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

Tomorrow he was going to do better. Which was exactly what he’d told himself yesterday, and the day before that. Tomorrow he’d figure out how to deal with Harper without making her mad, and meanwhile today he’d concentrate on looking after Scarlett and maybe even trying to get Wyatt to say something.


But first he had a mess in the kitchen to clean up. 


Justin wasn’t sure where the hours in the day went. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wasn’t getting on top of anything. He hadn’t even got around to getting the laundry on before Harper got home from school, shoved a note in his hand and stormed off to the living room to watch TV.


Harper’s teacher wanted him to call and schedule a time to come in and talk about Harpers “behavioral issues.”


Chapter 12