That Boy
Briar Black
(The Cheshire Set, #3)
Publication date: November 6th 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Holiday, Romance, Suspense
Building an impossible tea farm in the Cheshire countryside was Sofia’s second chance. A way to prove herself. A fresh start. She knew it would be graft. She anticipated a degree of isolation. But with Christmas imminent and the farm failing, her thoughts have grown darker. She’s searching for something — an ineffable force to make this year the magical wonderland she always craves and never finds.
Yet with the farm failing there’s no time to fix her ailing social life. Sofia resigns herself to another lonely holiday.
Enter Matt.
Delaware Grange’s twenty-one-year-old assistant gamekeeper. Nice enough, a bit dopey.
As she hunkers down for winter, Sofia thinks she’s prepared for everything. Nothing could prepare her for Matt. For the abrupt awareness of him. For the way he’s far more capable than he seems. Thoughtful. Considerate. Quietly intelligent.
Way sexier than he appears.
Suddenly impossible to ignore.
But Matt isn’t what he seems. A darkness runs beneath Delaware Grange — insidious, creeping, buried deep.
Sofia was little more than a challenge, a box for Matt to check, an assignment to complete. Until he fell.
Hard.
Now all he sees is her. All he wants is her. And all he knows is she has no idea who he truly is. While Sofia fights her feelings in the face of forbidden fruit, and Matt wrestles with the reality of his true purpose on the estate, the pair fall into an intoxicating, passionate, volatile romance.
As winter deepens and Christmas closes in, two lonely souls struggle to find peace in each other, and trust becomes the most dangerous choice on the estate.
Falling for Matt threatens everything Sofia has worked so hard to build. Falling for Sofia might just be the making of Matt.
That Boy is a high-heat, secret-identity romance where desire, deception, and devotion collide in a snowy small-town Christmas.
While not required, it is highly suggested to read Nightshade before That Boy.
Author’s Note: Each novel in The Cheshire Set can be read as a standalone, but the following order avoids spoiling the reading experience of earlier books.
Recommended Reading Order for The Cheshire Set:
- Bane
- Nightshade
- That Boy
Eve Was Framed, a prequel novella to Bane, isn’t strictly part of The Cheshire Set but is available for free download on the author’s website.
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EXCERPT:
‘Twas The Gloam Before Christmas…
A quiet, introspective moment between Matt and Sofia after a near-disaster. As they talk about “The Gloaming”—that melancholy space between Halloween and Christmas—their chemistry deepens and the novel’s central themes of loneliness, yearning, and rediscovery of light emerge.
“What’s the Gloaming?”
“Oh. Right.” I shifted, trying to find a way to lean that didn’t hurt my shoulder. It was useless. Until someone could pop it back in, I was doomed to dull agony. “It’s that feeling that threatens to drown you…” I paused, swallowing hard and staring out the window.
The world nearly drowned me tonight.
“This time every year.” I finally managed. “You know?”
Keep talking. Stay conscious. Don’t toss your cookies into his lap.
“That…overwhelming urge to…cover everything in cheer. But…” I took a little more water. “…the more you try, the less cheerful you feel. So you just keep…adding more.”
He chuckled.
“Hoping the cheer finds you before you’re…” Another tiny sip of water. “…crushed by baubles and fake fir garlands.”
He stared at me.
Great. Now he thinks I’m a total weirdo.
“I get it.” A slow smile spread across his face. “You’re staring at all the decorations. Watching the snow fall. And somewhere inside you’re sure you love Christmas. But you never quite seem to feel it.”
“Yes!” I sat up, and momentarily thought I’d blackout from the effort.
He eased me back into the sofa.
“Nailed it.” I swallowed. Talking was so much effort. Thinking was weirdly worse. “It’s a coping mechanism, I guess.”
He nodded, but when I didn’t continue, he made a winding motion with his hands.
“Every year this…fog descends. When Halloween’s over. This looming sense of…dread.”
“And it’s right when everyone else is getting excited.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Not me.” The wind howled savagely by, rattling the window and making us both jump. I turned my face away from the glass, not wanting to think about the carnage outside. “I’m sat there like a…miserly Scrooge.”
“Scrooge was never that pretty.”
I shook my head. “Don’t flirt with me.”
“Keep talking then.”
I didn’t want to. I just wanted to sleep.
My eyes drifted, and he nudged my knee with his. “Sof?”
With gargantuan effort, I rallied. “Welcome to Gloamas!” I wheezed. “Not quite Christmas. Not quite apathy. Some…twisted netherworld.”
He permitted me another tiny sip of water for my effort.
I swallowed it and continued, “You’re stuck for weeks. Longing to be…joyful and merry. But…that ineffable light is…absent.”
Matt pursed his lips. “So…it’s not gloomy, it’s gloamy. You’re in the twilight. Daylight’s gone. You know it will be back at some point, but in the interim, you’re left with a hollow echo—”
“How you…loved Christmas…as a kid,” I managed. “Desperately wish to…feel it all.”
He grinned. “But for now, the light’s faded. Until the sun rises, you’re left wisting after a feeling.”
I stared at him. “And someone to share it with.”
Matty shifted a little closer. He was still soaking wet from the rain. Must have been freezing. Yet he hadn’t complained. Hadn’t even seemed to notice. I leant into him and shivered. More at the thought of how cold he must be than anything else. But he stripped off my blankets (now soaked) and wrapped me in two new dry ones.
The phone rang, and he shot up to grab it.
“She’s okay, I think. Conscious, talking, the bleeding’s stopped. Her shoulder’s bad, but—”
A pause as whoever was on the other end of the line spoke.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” He peered out of the window. “The rain’s still coming down hard.”
Another pause.
“Okay. We’ll be here.”
He hung up. “Sounds like the storm’s passing. It’s lightening up at the house, and the rain’s almost stopped down there. They’re on their way up. By the time they get here, it should have cleared.”
“The track will be murder.” I tried to sit up.
He moved and blocked me, forcing me to stay still. “Easy.”
“Give me the phone.”
“They’ve already left, Sof.”
I struggled some more.
“Stop!”
Calm. But firm. Commanding.
I’ve never heard him speak like that before.
“Stop.”
Softer. Eyes searching mine.
My heart fluttered.
“We’d all gladly risk a bit of fucking mud to get you safe. You must know that?”
My breath caught. My chest constricted painfully. His jaw was locked. The look in his eyes was…feral.
And so fucking hot.
There’s really something wrong with me.
Satisfied I wasn’t about to bolt for the door, he sat back down. Glanced around.
“Is that why all your decorations are so…weirdly depressing?”
“They’re not.” I sniffed.
“They really are, Sof. Like…they’re full of the festive spirit but don’t quite hit the mark.”
He glanced at my forlorn little tree. Which, in fairness, was at least standing vertically now. I’d come in one day to find him scrambling around on the floor, fiddling with the screws on the base to get it standing straight.
He was right. The baubles were desolate.
I loved them.
“I like them.” Matt wrapped the blankets tighter around me. “They’re comfortingly depressing. How Christmas should be. It always just…kind of reminds you of all you’re missing in life.”
Author Bio:
Briar has been a professional copywriter for many years (far more than she cares to admit). She began her career working for large companies and agencies before realising she could do it all for herself. Now, she happily writes for businesses and entrepreneurs she’s passionate about and dreams of the day her fiction becomes popular enough for her to retreat into fictional worlds full-time. Growing up in Cheshire and falling in love with its countryside, small towns, and villages, she’s enjoyed creating a fictional world that reflects her own.
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Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree 