Dr. Jonathan Pierce came west to disappear.

Two years after a mistake he can't forgive himself for cost a man his life, Jonathan arrives in Star Creek, Colorado, with nothing but his medical bag and a name he's desperate to leave behind. What he finds is a mountain town that doesn't hand out its trust easily — and a woman who's been holding this town together with her bare hands for a decade, with no diploma and no salary, just a steady heart and better instincts than half the physicians back East.

Anna Whitfield doesn't need a doctor to tell her how to care for her town. But she wasn't expecting one who'd actually earn a place in it.

As the mountain winter closes in, Jonathan and Anna are thrown together by fevers, broken bones, and the everyday emergencies of a town with only two people willing to answer them. Slowly, carefully, something neither of them planned for begins to grow between them — right up until Jonathan's past finally catches up with him, and he's forced to face the mistake he ran two thousand miles to escape.

He'll have to choose: the prestigious future waiting for him back East, or the small mountain town — and the woman — that taught him what it means to actually belong somewhere.

A slow-burn, small-town Christmas romance with a wounded hero, a quietly extraordinary heroine, snow, second chances, and a happy-ever-after worth the whole journey.

Level: clean (no more than a sweet kiss)