A widower with two adorable boys and a Bohemian beauty who owns the local café are brought together in this emotional, heartwarming novel in Donna Alward's Darling, VT series.

Widower Ethan Gallagher's biggest challenge is just making it day to day. A firefighter and single father to two adorable boys, he juggles work and parenthood with the help of his family. When he volunteers at the temporary food bank site, he finds himself face to face with Willow Dunaway, owner of the Purple Pig Café. He's still not over his wife's death, but the carefree beauty has him thinking about living again...

Willow has worked hard to find inner peace and serenity, but Ethan challenges her at every turn, and before long the broody single dad gets under her skin. The passion between them is incendiary, and she also finds herself falling for his little boys, which resurrects all sorts of painful memories she thought she'd put behind her and disrupts her carefully calm existence.

But when Willow's deepest secret is finally revealed, their fragile happiness is threatened. Ethan knows love is impossible without trust—but trusting is hard when falling in love is the most frightening thing of all.