What happens when the secret you've kept for thirteen years walks through your door with a camera crew?
ESSENCE:
I've kept two secrets for thirteen years.
The first: my grandmother's Christmas cookies contain actual magic-the kind that makes grown men cry memories and sick children smile miracles.
The second: my daughter's "dead" father is Stefan Andersson, the celebrity chef who just walked into my bakery with Food Network cameras and enough sexual tension to melt snow in Vermont winter.
One look at Maya and he knows. One touch in my walk-in cooler and I'm twenty again, pressed against cold metal while his hot mouth reminds me why I never let another man close. His hands still know exactly where to touch. His body still fits mine like he never left.
But I'm not that naïve girl anymore. I'm a single mother with bills to pay and a business to save. I can't afford to let him back in-not when he chose fame over family once before. Not when his ex-fiancée arrives threatening to destroy us on national television. Not when my daughter's heart is on the line.
Except Stefan's not leaving this time. He's choosing us. In front of cameras, in front of the whole town, in storage rooms where we can't keep our hands off each other even though anyone could walk in.
And those magic cookies? They're working overtime, bringing together what should have stayed broken.
Thirteen years, twelve days until Christmas, and one man who's about to turn my carefully built life into the sweetest disaster. STEFAN: I thought I had everything. Twelve million viewers. Three restaurants. A penthouse in Manhattan.
Then I walked into a small-town bakery and found what I'd actually been starving for.
Essence. My first love, my biggest regret, and apparently the mother of my child. The daughter she never told me about. The family I never knew I'd abandoned.
One taste of her and fourteen years disappear. She's fire and flour, strength and secrets, and when I press her against that storage room wall, she still bites my shoulder to keep quiet. Her body remembers mine. Every curve, every gasp, every place that makes her melt.
My ex-fiancée wants me back. The network wants their golden boy. My entire career depends on walking away.
But Maya has my sister's eyes. Essence has my heart. And this tiny Vermont town that should mean nothing has become everything.
I've made my choice. I'm trading Michelin stars for magic cookies. New York lights for snow-covered streets. Empty success for a woman who makes me burn hotter than any kitchen I've ever worked in.
They kept my daughter from me for thirteen years. Now I'm keeping them forever.
Even if it means destroying everything I built to have everything I need.