Justin O'Dwyer is 19. Four days ago, his mother died of a drug overdose, and now Justin is back in Enterprise, Oregon, trying to figure out how to raise the younger siblings he's afraid of losing to the foster system. Justin is completely out of his depth. Harper is six, and hates him. Wyatt is four and doesn't remember him. And baby Scarlett, at fourteen months, has never even met her big brother before. When Scarlett gets sick and won't stop screaming, and when Harper runs off in the middle of the night, Justin is at the end of his tether. In desperation, he knocks on a neighbor's door begging for help.<br><br>Del Abbot is 38, and living in his grandparents' old place in Enterprise after his marriage broke down and he lost his restaurant in the divorce. He's a chef, even had his own show on cable for a while, but now he's looking for a new start, if he could just figure out what exactly that entails. When the O'Dwyer family barrels into his life one night, Del can't refuse to help. What begins as a trip to the hospital becomes a regular child-minding gig while Justin struggles to find his feet. And the more time Del spends with Justin, the more they both want more than friendship. But small town life comes with its own bigotry, and, in Justin's case, that bigotry has always been close to home.<br><br>When an act of violence threatens to destroy the small family they've built, both Justin and Del need to put aside their pasts and reach for their future together.

Family Recipe

After staying there for a year, it was looking lived-in and cozy, and—if Del was honest with himself—a little rundown in a few places. He didn’t have the energy for the upkeep for an old, sprawling 3,000-square-foot house. He needed to hire someone, but somehow, he hadn’t.


He told himself that he was focusing on the cookbook right now, but that wasn’t exactly true. He still felt unanchored after leaving Clyde and Trim behind, like he was just drifting through life.


Paul’s words rang in his mind. What did he really want from life?


Right now, he didn’t know, so he soldiered on, trying to come up with new ways to spin some old recipes for fine dining food that could be made at home. Trim had been a success because of him. Hell, just before he’d left, there had been murmurings of a Michelin star in the imminent future.


Chapter 8