Taryn Kincaid Knihy

Is love in the signs for a Capricorn ex-Navy SEAL and the Aries out to capture his heart? 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?

Derek Dunne is a Cordon Bleu-trained food critic for the prestigious New York Monitor, whose scathing review of a popular Italian bistro has driven away all but the most loyal neighborhood patrons. Lucrezia Serafina DiCicco is a clumsy business school drop-out, working as a chef and scrambling to keep her family's restaurant afloat, after her father develops diabetes and is banned from his kitchen for his own good. Now, with The Monitor folding, Derek is searching for his next career path and longing to get back to his first love-cooking-while Lu is desperate for an influx of cash to save the struggling restaurant...even as her father puts his foot down about non-family employees. Derek and Lu embark on a marriage of inconvenience to save the restaurant. But can Lu ever really trust the man who nearly destroyed her family, who once noted her initials spelled "LSD," and her food was like a "bad trip?" Or will it be their hearts on the chopping block?