Twenty-five-year-old Anna Hamilton drops out of grad school to come home to Heartland Cove because she's dead broke and her father has received a devastating cancer diagnosis. Working for Captain Newell on his whale tour boat, Jewel of the Ocean, is the perfect job for a girl with a degree in marine biology, but at this rate, she'll never get back to finishing her PhD. Meanwhile, her best friend from college, socialite Elise Kensington, begs Anna to find her a job where she can hide out incognito. Turns out her fiancé's family is part of the Irish Mafia and Denny O'Rourke wants out of the family "business". He and Elise plan to change their names and elope, before they find themselves the victims of an "accidental" death. Anna's summer becomes a matter of life or death—and romance—when Heartland Cove is filled with sightings of gorgeous new men in town; Hollywood scouts, strangers with amnesia that wash ashore, and Mafia heirs on the run from killer uncles. Anna unwittingly meets each one and finds herself attracted to them—including the boy she grew up with next door who's suddenly gone from skinny teen to model gorgeous. Can Anna stay alive long enough to figure out the right man for her, or will she be snuffed out by the mafia, too?
Author
Kimberley Montpetit once spent all her souvenir money at the La Patisserie shops when she was in Paris—on the arm of her adorable husband. The author grew up in San Francisco, another swoon-worthy city, loves all things Parisian and chocolate and lives in a small town along the Rio Grande with her family. Kimberley has won many awards for her work, including the Southwest Book Award, the Whitney Award, the Arizona/New Mexico Book Award, is a Crystal Kite Finalist (SCBWI) and included in the Bank Street College Best Books of the Year. She once stayed in a haunted castle tower room at Borthwick Castle in Scotland, sailed on the Seine in Paris, walked the beaches of Normandy, eaten in numerous French cafes, ridden a camel in Petra, Jordan, sunbathed on Waikiki, shopped the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, and spent the night in an old Communist hotel in Bulgaria. She adores all baked goodies; brownies, éclairs, donuts, tarts, and pie, and makes a lot of chocolate chip cookies while revising. Kimberley is, of course, hard at work on her next novel(s).
