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

If the two day drive to California was their baptism of fire, Justin felt they got through it pretty unscathed. They had to stop regularly to let the kids stretch their legs, and for bathroom breaks and to change Scarlett, and the kids got overtired and short-tempered an early way in, but they managed. In the hotel room in Reno, with all the kids tucked up in one bed, Justin and Del watched TV with the sound down, and then Del massaged Justin’s aching shoulders. Justin arched into his touch, eyes closed, and couldn’t wait until they had a room to themselves again.


The next morning they got another early start, after breakfast at a Wendy’s that necessitated a change of clothes for both Scarlett and Wyatt, who managed to wear most of their breakfast.


“Lucky we brought you a few spare shirts, hey,” Justin said as he wrangled Wyatt into a fresh T-shirt in the bathroom. “Otherwise the ants would carry you off.”


Chapter 75