother, Eddie, begging to speak with him. Micah says Eddie is not ready and urges her to keep writing letters. Sasha writes short, guilt-laden notes.

Indya, now heavily pregnant, worries Sasha will quit and offers her a rent-free cabin on the ranch. When Sasha discovers it sits next to Jax's house, she declines, but a break-in at her rental changes her mind. At the cabin, she meets Jax's lifelong best friend, Emery Hill, whose husband, Calvin, is verbally abusive. Jax's home serves as Emery's refuge, and Sasha battles jealousy she refuses to name.

At the annual employee party in January, an invisible tether pulls Sasha's and Jax's gazes together all evening. When Jax asks her to dance, Sasha reveals that her last memory of her parents is watching them dance, and she does not dance. He hands her champagne instead, and they spend hours talking at a back table. Back at his house, their game of lies and secrets resumes until she confesses she always wants him to kiss her. The kiss leads to his bedroom, where Sasha experiences an intimate connection she has never felt before. She slips away before dawn and the next morning asks Jax to forget what happened, insisting she needs her job and cannot be a casual fling. He walks away without a word, and six weeks of silence follow.

Six weeks after the party, Sasha discovers she is pregnant. She tells Jax immediately, and his stunned response infuriates her. That night, drunk on bourbon, he stumbles to her cabin and reveals that his biological mother abandoned him as an infant and never returned. He wants the baby. Sasha agrees. The next morning, he takes her hand, promises to make her fall in love with Montana, and drives her into town to introduce her to people. When she says she wants to name the baby Josephine after her mother, Jax repeats the name with reverence and begins calling the baby "my Josephine."

At Sasha's first prenatal appointment, they hear the heartbeat and later switch doctors on a recommendation from Lily, West's mother and the woman who raised Jax. Lily refused to let Jax call her "Mom," and before college he gave her an ultimatum: Accept him as her son or leave him alone. She chose distance, and they have barely spoken since. Sasha negotiates to keep the pregnancy secret until the 20-week ultrasound, during which the technician confirms the baby is a girl. Jax whispers "Josephine" and presses his forehead to Sasha's.

Over the following weeks, they lower their walls through harder truths. She reveals her parents died in a head-on collision with a drowsy truck driver when she was 18. He shares that his birth mother is serving a seven-year prison sentence for drug trafficking. He tells his family: His father, Curtis, tears up; his brother hugs him; his grandparents react with disapproval. Jax confesses he fears pushing Sasha away. She tells him, "Maybe I need to be pushed."

Their relationship deepens into a full partnership. Jax moves Sasha into his house while she is at work, installing Emery in the cabin after Calvin strikes Emery during a fight; Emery reports the incident to Zak, the local sheriff. Sasha calls the arrangement "temporary," and Jax echoes the word, though he privately intends permanence. At a family barbeque, Lily speaks to Curtis for the first time in over a decade, breaking a silence rooted in the affair that produced Jax. In July, Jax is thrown from a horse and hospitalized with a dislocated shoulder and concussion. Lily sits with a panicking Sasha outside the hospital, and Sasha asks why Lily never let Jax call her Mom. Lily admits she would change many things. That night, Sasha confesses she is scared of what will happen "when it ends." Jax asks why she assumes it will. She answers: "History."

At the Big Timber Rodeo in September, Calvin drunkenly insults Sasha, and Jax punches him. The violence triggers Sasha, who flees. That night, sitting among unopened baby shower gifts in the bare nursery, she confesses she fears setting up the room because she might love it and then have to leave. Jax tells her, "This is our house." Then she reveals her deepest secret to Jax: 11 years her junior, Eddie was seven when their parents died, and 18-year-old Sasha took legal custody. She worked constantly, leaving Eddie alone too much, and after she sold the family home, he spiraled into drug use and violence. About a year before coming to Montana, she tried to break up a street fight and discovered the aggressor was Eddie. He was arrested, and a judge allowed him to enter a wilderness therapy camp for troubled teens in Montana. Sasha moved to the state to be near him while earning enough to pay for his treatment. She has not spoken to Eddie since dropping him off.

In late September, Sasha's letters to Eddie arrive back in a package, scrawled with furious red-ink messages: "FUCK YOU," "YOU LEFT ME," "I HATE YOU." Meanwhile, Lily delivers a handmade blanket and an apology to Jax. He proposes a compromise: He will call her "Nana." She tearfully accepts.

Three weeks before the due date, contractions wake Sasha. Jax rushes her to the hospital, where Lily helps them to the delivery room. During labor, Jax tells Sasha he loves her, words he has never said to a romantic partner. She tells him she loves him too. Josephine Bryan Haven is born healthy, her middle name honoring Sasha's father. Jax proposes over breakfast for dinner, placing the ring on Sasha's pancakes. She accepts.

Eddie eventually calls, apologizing for his cruel letters and telling Sasha he misses her. Nine months after Josephine's birth, they prepare for their wedding at a meadow on the ranch. Eddie, now 18 and finished with his program, arrives and embraces his sister. He asks Jax to teach him to ride horses and plans to spend the summer in the cabin. Curtis and Lily have found a tentative friendship. Emery and Zak have begun a quiet relationship. At the rehearsal dinner, Sasha whispers a final secret in Jax's ear: She is pregnant again.