For two years, Harold's little wooden boat has sat under a tarp in Margie Salt's carport, and for two years Margie has not been able to use it or let it go. At fifty-nine she reads to children at the Sandpiper Reading Room on Saturday mornings, keeps to the back of every room, and tells herself that a quiet, invisible life is a safe one.
Then she works up the nerve to ask the new man at the boatworks to look at Harold's boat. Errol Lund came down from Maine to be no one, a widower who ran a fishing co-op for thirty years, lost his wife the same year Margie lost her husband, and has no plans to need anybody again. He agrees to restore the old cedar skiff on one condition: Margie has to help.
Board by board, over a long sweet season of sanding and varnish and shared coffee, two careful people who thought their best years were behind them start to come back to life. But a developer wants the whole bayside boatworks for a private boat club, the free Saturday program that gives a lonely twelve-year-old somewhere to belong is about to be bulldozed, and Margie's daughter wants her to pack up and move to Atlanta where it's sensible.
A sweet, clean, slow-burn second-chance romance with no spice, a wooden boat worth saving, a boy worth fighting for, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome back to Siesta Key, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.