What Happens at the Lake

After an unexpected turn in her life, a woman leaves New York for Laurel Lake, the small town her father always spoke of warmly while she was growing up. The town held the title of America's Friendliest Town for seventeen years running, and she arrives wanting exactly that kind of welcome.

She gets her neighbor, Fox Cassidy, instead. He is tall, dark and burly, and he grunts rather than says hello. Their first meeting goes badly: she is holding his mailbox, crushed after she pulled it out from under her tire.

Things get worse when the key snaps off in the lock of the place she is renting, and she has to ask Fox to help her break in. He glares through all of it.

Over time she notices other things about him: the way he watches her when he thinks she is looking away, and the heat in his eyes whenever they bicker. She came to escape her problems, and getting involved with Fox looks like trouble. This is a grumpy-sunshine romance, told in her first-person voice and standalone from any series.

She decides to have a summer fling anyway. The plan holds until it is time to go home, and leaving may not be as simple as she expects.