Evening Star

For almost thirty years, Estelle Quigg has filed every other person's happy ending. Every marriage license in Brevard County, every deed, every birth and obituary - they all pass across her records desk, and not one of them has ever been hers. Her husband walked out a lifetime ago. Her father, the launch engineer who once took her to watch every rocket lift over the Atlantic, has been gone even longer. So she keeps the blinds down at six-forty and tells herself that is enough.

Then a developer comes for the Starlight Pavilion.

Zenith Coast Group wants the old beachfront pavilion and the public dune where the whole town has stood shoulder to shoulder to watch the sky catch fire since 1962 - all of it bulldozed for a gated tower with a private rooftop club. The one man fighting to save it is Gil Hartmann, the quiet retired launch engineer who runs the astronomy club out of the pavilion and has not truly looked through his own telescope since he lost his wife. And the only person who can prove the pavilion is worth saving is the woman with all the records.

To save the place where the town keeps its wonder, a guarded clerk who gave up on her own story and a grieving widower who stopped looking up have to spend a long Space Coast summer of launch-watch nights bringing the old pavilion back - and learning, late and slow, that the brightest light in the sky is the one that comes out after dark. But a tower wants the whole dune, Gil's grown son is sure his father is making a mistake, and Estelle swore a long time ago that she would never, ever let herself be left again.

A sweet, clean, slow-burn second-chance romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome back to Cocoa Beach, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.