She spent three years being the strong one. Then a lost man sailed into the inlet and needed her to be soft instead.
At fifty-eight, Birdie Hartwell has buried a husband, raised a son, and followed her little sister to New Smyrna Beach to help reopen the family cafe. She is the one who holds everybody up. She did not plan on August Lindqvist, the quiet, weather-worn boat-builder who ties up at the marina one rainy evening with nothing to his name but a wooden sailboat and a grief that matches her own.
Gus lost his wife and his boatyard in the same hard year and pointed his bow south with no real plan but to keep moving. He did not plan on a sharp-tongued woman in a bright scarf who pours him coffee at closing time and refuses to let him drift back out alone.
Two widowed people who thought the best part of their lives was already over start to wonder otherwise, until Birdie's grown son shows up from Ohio, certain a man with empty pockets is after his mother's house, and drags every secret Gus has been carrying out into the light. Now Birdie has to decide whether to keep being the sensible one everybody expects, or take the one chance the tide washed up at her door.
A sweet, clean, slow-burn later-in-life romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Return to New Smyrna Beach, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.