Little Too Close

Nine years ago, a job at the Madigan family resort in Colorado gave a penniless, pregnant, heartbroken young woman a fresh start. The man who hired her, Weston Madigan, left the next day and has never come back, not even for a visit. She stayed, raised her daughter, Sutton, and built a life in the resort's employee housing.

Now Weston is home. She walks into the shared kitchen of her duplex and finds him cooking breakfast with no shirt on. He had no idea he would be sharing the place with a roommate, let alone a roommate with a child. A pilot, he has returned to launch the family's new heli-skiing operation, and the arrangement is meant to be temporary.

They agree on ground rules, and she is confident she can live with him for a while. Weston is brooding and sharp-tempered, but he softens when Sutton makes him laugh, and then he smiles at her mother. The attraction she has been trying to ignore gets harder to wave away.

This is a contemporary romance with a roommates-under-one-roof setup, a grumpy hero and a single mother who is determined not to fall for him. The tone is light and teasing, with plenty of humor in the heroine's narration, and the first-person voice keeps the tension close.