A one-night stand. A rundown farmhouse.
And the man I never forgot.

A year ago, I punched a handsy man in a Merritt Point dive bar, went home with the kind stranger who rescued me instead, and left before he woke up. Never even got his name.

I never expected to see him again. Hell, I was never supposed to be back in town.

But here I am, and my to-do list looks like a cry for help: survive my ER shifts as a single mom, finalize a divorce I should’ve filed years ago, and help my aunt gut her old farmhouse so I can take the profits and finally build a life of my own. What I didn’t plan for was my aunt’s contractor turning out to be the man from that night.

Nolan Murphy is an injured smokejumper stuck in Massachusetts while he waits for medical clearance to return to Montana before fire season starts. Unfortunately for me, he’s also built like a mountain and somehow makes that mustache work. Taking the contracting gig wasn’t part of his plan, but it’s better than spending one more night under his parents’ roof. So when I offer him the spare room to make both our lives easier, he agrees to every rule I set, including the one where we never speak of that night again.

Except living with your one-night stand is exactly as awkward as it sounds. It’s worse when your daughter decides he’s her favorite person within a week, when he keeps showing up exactly when I need him most, and when I catch a glimpse of the soft heart he works very hard to hide.

I try to keep my walls up. Turns out the man is criminally good with his hands, in every sense of the word, and somewhere along the way, I stop counting down to spring. But sooner or later, one of us is going to have to choose between the lives we were trying to leave behind and the one we never meant to build by staying.