After being orphaned as a teen, Lara Townsend has been by her grandmother’s side, helping her run the family’s legacy—the Wild Rose Point History Center. Tired of loss, she’s sworn off any new people in her life. She’s happy with her grandmother, her best friend, Ty, and the ghosts she believes haunt the museum.

Ty Wagner’s entire life has been baseball—long after he fell out of love with the game, but his father’s expectations kept him beating his head against the brick wall of a sport that didn’t want him. Now, he’s nearing thirty, and there’s nothing left, just Wild Rose Point and abject failure. Luckily, he still has what’s always kept him going when baseball and his dad’s expectations felt like too much: The Townsend women. Helping out at their Wild Rose Point History Center seems like a good place to be while he figures out what’s next.

Without baseball, life in Wild Rose Point looks different for Ty. He gets to settle down, plant some roots, and see what grows. Meanwhile, with Ty in one place—her space—for more than a few weeks at a time, Lara has to contend with that old high school crush that has a lot more to it than thinking his blue eyes are cute.

Both Lara and Ty have known disappointment and loss all their lives. Believing in something this good is going to take a miracle…

And maybe some help from a few friendly Wild Rose Point ghosts.

Titles in the multi-author Wild Rose Point series include:  Charming the Cowboy by Maisey Yates ~ Still a Cowboy by Delores Fossen ~ Caught Looking by Nicole Helm ~ The Accidental Christmas by Lori Foster ~ Her Christmas Fix by Michelle Major ~ Fake Date with the Runaway Bride by Elle Douglass (2026) ~ The Tortured Marine’s Sunshine Girl by Caitlin Crews (2026) ~

This story may contain language, possible violence, and/or sexual situations geared to an adult 18+ audience.

Title:  Caught Looking
Series:  Wild Rose Point #3
Author:  Nicole Helm
Published:  October 31, 2025
Publisher: Round Barns & Llamas
My Rating:  4.5 stars

I love it when authors come together to create their own unique world, especially when they are some of my favorite Harlequin authors.  Caught Looking is the third title in the Wild Rose Point series, bringing us Ty and Lara’s shaky romance.

Ty has finally ended his baseball career, well, his career never took off further than the minor leagues, but he’s done.  It’s time to return home and figure out what comes next.  He knows that he has a safe haven with the Townsend women, his best friend, Lara, and her grandmother.  They’ve always been his shelter from his baseball-obsessed, abusive father… and it’s to them that he returns to figure out his next steps.  He knows he’s in trouble when he starts looking at his best friend in a different light… a light that she’s terrified of.

Lara has suffered a loss so great that she will take no chances on anything.  Change, any type of change, scares her into immobility.  She runs a small museum with her grandmother, sees the ghosts who inhabit that building, and creates beautiful landscape paintings (often including those ghosts) that she calls a simple hobby; others call it art at its finest.  Ty is her best friend ever, yet when he dares to see their relationship as something more, she panics and is afraid to even think of those possibilities because it would change everything… and she refuses to allow change into her life ever again.  She thinks she’s protecting herself, but she’s denying them both a chance at something wonderful unless she can acknowledge those fears and face them with Ty at her side.

I enjoyed Caught Looking so much.  It’s a tender, often heartwrenching story of two people who need to get beyond something in their lives that is holding them back.  For Ty, it’s acknowledging that baseball was always his father’s dream, that he needed to find his own path, and that he could turn his back on the abuse that is never-ending. For Lara, she has to put the past where it belongs… in the past.  Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, but she still has a life to live far more fully than she has been.  And Ty is a huge part of that life she could have if she takes that risk.  Their story is well-written, emotional, with a few ghostly appearances.  If you love a heartfelt romance with major issues to be overcome, a couple you’ll root for to find happiness, and a few ghostly shenanigans, then you’d enjoy Ty and Lara’s story.

I read this title through my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

 

This title is available at Amazon