She’s trying to save the store that raised her. He’s trying to disappear before anyone needs him. Coldwater Ridge has other plans.
Delia Marsh has spent her whole life behind the counter at Marsh’s Provisions, the little family store that has fed Coldwater Ridge for four generations. These days, the shelves are thinner, the roof leaks when it rains, and the drawer beneath the register is filling with notices she can’t afford to answer, but what Delia can’t afford most is for her eight-year-old son, Charlie, to know how close they are to losing everything.
Cole Bannister came to Coldwater Ridge for quiet, a fixer-upper house, and the kind of work that ends when the tools are put away. After years in bomb disposal and one terrible loss he can’t outrun, he has no intention of becoming anyone’s neighbor, anyone’s hero, or anyone’s second chance.
Then Charlie’s baseball crosses the fence. One stuck window, one unfinished tree fort, and one porch swing at a time, Cole is drawn into Delia’s warm, complicated world. But when the past he’s been trying to survive convinces him he’s safer alone, Delia will have to decide whether to keep holding everything together by herself, and Cole will have to learn that love isn’t another thing to defuse. It’s something to stay for.
Porch Swing Promises is a clean, emotional small-town romance with a single mom heroine, a wounded veteran hero, a nosy but loving town, found family, a family store worth saving, and a hard-earned happily ever after.
