Silver Run. This item is unavailable.Silver Run

She came back to Cortez to sell her grandmother's old netmakers' hall and say goodbye. She did not plan on a reason to stay — or on getting back the bright, painting part of herself she thought she had packed away for good.

At fifty-five, Tess Whitaker has a tidy townhouse in Raleigh, a grown son who worries about her, an art room she retired from too early, and one last errand: drive down to Cortez, clean out the little netmakers' hall her grandmother Dess left her on the fish-house dock, and sell the failing old building to whoever will take it. Two weeks. In and out. Back to her careful, shuttered life — the one where she has not touched a paintbrush since the morning she buried her husband.

Then she meets Gil Buckner — the quiet, widowed net maker down the dock who mends the things nobody thanks him for and has kept Dess's hall dry and standing for years without telling a soul. And she climbs the dock stairs to the Netmakers' Hall, the net-hanging room and Friday-night gathering where the whole village used to come fry mullet and tell lies under the old dock lamp — only to find it shuttered and sagging, the lamp dark on the piling, and a smooth developer's survey stakes marching down the waterfront.

A retired art teacher who grew up on her grandmother's dock suppers and net-hanging bees cannot quite walk away. So Tess stays past her two weeks, and she and Gil start bringing the old hall back board by board — two people who thought their best years were behind them, learning that the brightest light on the bay might be the one they keep lit for each other. But a private resort wants the whole waterfront, her son wants her home, and Gil swore a long time ago that he was done hoping for anything past the next tide.

A sweet, clean, slow-burn second-chance romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome to Cortez, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.