He's the tattooed contractor restoring the town's most notorious wreck. She's the rule-keeping librarian who files chaos under "do not reshelve." When his first act is knocking over her romance display, sparks fly—then a box of forgotten books and a decades-old journal change everything.

Wren Hollow thrives on whispers, and Rhett Maddox's past makes easy gossip. June Whitmore has built a life of quiet order—until Rhett keeps showing up with fixes she didn't ask for and a gaze that refuses to look away. As the condemned Lennox mansion rises and the town closes ranks, the two of them are pulled together by crackling chemistry, reluctant trust, and the margin notes of a girl who once vanished without a goodbye. When a public confrontation forces Rhett to face who he was and June to choose what—and who—she stands for, they'll risk their reputations and their carefully laid plans for the one story worth breaking the rules for. A small-town, opposites-attract, age-gap romance brimming with banter, found history, and a fiercely earned happily ever after.