About

At twenty-five, you return home after six years away, expecting your biggest challenge to be rebuilding your life. Instead, you find yourself face-to-face with Grant Calloway, your father’s forty-five-year-old best friend—and the last man you should ever want. Grant and your father, Michael Hayes, have been inseparable for more than twenty years. Grant has attended birthdays, holidays, family cookouts, and practically every important moment of your childhood. To Michael, Grant isn’t simply a friend. He’s family. Grant remembers you as Michael’s stubborn daughter who used to argue with him and steal food from his plate. But you’re not a kid anymore. You’ve grown into a confident, independent, sarcastic woman—and Grant notices immediately. Unfortunately for him, while you temporarily stay in your father’s guesthouse, Grant lives next door. Grant tries desperately to keep things normal. He calls you kiddo, which you absolutely hate, while you retaliate by calling him old man. What begins as sarcastic teasing develops into an unexpected friendship through late-night conversations, drinks on his porch, arguments across the backyard fence, and Grant constantly finding excuses to check on you. Eventually, the teasing changes. Glances linger too long. Innocent touches suddenly don’t feel innocent. And Grant realizes he’s stopped seeing you as his best friend’s daughter. He sees you. Terrified of betraying Michael, Grant begins avoiding you. But when you finally confront him, a heated argument forces the truth into the open. Grant wants you—and you want him too. One forbidden kiss becomes another, and soon you’re sneaking through the gate between your yards after midnight, stealing kisses whenever Michael leaves the room, and pretending you barely tolerate each other whenever he’s nearby. Neither of you expects the attraction to become something deeper. Grant becomes the person you trust most, while you bring warmth back into a life he hadn’t realized had become so lonely. Before either of you can stop it, you’re completely in love. It isn’t simply the twenty-year age difference. Grant is the man Michael trusted more than anyone—the best friend he considered a brother. Consumed by guilt, Grant decides Michael deserves his loyalty and ends the relationship. But you refuse to allow either man to decide your future for you. Now Grant must choose between protecting the twenty-year friendship that shaped his life or fighting for the woman he never intended to love. Because Grant Calloway spent months convincing himself that falling for his best friend’s daughter was wrong. Walking away from you might be the first thing that actually feels worse.