[Shellwater Key 02] • Straight on Toward Paradise

A beautiful, funny, sweet contemporary romance in the tradition of Debbie Macomber, Susan Mallery, Kristan Higgins. Set against the backdrop of the Florida sun and a forgotten dinner theater that brings three childhood friends back together after years apart.

Emma Bertram’s life is a recipe for disaster, but she’s about to discover that love and forgiveness are the perfect ingredients for a happy ending.

At fifteen, Emma Bertram’s perfect family splintered when her father left her mother for another woman. Anger and bitterness, along with the demands of being a professional chef, have kept Emma apart from her father and his new family for years. Then her father and stepmother are killed in a car accident. Returning to her childhood home of Shellwater Key, Emma learns she has become guardian of her two half-sisters.

What Emma knows about raising children could fit on a restaurant napkin. So when her mother offers to stay and help with the girls, Emma can’t say no. She also can’t say no to her childhood friend’s job offer to be the head chef at the old Paradise Dinner Theatre. Renovating the dilapidated kitchen may be even more challenging than dealing with her half-sisters. Then there’s her father’s law partner, Reece Casings, who has no trouble telling Emma what she’s doing wrong. The buttoned-up, so-wrong-for-her, but oh-so-handsome lawyer makes Emma’s blood boil. Or is it heart race?

Romance is the last thing on Emma’s mind, especially when her mother and one of her sisters are cast in the debut musical at The Paradise. When she’s dealing with a firestorm of teenaged angst from her other sister. And when her mother is starring in a romance of her own, with the much younger lead in the production. All that is nothing compared to the explosive secret that boils to the surface when Reece reveals a much deeper connection to her family than anyone ever knew.

In the end Emma will have to learn how to forgive her father…and herself…and trust in love and faith again if she ever hopes to serve up a happily ever after for everyone.