One Big Little Secret

The Rory Brothers, Book 2

By: Nicole Snow

Narrated by: Rock Engle, Carly Robins

One wild night and a surprise reunion sends a moody billionaire spinning into fatherhood in this heartwarming and steamy romance by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Nicole Snow.

I guessed wrong.

A little reckless fun with a stranger never hurts.

A drunken one-night stand doesn't leave you pregnant.

A savage twist of fate won't make your baby daddy your new boss.

Bad luck can't last forever—unless you're me.

Should we count the ways I'm cooked with Patton Rory?

He rocks the grumpy gene, dialed up to 11.

He's so handsome the mirror winks back and his bank account has its own zip code.

He's also totally oblivious—thank God.

I'm not sure what he'll be if he figures out the little boy who trashed his fancy building and ruined his favorite tie is his son.

Maybe I'm becoming a human knot, but I won't make the same mistake twice.

If he starts acting human and making my munchkin laugh, I'm not swooning.

If his forbidden kiss tastes like pure temptation, I'll eat mud.

If he makes my heart sing, I'm still clinging to my big little secret.

Even if it's growing so massive I can't separate love from the lie.

This stand-alone romance serves up a sweet and spicy secret baby entanglement with heart-rippy feels. Witness the last man who ever thought he'd be a father wake up and go all-in for the wife and son he needs more than his next breath.

©2024 Nicole Snow (P)2025 Audible, Inc.

Decent Listen

Overall a good story. There was a bit of a drop with one of the incidents in the story, there was never a discussion about the car after the accident. That left some questions on how that was worked out.

The author needs to look into how depositing checks works and make sure it fits with the time frame she is working in.

Sadly Rock should never do women's or children's voices. His female voice is grating on the nerves and his kids voice left me thinking the character was neurodivergent or had some kind of speech pathology.

The characters (Salem’s) inner conflict goes on to long.

The worst character is the main female character. She is weak and terrible mother. The main male character definitely was more rational about the whole situation. I get tired of weak female characters. Hard to not roll my eyes

Omg so good!

Another wonderful book by Nicole Snow! I just love her writing style, and the story telling is fantastic! You really feel like you’re right there and you’re part of the family. The narrators are, of course, great as well. I’m going to go back and listen to book one in this series!

Long tedious boring story

So many things that brought this book down. Lets start by saying the book has 27 (TWENTY SEVEN) chapters all in ROMAN NUMERALS. I'll be honest. When I comes to roman numerals, I'm good til I hit 10. WHY would you put ROMAN NUMERALS as your chapter heading?? Then you've got the opening of the book of a VERY young girl drinking in a bar left solo by her "friend". We're talking barely drinking age legal. Then she goes to the room of a man who "rescues" her from a drunk who, seemingly, is almost TWICE her age. Oh, and she's a VIRGIN. Well, true to the synopsis on the back, she gets pregnant from that one time one night stand. As usual, they guy disappears with no way to contact him.

Fast forward to 6 years later. She's now a single mom who just got a job unknowingly working for her baby daddy. Opening scene is their 6 year old son is running around her work place, unsupervised, stealing a pastries, eating and smearing it on an expensive leather couch, then talking back to her boss (a.k.a. his daddy) when asked for his name. The child yells at him and talks back, mouthing off doing everything but telling him to "blank" you. Turns out mommy brought him to work with her that day because her sitter fell thru. Ok that explains why he's there, it doesn't explain why she's not looking for him. Additionally, the kid is rude, disrespectful, pretty much undisciplined, and acting more like 4 then 6. Yet she does nothing to scold or discipline him, demand he apologize, or have him face any consequences for his actions at all. Neither the running off, the stealing pastries, or defacing a several thousand dollar leather couch. She does apologize FOR him and makes lame excuses for his bad behavior before turning to him and "reasoning" about the error of his ways. Then, once she recognizes who her boss is, she becomes belligerent, sullen, and borderline rude. This pretty much carries on for the rest of the book. Ever wonder how all those men out there who treat women like crap came into being? Reading this book and observing how Salem (the mother) is raising her son in this book and you can pretty much see it in the making. She fawns all over him, justifies his every misdeed, praises his every little demand for attention, makes him think everything he does is just genius, and goes into a panic over his safety in every stressful, or situation which he "might" get hurt no matter how big or small. She starts calling his name "Arlo" (yes, the kid is actually named ARLO) running her hands over him to check him for injury, fervently demanding to know if he's hurt. Meanwhile the baby daddy is in his own head why this chick looks familiar then spends the rest of the time wondering where the kid's dad is. Then there's the constant mental reminder by Salem that HE's the father in every other sentence mentioned. Nicole has broken the sacred rule "Thou shalt not treat your readers as if they have suffered a traumatic brain injury that affects their short term memory". We don't need the constant reminders of something that was mentioned 3 sentences ago. I tried really hard to hang in there. Secret baby is one of my favorite tropes but only as long as it's done right. THIS WAS NOT RIGHT. I finally gave up on chapter XII (that was chapter 12, btw) and it was archived under my DNF collection.

The female narrator did not help. In the FIRST chapter of listening I knew who she was even though she was using a pseudonym. Her pseudonym was CARLY ROBINS but her actual name is CJ BLOOM. Reason I recognized her is because I refuse to listen to ANY books read by CJ BLOOM because she has no vocal control. One second she's whispering or speaking in a low tone so you have to turn up the volume on the earbuds perched mere centimeters from your eardrums to hear what she's saying. In the next instant she raises her voice to yelling blasting your poor eardrums wincing in pain. How she is still employed without changing that bad habit, I have no idea. She has no problem speaking in LOUD volumes into the microphone so much that even when I removed the earbuds from my ears and it was coming from the earbuds alone my coworker in the next cubicle heard her CLEARLY. Imagine that being stuffed in your ear when she pulls that stunt. So, in the future I will be boycotting CARLY ROBINS and CJ BLOOM. Also, when she narrates a child's voice for some reason all their personalities always comes across as bratty and spoiled no matter what book she's reading. Not a fan.

I did not have an issue with Rock Engle's narration. Just the material he was reading. I feel he would probably be better reading a different book. I'm going to look for something else he's narrating and check him out.

As for this book, it was a very long drawn out version of lather, rinse, repeat because that's pretty much what ALL the chapters did up until 12 when I finally gave up. I would NOT recommend it. Save your credit or your money and keep looking elsewhere.