The Fire Beneath the Ash

Fifteen years away. One summer to light it again.

Humiliated when the chef she works for presents her signature dish on national television as his own grandmothers recipe, Juliette Delorme walks out of his kitchen with nothing left to lose. Then her grandmother Rose dies, and leaves the old Hôtel des Thermes, a Belle Époque spa hotel in the volcano country of the Auvergne, to her three granddaughters on one condition: it must reopen and take guests for a complete summer season.

Thirty-two rooms, five weeks until the first of June, wiring, a kitchen and a roof to redo, and a property developer named Ferrand who is willing to wait. The only carpenter who can save the building is Mathis Roche, the grey-eyed boy Juliette left without a word when she was seventeen.

Mathis never forgave her. He never forgot her either.

Between oak beams, storm-lit nights, the icy water of the Lac de Servière and a solstice fire they once promised to jump together, the old spark refuses to die. But before she can breathe on it, Juliette will have to face the real reason she ran.

A warm, sensual second-chance romance about coming home, small-town loyalty and family secrets. Book One of The Delorme Sisters.

Contains sensual scenes between adults.