Maeve Calloway has spent eleven years being capable, present, and overlooked. When she finally packs her car and drives seven hundred miles to a teaching position at a small Vermont college, she isn't looking for anything - just a town that might actually want her in it.

She gets the town. Her first night, she also gets a hole in her wall.

Rhett Danner comes to fix it, says approximately forty words, charges her a fair rate, and tells her she'll be all right here with the quiet certainty of a man who checked. He's been the most reliable person in Briarwood for a decade - single dad, his own business, a perimeter around himself so well-built most people don't notice it's there.

He didn't account for her.

When his daughter enrolls in Maeve's class and his renovation crew moves into the building next to her office, proximity does what it does. Slowly. Then all at once. But Rhett has kept his walls standing for a reason, and Maeve has spent too long waiting to be chosen to settle for almost.

What Holds is a slow-burn, high-heat standalone romance about two people in their forties who know exactly what they want - and what it finally costs to ask for it.

Eight years ago, Hazel told Reid she wanted different things.

It was a lie. She's been living inside it ever since.

Now Reid is back in Briarwood - just long enough to settle his late father's estate, just long enough for the Copper Kettle to feel very small. And Hazel is about to find out what happens when the wrong story finally meets the truth.

Before the First Frost is a small-town, second chance romance set in the village of Briarwood, Vermont, where the coffee is strong, the seasons are honest, and some things take eight years to say out loud.