Sixteen years ago, Adrian Vale left before breakfast. He never explained why.
Now thirty-nine, divorced, and unable to remember the last time he loved his work, the Philadelphia architect returns to Briarwood with a practical plan: restore his grandmother's Victorian house, sell it, and leave.
There's just one problem. The contractor he needs is Owen Mercer—the man who once showed up with breakfast and found Adrian gone.
Owen has built a business, a life, and solid reasons to keep his distance. He can handle rotting timber, impossible deadlines, and a client with opinions about everything. Working beside Adrian is another matter.
Between stubborn windows, familiar jokes, and afternoons that run past quitting time, their carefully negotiated boundaries begin to slip. The attraction is still there. So is the hurt.
Adrian knows how to draw a future down to its smallest detail. Sharing one means learning to ask. And Owen must decide whether the man who once disappeared deserves the chance to stay.
A high-heat, standalone MM romance featuring mature heroes, an architect and his restoration contractor, small-town homecoming, hard-earned second chances, and a deeply satisfying happily ever after.
