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

“Why are you on the floor?” She looked at them, letting her backpack dangle from her arm.


Del guessed that was as much of an explanation either he or Wyatt was going to be able to give her, so he ran with it. “Yeah, there was an oops, but it’s all better now. Do you guys want a snack?”


“Sure, what do we have?” Harper plopped the backpack by the wall out of the way—there’d been an incident where Del had almost fallen one day, and they’d all learned from that experience—and waited for Del to get off the floor.


“I’m not sure, but we’ll check. Dinner is a bit later than usual, Justin has to stay at work for a bit longer so we’ll wait for him, all right?”


Wyatt went back to his chair and Del went to check the fridge.


“So how was school?” he asked Harper, who had come to lean on the island.


There was something on her mind, but Del knew her well enough by now that asking about it directly wouldn’t work.


Chapter 35