The Lighthouse Wager: Book 1 (Salt & Sugar)

Some bets you can't afford to lose. This one, I can't afford to win either.

Four thirty in the morning, and I'm gossiping to a jar of sourdough starter about the town's latest engagement. Usually the most dramatic thing that happens before sunrise in Pellamook Cove.

Then the trucks roll in. The town council wants to gut our town's legendary lighthouse Arch, the one where a kiss guarantees you'll fall in love within the year, because some engineer with a clipboard says it's not worth saving. I've fed this town through every grief it's ever had. I won't let it lose its heart to a spreadsheet.

So I stand up in a packed town hall and bet my entire bakery on saving it.

The problem is the engineer. Ambrick Foxmorrow is infuriating, and devastating: the kind of man who demolishes your assumptions with the same hands he uses on old brass. He didn't ask to become the terms of my wager. He definitely didn't ask to fall for the loudest woman in town.

Now Harbormain Street is watching, the deadline's closing in, and nobody accounted for a third outcome: the one where I lose the bet and win something I never put a price on.

Grumpy engineer. Sunshine baker. A wager that was never really about the money.