The Stranger I Let in

She has rules for strangers. He's the one man who doesn't fit any of them.

Fiona Jet doesn't have time for mysteries. She runs her late mother's diner in Cedar Falls, Vermont, and raises her eleven-year-old son, Cody. Her freezer is broken, her roof leaks and her bank account is near empty. She has also spent four years learning to trust her own judgment again after a man who made her doubt everything.

Then a stranger walks in on a quiet Tuesday in March. He takes the back booth, orders toast he doesn't eat and watches the door like it owes him an explanation.

He says his name is Damian. Just Damian.

He doesn't flirt or push, and he never moves toward her without giving her room to move first. He's also the first man in years who makes Fiona curious, and to her that's more dangerous than being nervous.

Damian Vassilis didn't plan to stop in Cedar Falls. He left his billionaire father's funeral and kept driving, away from a family empire, a brother who calls it "embarrassing the family," and questions about how his father died. For the first time in his life, nobody knows his name. In Fiona's diner he can just be a person.

But a man can only stay anonymous for so long. When the cameras arrive and the truth comes out, Fiona has to decide whether the man she let in was ever who she thought he was.

The Stranger I Let In is a slow-burn, small-town romance told from both sides. It's about trust, starting over and the kind of love that doesn't ask you to give yourself up.