She came back to Steinhatchee to sell her grandmother's old river fish camp and say goodbye. She did not plan on a reason to stay - or on getting back the warm, generous part of herself she thought she had quietly packed away for good.
At fifty-six, Nell Ainsworth has a tidy little house in Gainesville, a grown daughter who worries about her, a marriage of thirty-four years that came apart so politely she barely heard it break, and one last errand: drive down to Steinhatchee, the Old-Florida scalloping village at the mouth of the river, clean out the River House her grandmother Etta left her on the fish-house dock, and sell the failing old building to whoever will take it. Two weeks. In and out. Back to her careful, decided-for life - the one where she stopped cooking a real supper for anybody the year her husband stopped coming home hungry.
Then she meets Boone Tolliver - the quiet, widowed skiff builder down the dock who mends the things nobody thanks him for and has kept Etta's River House dry and its dues paid for years without telling a soul. She climbs the landing stairs to the River House, the scallop-shucking hall where the whole village used to gather under the old landing bell, only to find it shuttered and sagging, the bell silent on the piling, and a developer's survey stakes marching down the riverfront.
A retired schoolteacher who learned to shuck scallops and feed a full table at her grandmother's elbow cannot quite walk away. So Nell stays past her two weeks, and she and Boone start bringing the old River House back board by board - two people who thought their best years were behind them, learning that the surest light on the river might be the one they keep lit for each other. But a private resort wants the whole riverfront, her daughter wants her home, and Boone swore a long time ago that he was done hoping for anything past the next tide.
A sweet, clean, slow-burn second-chance romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome to Steinhatchee, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.
