Tess Cohen was a 23-year-old aspiring artist with dreams of painting beach scenes. She longed to leave the small town of Starks, Louisiana, and head for California to make a go of it as an artist. Instead, she compromised with her parents and decided to spend the summer of 1968 on Galveston Island with her younger sister, Abigail. It was just meant to be an extended summer vacation. Abigail would return to college in the fall and Tess would finally settle down for good in Starks. But then a chance encounter with ‘Easy’ Billy Castro changed everything. Billy had a troubled past and was orphaned at the age of 16. No stranger to conflict, he’d been using his natural talent for fighting to scrape together a living collecting debts for a local gambling organization. When boxing legend, Marvin Jones, finds out Billy has roughed up one of his fighters, he presents him with an opportunity to turn his life around. Thankfully, Tess also sees his potential and the love that grows between them that summer will only serve as a catalyst for his drive to become a world champion boxer. Brooke St. James unfolds this timeless story at a leisurely Texas pace, and Galveston Island serves as the perfect beach background in a love story that pulls out all the stops.

Tess had always wanted to live at the beach and paint scenes of palm trees and blue waters. Now she was moving to an island, but you would have thought she was moving to paradise with how excited she was. From the moment she got off the ferry she knew she had found her muse. What she didn't know was that she was also about to find her soulmate.