His Winter Proprietor

Nell Hastings inherits a bookstore with a broken furnace, three regulars, and a lease she can't afford. The man who holds that lease is Owen Davies — forty-five, widowed, the kind of neighbor who shows up with a toolbox and pretends he was in the area. He's been quietly paying the back rent for two years because Nell's aunt asked him to, and he has no intention of telling her. Nell has every intention of not needing him. Then January arrives, the pipes freeze twice, and a three-day snowstorm leaves them alone in the Lantern with candles, a shelving kit, and a very old dog. What starts as a kiss neither of them names becomes the only thing in Marrow either of them looks forward to. When Nell finds out about the rent, the fight in the hardware store is loud enough to be heard across the green. His Winter Proprietor is a standalone small town age gap boss romance about slow weather, old buildings, and the slowest, warmest happily ever after.