Capricorn Slate Claybourne, a former SEAL and sniper who has seen and done things in country no man should endure, returns to his bucolic hometown on Pieberry Island, desperate for the mundane, everyday routines he once wanted to escape.
A broken, soul-dead man unable to be around people, his body still a lethal weapon when his night terrors wake him from sleep, Slate’s failed to keep the promise he made to the commander who died in his arms: to look after the older man’s baby girl.
But animated Aries Holly Harper is not the pigtailed tot Slate expected her to be when she lands on the island to take over the decrepit Pieberry House, determined to turn it into an inn for summer tourists…and even more determined to yank Slate back into the land of the living.
First she crashes into him at the island’s Winter Festival, dumping a towering stack of pies at his feet, then she drags him off to a fortune teller against his better judgment.
Except for the sizzling attraction smoldering between them, they’re incompatible in every way.
But when a furious December nor’easter traps them together at Pieberry House, will Slate and Holly overcome their pasts and discover they are two halves of a whole?