Waiting for Sunshine

Shane Thompson has had a rough stretch: a partner who cheated, a dream job she walked away from, and a drive across the country to keep herself from ending up homeless. She arrives in Nashville still insisting on optimism, whatever it costs her.

Max Mullins is a former Navy SEAL who has spent years shut off from other people. He is sure he needs no one, and his bar runs on that conviction.

The two meet when Shane spills coffee down the front of Max's white sweatshirt. The accident leads to a job behind his bar, and the two fall into a wary routine of shared shifts. Slowly the routine warms into something neither of them planned.

This is a contemporary romance and the first book in the Nashville Nights series. It alternates between Shane's and Max's points of view. The dynamic is grumpy and sunshine, with an age gap between the leads, and the romance builds slowly. Both characters have lost a great deal and handle it in opposite ways, so the pace is gradual and the mood leans warm, with hurt underneath.