Yesterday's Embers (Clayburn, #3)

Still reeling from the deaths of his wife and daughter who suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, Doug DeVore barely manages to get out of bed every morning, let alone be both father and mother to his five remaining children. Mickey Valdez, who runs the Clayburn Day Care Center, offers feminine affection and brings a little normalcy into the Devore children's lives. A spark of attraction ignites between Doug and Mickey, but when they marry after a romantic, whirlwind courtship, real life knocks them all off their pedestals. Doug, still grieving the tragedy that destroyed his perfect life, discovers that his affection for Mickey isn't the same as what he felt for his sweet Kaye. Meanwhile, Mickey faces her own reality: she has traded quiet evenings in her tidy little house with its beautiful garden for a messy, noisy life of conflict. Doug and Mickey pledged their lives "for better or for worse," but suddenly it seems they've given up everything in exchange for worse-than-nothing. When Mickey turns to the God of her youth in desperation, she finds Him waiting there for her with a surprising assignment: simply love your husband. But how can she manufacture feelings for a man who is so different from her three doting big-brother heroes, so different from the man she's dreamed of loving since she was a little girl, different even from the Doug who walked up the aisle beside her a few weeks ago. Will love and trust be enough when another crisis strikes?