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.