He Falls First

Ryder Colburn has no spare hours. He runs the family business and looks after his sick father, a man who has become a stranger to him, far removed from the cold, heavy-handed parent he once was. Hobbies and dating are not on the list.

Then a woman steps into the path of an oncoming car, and Ryder steps in to help. She is Penny, a chef who is wary around people and carries a scar on her chin. Something in her guarded manner draws him in, and he keeps finding reasons to get closer.

Penny has already paid for a hard lesson about love. She now lives in a run-down house in a tiny California town with her feisty grandmother and her tween brother, and the household eats on the leftovers from her catering job.

It is far from the life she once pictured. She fills her days with amateur plumbing repairs and breakfast casseroles, and she has decided she is finished with romance.

Ryder is a contractor with a sharp tongue, and he keeps pressing on the defenses she has built. This is a contemporary small-town romance with a banter-driven dynamic and a family-heavy cast. Penny's secrets and her resolve are the main obstacles between them.