Every Time We Touch will be available from The Bliss Shop on 16 September 2026.
It will be out on all other retailers in ebook and paperback on 30 September 2026.
The audio (by Abby Craden) will follow in November.
Here’s a preview. Enjoy!
Every Time We Touch
© Harper Bliss
CHAPTER ONE
JEN
Sunday brunch at my mother’s house is usually a lively affair, but today there’s an undercurrent of tension running through us all. No wonder. My father is bringing his new girlfriend over for the first time.
The only person who’s relaxed is my mother. She introduced her own new partner a few years ago and the world didn’t end. That her partner is Nora Levine, arguably the biggest sitcom star of the last twenty years, didn’t hurt either. That sort of thing tends to go down better with the offspring than waltzing in with a woman almost thirty years your junior.
Dad’s new girlfriend was born the same year as me. How cliché can you get?
“Dad’s been a mess since Abby left him,” Austin, my younger brother, says. “He’s not been himself.”
“It’s been tough,” Heather, my twin, confirms. “We should give him some credit.”
“He can have all the credit he wants, but must he also have such a young girlfriend?” I chime in.
“You’re just annoyed, Jen,” Lauren, my other sister, says. “Because Dad found himself a new girlfriend in no time and you’re still single at forty-two.”
“Oh, sure. That must be it.” I used to call myself self-partnered, but after my last relationship ended, I can’t quite call myself that anymore. “I’m the bitter single of the family and the only one who can see this younger woman for who she really is. Probably some gold digger or something.”
“Dad’s not that rich,” Austin says matter-of-factly. “Mom’s the one with all the money.”
“Rich enough for some opportunistic dancer to get her claws into him.” Damn. I do sound rather harsh. “Why else would she go out with Dad?”
“You haven’t even met her yet,” Mom says. “Give her a chance before you judge her. Or at least before calling her a gold digger.”
“I googled her,” I say. “Did you know she did one season of Dancing with the Stars?”
“Ooh.” My brother’s boyfriend Juan’s eyes grow wide. “I adore that show.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “What’s her name?”
“Clancy Estevez,” I say on a sigh that could also be construed as bitter.
“Really?” Nora asks. “Clancy Estevez?”
“Here she is.” Juan shows Nora his phone. I catch a glimpse of the photo. I’ve already seen it and so already know that Clancy Estevez is a hot forty-two-year-old woman with a dancer’s body. The thought of her being with my father simply doesn’t compute in my head.
“Oh, yeah,” Nora says. “I met her once at Stella’s.”
“And?” Heather asks, while all of us fix our gaze on Nora.
“She was lovely, as far as I can remember,” Nora says.
“Lovely,” Juan repeats. “That’s high praise coming from Nora.”
“How the hell does someone like that end up with Dad?” Heather asks. At last, another sibling expressing some doubt about this relationship.
“It was an app, wasn’t it?” Lauren says.
I can’t help but roll my eyes. The mere notion of my seventy-year-old father on a dating app is, somehow, excruciating.
“Your father’s a handsome man,” Mom says. “He’s never been short of female attention.”
“Way of the world.” Juan leans back in his chair. “An older man with a much younger woman. They’re by no means the first couple like that and they will most certainly not be the last.” Juan is eighteen years older than my brother, so of course he would say that—and they’re two men. But eighteen years is not twenty-eight. Still, I also know he’s right. It’s a tale as old as time.
“Amen to that,” Nora says.
“I understand it’s an adjustment,” Mom, always the peacekeeper, says. “Abby was much more age-appropriate, but in the end, don’t we all just want your father to be happy?”
“How happy can a woman the same age as his oldest daughters make him?” I ask.
“Extremely happy,” Juan, wiggling his eyebrows, is quick to say.
“Ugh.” Austin makes the exact barf sound I want to make as well.
“That’s not a question for us to answer,” Heather says, to my dismay. We usually agree on everything, despite our lives being so different. She has two young kids and a husband. “Only Dad knows that.”
The bell rings and the energy shifts. Mom gets up to open the door to her ex-husband. Their marriage was hardly a textbook one, but they’ve remained close, hence him introducing us to Clancy at her house—maybe he considers it neutral territory.
I take a few deep breaths. I can be against this relationship all I want, but he’s still my dad and, in the end, my opinion won’t matter all that much. I hear footsteps as they approach, accompanied by upbeat chatter.
My father walks in, hand in hand with a woman whose pictures on the internet don’t do her justice whatsoever. Her complexion is a soft golden-brown that catches the light in all the right ways, her body sculpted by years of dancing, her shoulders deliciously broad.
Hot damn.
“Kids,” Dad says. “Please, meet Clancy. Be nice to her. No funny business, please.” This is also my dad, of course. The parent who could defuse an argument between his children with just a few choice words and a targeted look. He was never overly strict, but he oozes a sort of charming kindness that’s impossible to ignore. Eric St James is, very simply, a warm, decent guy down to his bones. It’s hard to hold anything against him. And it was even harder to watch him fall apart after his second wife left him.
The advantage of having three siblings who are all in relationships is that it makes it easy to hide in the small crowd gathered at my mother’s table. Austin pulls out the chair next to his for Clancy. Lauren pours her some coffee while her husband can barely keep his eyes from popping out of their sockets. Juan does his Juan-thing that wins everyone over in a matter of seconds—we’ve had many discussions about it at this very table but none of us can quite explain what it is he does exactly; only conclude that it works.
Then, we’re all sitting around the table, chattering away as if it’s any other Sunday, which, in my view, it’s decidedly not. I’m clearly outnumbered by my siblings when it comes to feeling resentful about this situation. My dad sits there beaming as though he’s just won the lottery instead of having separated from a woman he loved for twenty years. I would too, if that breathtaking person was my new girlfriend. With those high cheekbones and that sharp jawline, she should be intimidating, but Clancy Estevez is all warmth and gregariousness. She’s striking and pleasant—that becomes clear after only fifteen minutes at the table with us.
How am I going to hate her now?
CHAPTER TWO
CLANCY
If it had been up to me, I wouldn’t be here right now, meeting Eric’s children, two of whom are the same age as me. I told him it was too soon, but he said nothing’s too soon when you’re seventy and I didn’t really have a counterargument for that.
We’ve only been seeing each other for two months, but I’m just going with the flow. It hardly takes a degree in psychology to see how happy it makes him to bring me here. I get it. He’s still fragile from his divorce and wants to flaunt me—craves that boost to his ego.
The St James kids are lovely. The vibe is a bit unhinged because there are so many of them, talking over each other while also tending to three adorable grandkids. And then there’s Nora Levine—a legend for my generation. When Eric and I just started dating and he told me his first wife was in a relationship with Nora, my interest in him increased. For some reason that can never be fully explained—unless you’re writing an essay about celebrity culture in the nineties—it made me want to see him again even more. Not that I needed much persuading because Eric St James is quite a catch. Discovering on our second date that we share a fondness for old French movies was an unexpected bonus.
The only one who has a somewhat persistent scowl on her face is Jennifer—or is it Heather? They’re not identical twins but Eric has three daughters and this situation is rather stressful—no matter how much of a go-with-the-flow girl I am. But I’m a dancer and a teacher, which makes me skilled at being engaging as well as charming in tense situations.
“How long has this been going on?” Jennifer—I think—asks, pointing at me then at Eric as though questioning the freshness of a food item on the table.
“Jen, come on,” the sister who looks the most like her says.
“What?” Jennifer says. “It’s a totally fair question when a parent brings home a new significant other.”
“It’s fine,” Eric says. “It’s been what?” He curls an arm around my shoulders. “Three amazing months now?”
I lean into him, smiling. “Two,” I correct him.
“Didn’t we meet at Stella and Kate Flack’s house once?” Nora asks.
We sure did, although ‘meet’ might be too big a word for the couple of words I exchanged with Nora that evening. But this is LA and that’s what ‘meeting someone’ means here. “Yes. That’s right—”
“Where was I?” Mimi, the ex-wife and mother of Eric’s kids, cuts me off. She looks at me through squinted eyes, as though she might remember me from somewhere.
“Probably working, babe,” Nora says.
I don’t take offense at being interrupted. It’s how the people at this table talk to each other—and express affection.
“And you’re a dancer?” Jennifer again.
“She has her own dance school—” Eric tries to say, only to be rebuffed by all four of his kids at once for not letting me speak for myself.
“Sorry.” Eric holds up his hands. “Can you imagine what it was like to raise these four?” There’s nothing but warmth in his voice. I know today is important to him, although I can’t predict what might happen if his kids—or even just one of them—were to disapprove of me.
“A privilege,” Austin, the youngest, says.
“Can’t argue with that.” Eric’s smile says it all.
How he speaks about his children was also a massive draw. He talks about them with the kind of joy that comes from being a present, involved dad—which says a lot about a man and his priorities.
“I used to dance competitively, but now I mostly teach,” I say.
“I’d love to take one of your classes,” Austin’s boyfriend says.
“So would I,” one sister’s husband says, earning him more than one look of disapproval.
“I can put together a group session for the St Jameses,” I joke.
This actually merits a smile from Jennifer. At last.
“I was trying to imagine all of us in a dance class together,” Jennifer says. “We’re tight as a family, but that’s a couple of steps too far.” She catches my glance for a split second—she has the most beautiful blue eyes—before the family all start talking over each other again, trying to decide which dance would suit who most.
Juan decides on a rumba for himself. Heather and Lauren are partial to learning how to waltz properly with their husbands. Nora is convinced she can pull off a quickstep, pointing at herself as she says it.
“I’ve had a personal trainer since High Life,” she says. “Marcy used to be in the military.”
Mimi leans back and runs her hand over the back of Nora’s head, her eyes full of something—maybe pride, maybe love, maybe both—and seeing the two of them together like that is such a sweet moment.
For Eric to sit at this table with his ex-wife like this is not a given. My parents are divorced and they haven’t spoken to each other for ten years, maybe longer. This family has a lot of love between them and wants the best for each other, despite the parents not staying together. Whether they will accept me as the best for their father remains to be seen, but my first meeting with them has been positive.
“What about you?” I ask Jennifer, now that she seems to have warmed up to me a little.
“What do you think?” she says. “You’re the expert.”
I look her in the eye—as a former competitive dancer, it’s second nature—and smile. She’s not LA-beautiful, in the sense that there’s nothing fake about her. She’s more depth than flash. She’s the most guarded of the siblings—the most challenging to crack.
“You’re definitely a tango girl,” I say. Maybe she even has a super-sultry Argentine tango in her, but this room full of family members is not the place to say that out loud.
Heather slaps her sister on the arm. “I swear to god, only last week Jen was saying she was ready for a new challenge, like learning how to tango.” Heather beams me a wide smile. “Those were her literal, actual words.”
“I know a pretty good dance school,” I say to the both of them.
Jennifer shoots me a look that says she’d rather cut off a toe than have me teach her how to tango—there’s definitely a lot more work to do in the winning-over department when it comes to her.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Juan says. “I’m ready to rumba.”
The moment passes and the conversation meanders to another subject but, as brunch comes to an end, and Eric and I say our goodbyes, I reckon I got the majority of the St Jameses to like me. As I live and breathe, because I’m also that kind of girl, I swear I’ll get Jennifer to do much more than merely tolerate me.
<<End of preview>>
Every Time We Touch will be available from The Bliss Shop on 16 September 2026.
