One week.
That’s it.
In seven days, Too Close to Home will officially be out in the world and Jake Whitton and DI Harrison Black will no longer belong entirely to me.
Which is exciting.
And terrifying.
Mostly terrifying, actually.
Because this book, and the trilogy that follows it, has been one of the biggest things I’ve taken on as a writer.
Three books. One couple. Three investigations. A thirteen-year-old cold case running through them all. Police procedure, mystery, grief, secrets, danger, ridiculous amounts of sexual tension and two men who really, really should have stayed away from each other.
Obviously, they don’t.
Welcome to Hartswick
Too Close to Home begins with DI Harrison Black leaving London behind for the small Yorkshire town of Hartswick. He’s looking for distance. From his old life. From his grief. From everything that happened before. A quieter posting would be nice.
Hartswick has other ideas.
Within hours of Harrison’s arrival, a seventeen-year-old girl disappears on a woodland path. And there’s something horribly familiar about it. Because thirteen years earlier, another young woman vanished in Hartswick.
Robyn Whitton was never found.
And her brother has never stopped looking for her.
Then there’s Jake bloody Whitton…
Roofer. Drummer. Ex-con. Hot-headed pain in the arse. Possessor of far too much hair and absolutely no faith whatsoever in the police.
Jake has spent thirteen years living with what happened to Robyn—and with the knowledge that the people who were supposed to find her didn’t.
So when another girl disappears, he’s not about to stand quietly on the sidelines while the police investigate. Which would be considerably easier for Harrison if Jake weren’t also becoming the one person in Hartswick he can’t seem to keep at arm’s length.
Because professionally?
Getting close to Jake Whitton is a terrible idea.
Personally?
Well…
“And you know what the really fucking inconvenient part is?”
“Other than him being a suspect?”
“Person of interest.”
“Harry.”
“That I fucking want him.”
Yeah.
There’s your problem, Harry.
One couple. Three books.
If you’re new to Whitton & Black, there’s one important thing to know before you start.
This is a same-couple MM romantic-suspense trilogy.
Each book has its own central investigation, but the mystery surrounding Robyn’s disappearance continues across all three books.
And so does Jake and Harrison’s relationship.
This is a proper slow burn. Book One starts lower on the heat scale because these two have rather a lot to work through before they get there. Things get progressively steamier as the trilogy continues, with Jake and Harrison’s full HEA coming in Book Three.
So if you like:
🔥 Grieving detective × hot-headed ex-con
🔥 Age gap
🔥 Cop × person of interest
🔥 Slow burn
🔥 Hurt/comfort
🔥 Small-town secrets
🔥 Missing-person investigations
🔥 Cold cases
🔥 Men who use sarcasm instead of discussing their feelings
🔥 And one relationship developing across an entire romantic-suspense trilogy…
Welcome to Hartswick.
I hope you enjoy your stay.
I’m sure absolutely nothing terrible will happen.
Want to start reading now?
Because we’re officially ONE WEEK FROM RELEASE, I’ve put the entire first chapter of Too Close to Home right here:
CHAPTER ONE
Loose Slates
Harrison glanced up at his brand-new cottage.
Then sighed.
And wondered, not for the first time, if he’d made a mistake.
Silence folded neatly over him. Not London silence. There was no such thing here. The quiet in the city carried movement: distant trains, late-night laughter, the restless pulse of millions of people refusing to sleep.
Here was different.
Here was the bottom of a well.
Wind threaded through the hawthorn hedge in long, low breaths. A crow called somewhere across the fields. One sharp note, echoing off stone. His gut cramped with apprehension.
God, it was quiet.
He hoisted the box in his arms, adjusting it against his hip, and walked up the short stone path towards his new home. Not new, exactly. That much was obvious. Decades of rain had bleached the low dry-stone walls silver. The slate roof dipped ever so slightly at the ridge, the chimney leaning with the faint resignation of having held itself upright longer than anyone had thanked it for. Moss threaded the guttering. The windows were small, deep-set, the glass faintly warped at the corners.
But it was new to him.
And strange.
Vastly different from the terrace townhouse he’d been living in for the past fifteen years. This was a single-storey, detached bungalow cottage, set a fraction apart from the others along the lane, overlooking vast woodland and farmland, as if time had nudged it sideways and forgotten to nudge it back. The neighbouring houses sat at uneven intervals. Not close enough for casual familiarity, nor distant enough for full isolation, but far enough to allow privacy. He might not hear the neighbours having sex here. Or have them complain he was.
Not likely anymore.
The thought came uninvited. An observation rather than a meek attempt at humour. It’d been a long time since he’d heard those mortifying bangs on the wall. And he doubted the plaster would flake behind his bedposts anytime soon.
For many, many reasons.
He paused at the gate, gravel crunching under his shoes, and looked back down the narrow lane. No traffic. No sirens slicing through the night. No bass bleeding through brickwork. It was only soft wind dragging along hedgerows and the distant, unhurried hum of nothing in particular.
This was a long way from London.
From glass and concrete and the permanent thrum beneath the city’s skin. From the shared smoggy air, breathed in by thousands before it even reached his lungs. And a world away from the Camden townhouse that had felt cramped and overheated and alive with movement.
Then, almost overnight, cavernous.
Airless.
Empty in a way that no amount of square footage could soften.
He adjusted the box again and mounted the shallow step to the door. The key felt unfamiliar in his hand. This was what he’d asked for. What he’d argued for in a meeting room smelling of mocha lattes and echoing with compromise. What he’d told his superiors he needed after his extended leave and hours of counselling. A clean transfer, a smaller force, somewhere quieter. Somewhere he could work without the noise of a city that knew his name. Where problems strayed onto roads on four legs and got guided back through gates, not zipped into bags under blue lights. Where the worst call might be a missing sheep, not a teenager bleeding out on concrete.
Where he could start again.
Where he could heal.
He turned the key in the lock and pushed inside with his shoulder, nudging the door shut behind him with his heel, scents of dust and stone holding damp, welcoming him into his new home. He’d never been one much for DIY. That had been Chris’s job. Here, he’d have to muddle through or learn to love floral.
The floorboards creaked under his weight as he carried the box through to the sitting room, announcing every step to no one. It looked the same as it had when he’d viewed it and put in his offer on the spot. Someone had inexpertly boarded over the fireplace, and the plaster cracked at one corner as if the house were trying to shrug the covering off. A faint discolouration marked the ceiling near the window, paint lifting in a subtle ripple. The windows looked out over the ridge of moorland pressed low beneath a heavy, iron-grey sky.
It felt temporary.
As if the house were waiting to see whether he would stay.
He was, too.
Maybe this was a mistake. Him moving away this far. Everyone believed he’d come running back to the city, eventually. His old chief was keeping his job open. His dad was keeping their game of chess untouched. Nigella was holding onto the clothes he’d left down there.
Just in case.
He set the box down beside the others as the quiet eased around him again.
Vast.
And as he stood there, listening to the unfamiliar silence of a place that didn’t yet know him, he wondered if he’d always feel slightly misplaced. As if he’d stepped sideways into someone else’s life and forgotten the map back to his own.
Then—
Drip.
He frowned.
Drip.
Faint, but unmistakable.
Harrison followed the sound to the far corner of the sitting room and looked up. A damp stain spread across the ceiling, the plaster beginning to bow beneath it. As he watched, water gathered along a hairline crack, swelled into a heavy bead, then dropped to the floor.
Drip.
“Wonderful.” He planted his hands on his hips and stared at the ceiling. “Welcome to Yorkshire, I suppose.”
He then climbed onto an unopened box marked Books – Study and pressed his fingers to the stain. It was damp. Fresh. The survey had mentioned the roof in the vague, arse-covering way surveys mentioned everything. Age-related wear. Monitor condition. Maintenance recommended within five years. And Harrison had skimmed it somewhere between grief counselling paperwork and transfer forms, signed what needed signing, and bought the cottage anyway.
He let out a breath bordering on a resigned laugh. There was something almost cruelly symmetrical about it. He’d left London after a life that had collapsed inward under scrutiny and failure, and within hours of arriving, his new house was about to do the same.
He stepped down and raked a hand through his hair.
He could ignore it.
He had bigger things to deal with. A new station. A new team. A town that would assess him before he’d even set foot inside the briefing room.
Drip.
“Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today, Harry, my love.”
“Yes. Thanks, Christian,” he replied to the ghost who’d unfortunately followed him here, too. “This is your area. Not mine.”
Chris had always hated problems that waited.
And he, too, hated leaving things undone. The same way an unsolved case gnawed at him, he could already feel the itch at the base of his skull to get this sorted. Unfortunately, he was better at solving murders than patching slate, though. So he went into the kitchen where the estate agent had left a neat stack of local information on the table. He assumed it would be takeaway menus and bin schedules. But alongside recycling days and parish council notices sat a single, plain business card.
J. Whitton Roofing and Repairs
Call anytime.
Cash preferred.
No logo. No website. No review stars. Just a name and a mobile number.
Harrison turned it over. Blank. He should use TrustATrader. Vet quotes through Trustpilot. But he glanced back towards the sitting room at the persistent drip and realised he didn’t have time for any of that. Not when he was due at HQ in less than an hour.
Drip.
He exhaled sharply and reached for his phone, dialling the number on the card. It answered before the first ring.
“Aye, Jake Whitton.”
The accent hit Harrison before the greeting properly registered. Northern. Broad, but not the lazy caricature. Gravel under honey. There was background noise, too. An engine rumbling, the hiss of tyres on a wet road. The man was clearly driving. Harrison closed his eyes in subtle resignation. He’d signed off on too many collision reports in his career. Seen too many grainy photographs of twisted metal and blood pooled beneath steering columns because someone believed they could split their attention at fifty miles per hour. The instinct to ask if he was hands free surfaced on his tongue.
He swallowed it.
He wasn’t here to reprimand anyone. Wasn’t anyone’s traffic enforcement sermon. He wasn’t that man.
No, he was someone else. Someone who, for reasons unknown even to him, thought it was the right time to have a stomach-flipping reaction to the sound of a fucking voice. “It’s a nice voice,” Chris’s ghost commented unhelpfully.
“Bugger off.”
“Sorry, what?” the man on the other end said, clearly aggrieved. “You called me, mate.”
“Uh, no, sorry.” Harrison pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Oh aye.”
“And sorry to call so early, but I found your number from a card left at a property—”
“If you found my number on a card, mate, I absolutely want you to ring it. Anytime.”
There was a grin in the words. Harrison could feel it.
He straightened instinctively, as if the man could see him. “Of course. Yes. Sorry.”
“No need t’apologise. Not yet, anyhow. What can I do you for, mate?”
The cadence was nothing like London. Or Chris. His vowels were wider, rounder. Less clipped precision, more breath in them. Consonants didn’t snap; they rolled and softened, settling into one another as if the language had nowhere urgent to be. There was warmth threaded through it, too. Ease. And beneath that, something else.
He sounded young.
Not reckless-young. Not careless. But not the thick-necked, sunburnt, beer-bellied stereotype Harrison’s mind had lazily conjured when he’d read Cash preferred on an unbranded business card. This voice carried shape. Intelligence. A man comfortable in his own space. And it gave Harrison’s chest an unexpected flutter that had nothing whatsoever to do with roofing.
Unwelcome.
Deeply inconvenient.
He wasn’t ready for any kind of reaction to any kind of man. Not yet. Not when grief still sat in the marrow of him, quieter now but not gone. Not when he’d relocated counties to put distance between himself and a life stripped back to bone.
Certainly not over a voice.
Someone he knew only as a name printed in plain black ink on a card that didn’t even boast a registered trade number or a five-star review.
Ridiculous.
“I’ve moved into a cottage on Larkspur Lane and—”
“Number five?”
Harrison blinked. “Yes. How did you—”
“Deacon said you might call.”
Deacon? Ah. Deacon Froggatt. The estate agent who’d shaken his hand and assured him everything was ‘sound as a pound’. Harrison rolled his eyes and remembered why Chris used to do this stuff. He’d have checked that survey over with a fine-tooth comb and understood the wording better than he had.
There was a brief rustle on the other end of the line. Fabric against plastic, as if Jake Whitton, Roofing and Repairs, had wedged his phone between his shoulder and jaw. Harrison clenched both of his instinctively. He knew how quickly a moment’s distraction could turn into a sheet over a body.
So it came out automatically. “Are you driving? Should I call back?”
“No, no. Hands free, mate.”
Harrison wasn’t sure he believed him.
“So the roof still a state, then?”
“That’s a rather tragic understatement.”
“I’ll bet.”
“The survey mentioned it…”
There was a pause. Then a chuckle. Low and unrestrained. Rolling through the speaker, deep enough to feel physical. And Christ. It hit a part of Harrison that had lain dormant far longer than he cared to examine.
“Assessed, were it?” Amusement threaded every syllable of Jake’s reply. “More like they stood on the pavement, squinted at it, and reckoned it’d stay up long enough for you to sign the deeds.”
Harrison rubbed his forehead. “That could be an accurate summary.” He should’ve known better than to trust a surveyor recommended by an estate agent.
The sound of the engine on the other end of the phone changed, perhaps as the bloke slowed for a turn. “Alright, I can come take a look now—”
The words blurred mid-sentence as Harrison’s phone vibrated against his palm. Another incoming call. He pulled it away from his ear to glance at the screen.
DCI Pollard.
The warmth from the man on the end of the phone evaporated, and a subtle but complete pivot moved through Harrison as he went instinctively into work mode.
“Sorry, Mr Whitton—”
“Call me Jake, mate.”
Harrison swallowed that easy familiarity down. “Jake. I have another call. Urgent. I’ll ring back.”
“Sure. Long as you’re not taking quotes from TrustATra—”
Harrison cut the line before the name fully formed and answered the incoming call. “Sir.”
“Black. Sorry to cut into your moving-in time, but we might need you earlier than planned.”
He braced himself. “Right. Understood. There a problem?”
“We’ve got a live one.”
The words sank colder than the dripping ceiling.
Christ. Already?
He’d expected a buffer. A gentle start. Low-level CID work until he’d learned the map of this place. Its habits, rhythms, who drank where, and who shouted loudest at closing time. Burglaries, common assaults, the weekend drunk who fell through someone else’s window. Mundane policing. Predictable policing. A deliberate retreat from the relentless, jagged tempo of London.
But the Moors didn’t care about his intentions.
“What are we looking at?” He reached for a plastic microwavable bowl from a half-open box and slid it under the persistent leak. The plaster sagged a fraction more, as if listening. Testing him. Reminding him how he was now alone to deal with all this.
“Missing teenager. Female. Seventeen years old. Didn’t make it home from her shift at the pub last night. No history of absconding. Parents extremely worried.”
Harrison frowned. “How long unaccounted for?”
“We’re marking the clock from twenty-three twenty last night.”
Harrison checked his watch. Almost twelve hours. Long enough for panic to set in. For stories to form in people’s heads. For a trail to cool. Not catastrophic. But not kind. Especially for a young woman alone at night.
“Regrade it now. High risk.”
“Aye, thought you’d say that.” Pollard inhaled sharply. “I’m putting you down as SIO on this, Black. Reckon it fits your incoming skill set. Your Met training. First live job in the district. Fortunate timing.”
Fortunate wasn’t the word he would have chosen.
Unfortunate felt closer. For everyone involved.
He’d worked enough missing-person cases to know how sometimes they ended anticlimactically. A teenager found in a mate’s spare room. A woman who’d booked herself into a B&B under her maiden name and turned her phone off for forty-eight blessed hours of quiet. People who simply needed distance from the monotony of their lives and the expectations waiting at home.
He’d also worked enough cases to know they were the fortunate ones.
“Incident room’s being set up now. Bring fresh eyes. Town’s twitchy about missing girls.”
Harrison felt the faint chill sliding into place. “Aren’t all towns?”
“Probably,” Pollard sighed, “but we’ve got a delicate history. Be prepared.”
The line cut.
Harrison lowered the phone, the cottage pressing in around him as if absorbing the deviation from what he’d come here for. The drip sounded louder; the air felt thicker, and he braced for what came next. Then he nudged the bowl further under the leak. Containment, however temporary. A reminder that some things had to wait.
Jake Whitton, Roofing and Repairs, would have to wait.
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OUT 25 SEPTEMBER 2026
