HEATHER TULLIS has been reading romance for as long as she can remember and has been publishing in the genre since 2009. She has published more than twenty books. When she’s not dreaming up new stories to write, or helping out with her community garden, she enjoys playing with her dogs and cat, cake decorating, trying new jewelry designs, inventing new ways to eat chocolate, and hanging out with her husband.
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Jonah Owens thought moving to Echo Ridge to open his art gallery would solve all of his problems. The need to sell his grandma’s house adds an unexpected complication. It would be easier if his neighbor didn’t have all those farm animals. Kaya Feidler’s family has owned their land for nearly a hundred years–long before the neighbors were there. There’s no way she’s giving up the animal therapy business she’s been struggling to make profitable. She gets a temp job helping Jonah in the gallery.
Spending time together is a recipe for romance, but can they overcome their own hangups to be more than friends?
Snippet:
Jonah turned to a new page, thought of the boy and started drawing him on the sorrel, his gangly arms and legs seemingly out of proportion with the rest of him as boys so often were at his age. Jonah didn’t draw him straight on, but at an oblique angle, his excitement showing from the way he held his arms and legs, the implied movement of the horse. It felt a little like joy.
When he finished a rough draft, he flipped the sheet and started on one of the girl in the wheelchair and the happiness that had suffused her face as she held out a treat for the goat. It nuzzled her hand and she grinned brightly, joy on her face. She was detailed, and the goat was moderately detailed, but the rest of the space, the straw, the wooden beams and windows were little more than shapes in the picture, lines shooting off in different directions, adding dimension and mood without being fully formed.
It felt good to create, to feel the dust of charcoal, the sharp edges of the rectangular stick pressing into the pads of his fingers. His hands ached to hold a brush and spread paint across the paper, to see the form emerging from his mind and heart as he created something more than either part of him could ever do alone.
