Jenny Gardiner

Hard up...Sunshine Ferguson had finally gotten her Zen on. After years of being an uptight staffer for a hotheaded senator, she'd been forced to switch careers, changed her name to something more cheerful and less evocative of the implosion from her last job, and became a yoga instructor. It was the furthest thing, career-wise, from what she'd been doing. She really needed to nourish her soul upon being fired when she got caught accidentally making out in a dark bar with a staffer of the candidate trying to take the senator's job. The loud-mouthed press secretary proved once again that men were never to be trusted, though at least his blabbering their secret finally forced her out of the job that had been toxic for a long time. Life was finally good for Sunny. She was calm. She was imperturbable.Until the very man who blew up her career-and ultimately absconded with her job-shows up in her class, seeking to find his own nirvana.

Go hard or go home... After losing her beloved neighbor Violet, Daphne Sweeney realizes her dream when Violet leaves her part ownership of the duplex she shared with her aged friend. Finally, after years of trying to scrape together the money for her own place, Daphne can stay put, establish some real roots, in her humble little home from Violet. Until she realizes Violet left the remaining ownership of the house to a very distant relative, Brady McGovern, who just so happens to be Daphne's college boyfriend who fled town the day after graduation, never to be heard from again. And Brady has touched down in town just long enough to unload the property and get back on the road again, just like the good old days.

Not such a cutie patootie...Alyssa Heyward has held a powerful grudge against Josh "The Mad Tooter" Trumbull for the better part of her life. Not that obsessing over something that happened when you were a tween is a particularly helpful thing to do for your mental health. And not like she's dwelt on it forever. In fact, she hadn't considered it-or him-for a long, long time... Until he shows up at her door as the new general contractor set to do major renovations on her house. Which instantly resurrects all of those old feelings about the sleepover at her best friend's house when she ever-so-reluctantly agreed to partake in her first (and last) game of spin-the-bottle. When the creepiest boy in the Fourth grade spun, and the bottle pointed toward Alyssa, she thought her life was over indeed. And when she stood as far away from him in the dark storage closet instead of submitting to an unwanted kiss from the boy everyone knew had eaten a fly in the cafeteria and whose propensity for, um, breaking wind in all the wrong places (not to mention belching like a bullfrog) were the hallmark of his personality, she hoped she'd dodged a bullet. Until Josh Trumbull exited the closet and told everyone that instead of kissing him, Alyssa had emitted a noxious fume in the closed space.Perhaps the high point of Josh Trumbull's prank-filled childhood happened at a spin-the-bottle party, when the girl he fostered a wicked crush on refused to grant him that one little kiss, and instead treated him like a pariah when they were sequestered in the dark confines of the kissing closet. Quick on his feet with a rejoinder, Josh popped out of the dark room and told all his buddies that Alyssa had pooted in there, killing all romantic notions of a first kiss.He hadn't given this moment a second thought for the rest of his life. Until now. When he rings the doorbell of the woman whose home he's set to renovate and when she opens the door, her face falls, much like it did when that spinning bottle pointed straight at her nearly fifteen years earlier. Leaving him to wonder: does he have any chance of rebuilding a relationship with the woman who hates him most as he rebuilds her home?

Shrimply irresistible...Lola Quigley can't believe her good luck when she wins a spot on the Food Channel's popular Shop till you Drop. The show features amateur foodies competing to produce a prize-winning meal from staples commonly found in food banks, where people often unload their most unwanted pantry items. Having lived on a near poverty-level budget for a few dark years when her life imploded unexpectedly, Lola had grown to love the challenge of creating delicious meals with the cheapest ingredients she could find on the sale shelf of the grocery store, or-in a twist of irony-donated from her local food bank. She just has to win this: the prize money would help her launch the soup kitchen food truck she's dreamed of starting. It'll be her way of paying it forward after she managed to dig out of a financial hole she'd doubted she ever could escape.Levi Patton is pissed. He's stuck doing penance as a guest chef on an annoying cable reality TV show where overly enthusiastic wannabes try to outdo him with random undesirable ingredients. Will he ever get over the meteoric crash of his career after a food critic found the unmistakable tail of a rat floating atop his bouillabaisse at Levi's revered Washington, DC, restaurant? Convinced, but unable to prove, that a jealous sous chef sabotaged him, his name is now mud in the food world; he's drowning in the veritable toilet of the culinary industry: competing on Shop till you Drop. And he's totally screwed when he ends up pitted against the overly cheerful brunette with the tattoo of Popeye on her bicep, the very woman he'd left at the altar nearly a decade ago.

Does this ring make my ass look big?Izzy Strong has grown weary of the loser guys of L.A., having ditched the latest, a guy who couldn't seem to look up from his ESPN app to conduct a meaningful conversation. He'd followed on the heels of a lifeguard obsessed with sharks, a waiter who bragged far too often about serving the Kardashians, and a foot fetishist who demanded she wear sandals while vacationing at a ski resort in the dead of winter. So when she hears about a charming man from the remote Montana town where her best friend Zoey lives who's holding a contest to give away the very expensive ring from his failed engagement, she hightails it to Bristol, Montana to see if he's as bighearted as her friend claims he is. Too bad she finds out immediately that he's a thoughtless jerk who hasn't the common decency to even curb his dog.Sully Forester is ready to let go of the last remaining ties to his long-term relationship with a fianc who ditched him weeks before their wedding: the engagement ring. When he decides to hold a contest to flat-out give the pricy bauble to the person who persuades him he's most deserving of it, he has no idea of the craziness he'll be unleashing in his adopted town of Bristol, Montana. Beginning with being wrongfully accosted by a cranky shrew of a woman who flips out on him for his dog's transgressions, even when his dog isn't the culprit. Thank goodness he'll never see her again.

Sometimes you'd rather be caught with your pants down than your skirt up... Zoey Richards needs to get far away from her past. Following a broken engagement and an earful of I-told-you-so's from her controlling parents, she decides to flee the West Coast for the hinterlands, finding herself alone and licking her wounds in the wide open spaces of Bristol, Montana, happily away from anyone who knows her or anything about her life. Tanner Eliasson loves that no one knows who he really is. More like who he was. As the son of a famous film director and his attention-seeking starlet wife, every moment of his childhood was recorded by the paparazzi for posterity. And suffice it to say nothing about your childhood should be in the public spotlight so much. So when the daughter of a family friend punches ten-year old Tanner at a film premier and he runs to his mother for solace, the media had a field day mocking the poor boy. From then on, Tanner counted the minute till he could escape his childhood and carve a normal life for himself in the mountains of Montana, where no one would ever know that he once was known the world-over as the Weeping Wimp. That is until the girl with the mean left hook shows up in his one-horse town, and threatens to make his life a living hell.

How could a man so perfectly wrong be so completely right? Maddie Henderson is the trivia queen of Verity Beach, and she's got a shelf full of trophies to prove it. Word's gotten around that she's downright unbeatable when it comes to being brimming with useless knowledge and pop culture fun facts. Unbeatable, that is, until Donovan Reeves-the one that got away-shows back up in town, years after crushing her heart like a bug on the sidewalk. And Donovan is determined to crush Maddie again, this time in the statewide trivia championships, while proving to her she had him all wrong and he's truly the right man for her.

If this truck's a-rockin' don't come a-knockin' Jamie Lundquist had gone soft. More like squishy. Usually a lean, athletic surfer girl, the stress of her newly-divorced parents dueling for her undivided attention had driven her to seek solace in food and binge-watching TV shows, and her fat ass had become a testimonial to her woes. So with the New Year, she's vowed to turn over a new leaf and get back in shape before surf season kicks in. But temperatures rise and tempers flare when she has to wedge her car into a half space left by some jerk who straddled two spaces in the crowded gym parking lot, and he goes for the jugular, pointing out that she needs to stop criticizing him and get to the gym to rehabilitate her out-of-shape physique. Carter Henderson's day just keeps getting worse. First he flattens a skunk in his new truck, then he gets not one but two injuries during his pre-dawn workout. He just wants to get home, take a hot shower and ice his wounds before embarking on the first day of the new job he was so excited to start. Instead he finds himself a speechless combatant in a war of words with a snarky woman who's all up his ass over his park job. Jamie would like nothing more than to forget that the jerk existed. Until he turns up as the new chef at her father's new restaurant, where she's been waitressing while trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. And when her father refuses her demands to fire the moron, all bets are off as the heat is turned up to scorching in the kitchen to see who will bring the other down first.

Taking the plunge... Lacy Caldwell's mermaid gig at a cheesy roadside beach bar provided much-needed income while she pursues her graduate degree. That is until the beloved owner dies and her greedy nephew announces he's cashing out by closing the bar and selling the property to a developer who's going to replace the kitschy charm of the Mermaid's Purse with ocean-view condos. Cameron Sanders can't believe his good luck. Struggling financially, he's thrilled to find out some random, ancient aunt he hardly knew died and left him an inheritance that'll help take the money monkey off his back. He's ready to go to the mat in battle when some annoying mermaid from the bar tries to throw a wrench in his plans. But things get complicated when he realizes that she's a woman he's started to have feelings for.

If it swells, ride it... Georgie Childress moved to Verity Beach to lick her wounds after her controlling fianc pulled a runner mere weeks before the wedding. Jobless and desperate to flee his turf, she sought solace in the quietude of the ocean, happily escaping into her own thoughts while surrounded by diving dolphins and cacophonous seagulls. Only when she accidentally runs over some random--and super sexy--surfer dude's surfboard does she start to wonder if she needs to bring her head out of the clouds and start paying attention to life again. Spencer Willoughby long ago fled his rigid upbringing, shunning the familial expectations of an Ivy League education and Wall Street career in favor of the sun, sand and surf along North Carolina's Outer Banks. Give him a surfboard and he's a happy man. That is until some nutty lady with a penchant for fender-benders backs into his beloved hand-crafted wooden surfboard, snapping it in half. It's enough to make a man crazy--crazier still because the kooky blond is making his blood run hot. Just when he finally gets the woman out of his head, Spencer is unwittingly paired off with her at a wedding as a favor to a friend, forcing him to make nice with his board-murdering nemesis who he might just want to ride off into the sunset.

If lusting after him is wrong, she doesn't want to be right... Harper Landry sometimes feels like she's turned into a professional dater. Which might not be such a bad job if it didn't involve having to spend so much time with a succession of truly undesirable men who were obviously still single for good reason. So she's elated when she ends up on a blind date with the charming and handsome Danny Greevy, a man who seems too good to be true. But Harper's starting to think that too good to be true might be downright perfect for her. Particularly when the man who launched her man-drought shows up unexpectedly to throw a wrench in her life yet again. Noah Gunderson is back in town after traveling the world for the past several years. Forced to return home after promising his mother on her deathbed to save the beloved inn that she'd nearly run into the ground, he's planning to get far away from Verity Beach just as soon as he's got the inn back in the black. And he's determined not to let the distraction of Harper Landry, the one that got away, keep him here a moment longer.

Oh, oh, ohhh, what a feeling Allie Ledbetter is outstanding in her field. Well, sort of. After all, she stands in a lot of fields as she releases her peregrine falcon to help fend off huge flocks of starlings from decimating grape yields at vineyards that hire her. And she and her falcon just landed a dream job: working at a vineyard in Tuscany keeping birds from having a feast with the grapes. Francesco Romeo is sick to death of things that eat his crop. As the brother tasked with eradicating these pesky marauders at the top producer of premier wines in the Chianti region of Tuscany, Francesco is enraged when he learns the vineyard next door has hired a falconer to scare away swarming flocks of starlings, and now the birds are instead happily feasting on the Romeo family's predator-free grapes, and Francesco has to go toe-to-toe with the feisty falconer, who just happens to be a woman he's already gone mouth-to-mouth with.