<p>She came home to heal her father. She never expected to find her own heart on the line.</p><p><br></p><p>When ER nurse Tessa Grant rushes back to her hometown after her estranged father's stroke, she expects to find the same emotionally distant man she left behind fifteen years ago. Instead, she discovers her father has changed, and a mysterious stranger is living in her childhood home, helping her father. Beckett is frustratingly kind, impossibly steady, and somehow knows more about her father's daily life than she has in a decade.</p><p><br></p><p>Tessa plans to handle her father's recovery and escape back to Denver before Christmas. But as holiday lights twinkle in the picturesque mountain town of Sweet River Falls, the walls she's built begin to crumble.</p><p><br></p><p>Between helping with the town's Christmas festival, baking her mother's treasured cookie recipes, and witnessing the unexpected bond between her father and Beckett—a man with his own troubled past—Tessa finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about family, belonging, and where she truly fits.</p><p><br></p><p>As snow blankets the mountains and the town prepares for its Christmas Eve candlelight walk, Tessa discovers that healing comes in unexpected forms, second chances are worth fighting for, and sometimes the best gift is finding your way back home to family, to love, and to yourself.</p><p><br></p><p>A heartwarming Christmas story about forgiveness, finding home, and the families we choose that will leave you reaching for hot chocolate and believing in holiday magic long after the last page.</p>