She gave herself one year to not fall in love. He’s spent fifteen trying not to tell her he already has.
For three years, Marin Mercer has run the Mercer Inn like a fortress. After her marriage ended, she closed its doors to weddings, filled its rooms with everyone else’s happiness, and quietly stopped expecting any of her own. One year — that is the rule she has made with herself. One year of not looking at anyone. And she means to keep it.
Across the cove, Jonas Pike has kept a harder rule, and kept it longer. He has loved Marin since before either of them knew what to call it, and in fifteen years he has never once said so. Every night he climbs the chapel tower and rings the old shipwreck bell into the dark, alone — the way he has carried everything since his mother died. Quietly. On purpose.
Then a colt is born at first light. A heart stops on a sun-bright dock. A storm comes up the coast faster than anyone wants it to. And the careful distance two stubborn people have kept across one small harbor begins, at last, to close.
But Marin has spent a long time learning to want nothing, and Jonas has spent even longer learning to wait. With Christmas coming, a marina to save, and her year nearly up, both of them are about to learn what the old bell has been telling the whole island for a hundred years — that grief and joy ring from the very same bronze, and that the Lord still brings the weary to their desired haven.
The Inn at Mercer Cove is a tender, faith-filled island romance about healing after heartbreak, the courage to open the doors again, and a love patient enough to wait for the right morning.
Readers will love:
A quiet, steady hero who has loved her in silence for fifteen yearsA heroine learning that healing means letting the light back inA warm, meddling small-town cast and a Christmas you won’t forgetCompletely clean and Christ-centeredA standalone story with no cliffhanger, set in a series you will want to live inCome home to Wrenhaven Island, where the bell still rings and the inn lights are on.
