Sometimes you need a bit of tough love to get where you're supposed to be ...

Mia Anderson has spent five years as a divorce lawyer at her father's firm, watching people who once promised each other forever fight over the house, the dog, and ? on one memorable occasion ? a donated kidney.

It has not been good for her faith in romance. Or her will to date. Or, lately, much of anything.

Then, partway into the first vacation she's taken in eight years, her parents call her home. Her grandmother is ill. Someone has to drive up to the cabin and look after her, and somehow that someone is Mia.

Alpine Ridge is two hours into the Cascades. Gran's cabin is very small. And Nate Edwards lives alone at the top of the mountain, likes it that way, and happens to be the one person for miles that Gran genuinely trusts.

Which Gran ? who turns out to be nowhere near as frail as advertised ? finds tremendously convenient. Suddenly there's always a reason Mia needs to be at Nate's. A ride. An errand only he can run. A road that isn't safe to drive back down tonight.

Mia has spent her whole life doing what she was told. The job, the firm, her father's expectations, and now this. Falling for a man who will never leave this mountain would just be one more thing she didn't choose.

She came up here because she was sent. Staying would be the first thing she ever decided for herself.