Pining for Love

She wasn't supposed to stay. He wasn't supposed to care. She came to Pine Ridge to disappear. He's been disappearing in plain sight for years. Calla Finch has nothing left but a half-tank of gas and a plan to keep moving. No job. No marriage. No idea who she is without the life her ex-husband spent six years quietly dismantling. Pine Ridge, Washington was never supposed to be anything more than a wrong turn on a back road.Until her car dies on Main Street. The town has other ideas for her. Wyatt Ward left Seattle PD after a split-second decision he can't forgive himself for, even though it saved a child's life. Now he runs a struggling ranch outside Pine Ridge, carries the weight of a community that leans on him for everything, and keeps his own needs filed firmly under not my problem. The last thing he wants is to babysit a city woman through the Winter Lights Festival. But that's the tradition. And Mae Calloway didn't get to seventy-two by losing arguments. Forced together for a week of festival events, stranded by a winter storm, and slowly dismantling each other's walls one honest conversation at a time — Calla and Wyatt discover that the thing they've both been running from might be the same thing. And it looks a lot like this. When Calla's past follows her to Pine Ridge wearing a charming smile, everything they've built sits on a knife's edge. She's spent six years learning not to trust. He's spent three years learning not to need. Staying has never been harder. Leaving has never felt more wrong. Pining For Love is a spicy small-town romance featuring forced proximity, an enemies-to-lovers slow burn, a grumpy ex-cop who doesn't know how to want things, and a woman rediscovering herself one pine-scented December day at a time. HEA guaranteed.