Fired by the Boss of Winter Lane

Nell Brennan has worked Winter Lane for nine winters. On the tenth, the new owner fires her. Rowan Vance came north to save a farm he inherited and a business he doesn't understand, and the first spreadsheet decision was simple: cut the foreman. Then he learned who the foreman was. Stranded in a snowstorm with the woman he left nine years ago, he makes the only deal he can — stay through Christmas, train the crew, and don't ask what happened. She stays. The farm doesn't survive on paper, so she shows him how to open the fields. Together they build a harvest festival out of frozen ground and stubbornness, and in the house where they were almost something, they start to be something again. He offers her half the land. She's not signing until spring.