Another Kind of Ground #970607

The ground beneath Ironwood Basin holds more than anyone measured. Until now.
Jess Nakamura has spent three years holding Morrow Station’s SAR team together — training the new medic, running every callout, carrying the weight so nobody else has to. She doesn’t ask for help. She doesn’t need it. That’s what she tells herself.
Then Rachel Okafor arrives with a core driller and a dataset that could save the valley — or tear it apart.
Rachel came for the geology. Three years of seismic readings, collected for a university study she thought nobody would ever need. But when her data reveals that a mineral extraction company’s entire filing is built on outdated science, she becomes the pivot point in a sixty-nine-day race to form a Public Land Trust before the wrong door opens permanently.
There’s just one problem: the Trust requires every property owner’s signature. And Jess’s mother signed an option with the other side — to fix a roof she couldn’t afford, in a silence she thought was love.
Now Jess and Rachel must build a case from rock samples and rope data, navigate a community that protects its own with quiet ferocity, and face the truth that the hardest geological feature to read isn’t underground — it’s the person standing next to you.
Another Kind of Ground is the third standalone novel in the Ironwood Rescue series — a grounded, emotionally devastating f/f romance where competence is intimacy, science is armor, and letting someone see you fail is the bravest thing you’ve ever done. Happy ending guaranteed.