Hometown Sweethearts

By Tara Baisden

Description:

Grace Bennett traded her shattered Atlanta life for the grandmother's inn she inherited in Serenity Crossing, Tennessee. With her divorce barely final and her trust in her own judgment destroyed, she has twelve weeks to restore the Mountain Laurel Inn before the town's biggest festival—and she's determined to do it on her own terms. She didn't come back looking for love. She came back to prove she could build something that wouldn't fall apart. But walking into Hartwell's Hardware for renovation supplies means facing the boy she left behind fourteen years ago... and discovering he's become the kind of man who makes her question everything she thinks she knows about what she wants.

Jim Hartwell has built a good life in the town he never left. He runs the hardware store his grandfather founded, lives in the cabin he built for a family that never came, and has made peace with the possibility that love might not find him again. Four years after his ex-wife told him he and his "little town" would never be enough, Jim knows his worth—even if he's stopped expecting anyone else to see it. When Grace walks through his door, fourteen years of wondering what might have been comes rushing back. He realizes instantly that he never stopped loving her. But Grace isn't looking for a hero. She's looking for hardware. And Jim refuses to be chosen simply because he's the safer option.

As plumbing disasters force them to work side by side and Jim's escape-artist hound keeps finding his way to Grace's doorstep, the walls she's built begin to crack. Small-town proximity makes avoiding each other impossible. Shared history makes pretending they're just old friends laughable. But Grace has spent years with a man who offered help as a form of control, and Jim has been told once that being himself wasn't enough. For Grace to trust again, she'll have to risk being wrong. For Jim to love again, he'll have to believe he's being chosen—not settled for.

In the mountains of Tennessee, where church bells ring every morning and neighbors still know your name, two wounded hearts will discover that healing takes courage, faith requires trust, and sometimes the greatest journey is the one that brings you home.