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

The cashier with the pink lipstick was walking toward him through the small parking lot, an unlit cigarette hanging between her fingers. In the sunlight her makeup looked patchy and her platinum dyed hair, stacked in curls on her head, looked brittle and thin. “Bill blew you off, huh?”


“Yeah,” Justin said, squinting in the sunlight.


“You’re an O’Dwyer, right?” the cashier asked.


“Hmm.” The woman lit her cigarette. “My brother Lloyd owns the feed store out on the highway. He’s looking for someone who can lug bags of grain around. His back can’t take it anymore. That sound like something you’d be interested in?”


“Yeah,” Justin said, his heart thumping with sudden and unexpected hope. “Yeah, that sounds great.”


The cashier nodded and blew a cloud of smoke toward him. It hung in the air between them like fog before it slowly dissipated. “You tell him Carol sent you, and see what he can do.”


Chapter 25