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

He just wanted to leave Enterprise and all of this behind him. He wanted to have a new beginning somewhere else.


“Do you really think we can get a fresh start together?” Justin asked, hope swelling inside his chest.


“Yes,” Del said softly. “I think we can do anything we want.”


Justin smiled and drew Del in for another gentle kiss.


Justin fought with his nerves the entire day Emily and her husband were due over for a cookout. He knew that Del knew Emily from school, but he was finding it difficult to imagine that she wouldn’t somehow be the bearer of bad news. That she’d suddenly tell him that no, he couldn’t have the kids after all since he couldn’t look after them on his own. It wasn’t even fair to Emily, he knew, because she’d been nothing but helpful and supportive. It was just that she represented the system, and Justin had been raised to never trust the system to begin with, and to know that he was totally powerless against it as well.


Chapter 69