Hearts Restored - Tara Baisden

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Sommaire:

She was the one thing he could never blueprint. He was the one man she couldn't wall out.

Sarah Hartwell swings a hammer on Monday and wears a sundress on Saturday - and she is entirely, fully herself in both. As the owner of the most respected construction firm in Serenity Crossing, Tennessee, she's spent years proving that a woman can build something extraordinary with her own two hands. But the last man she let past her defenses told her she was too much for love, and she's been building steel walls around her heart ever since - the kind no one can see and no one gets through.

Ethan Cole left Serenity Crossing at eighteen chasing a bigger life. He found it in Nashville - the prestigious firm he built, the skyline projects, and success that looked exactly the way he'd designed it. Then his father passed away, and the blueprint of his life fell apart. Now Ethan is home, running the family architecture practice, caring for his grieving mother, and carrying a quiet ache he won't let anyone share. His father's final dream - restoring the historic Granville Theater where three generations of Coles fell in love - is the one project Ethan refuses to get wrong. What he didn't plan for is the contractor standing on the other side of his blueprints: the same stubborn, brilliant, maddening woman who beat him in a history debate at sixteen and never left his mind.

Working side by side inside the Granville's crumbling walls, Sarah and Ethan discover that restoring an old building requires the same terrifying thing as restoring a guarded heart - you have to tear down what's broken before you can rebuild. But Ethan's instinct to carry every burden alone and Sarah's refusal to let anyone share hers are on a collision course. And when the stakes rise higher than either of them expected, they'll face the question the Granville has been asking all along: what's worth saving - and what are you willing to open up to keep?

Set against the backdrop of the Great Smoky Mountains, with a warm and meddling small-town community, family that shows up no matter what, and a century-old theater full of secrets and second chances, Hearts Restored is a story about two people brave enough to let the walls come down.

Tropes:

• Rivals to lovers
• He fell first (and never stopped)
• Forced proximity / professional partnership
• Small-town homecoming
• Strong heroine meets steady hero
• Emotional renovation (inside and out)

Reader Promise: Hearts Restored is a sweet, clean Christian contemporary romance with authentic faith, slow-burn emotional intimacy, no explicit content, and a happily-ever-after worth waiting for. Come home to Serenity Crossing - the coffee's hot, the mountains are blue, and the best love stories are built to last.