──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Margot Chen arrived in Portland with a rescue cat, a color-coded spreadsheet, and a fierce commitment to never shrink herself again. After six years of disappearing into someone else's life, she came for one thing: a tomato garden she could grow without asking permission. Romance was not on the agenda. Then she met her neighbor.

Eli Navarro is a year sober, rebuilding his life one day at a time after his celebrated culinary career burned out in spectacular fashion. He works at a food co-op now, plays guitar badly on purpose, and carries a black notebook filled with recipes and therapy insights. He's learning what it means to cook for joy instead of survival. He never expected to have to negotiate anything with the woman next door.

A leaning fence. A 1991 lease clause about Shared Amenities that neither of them can escape. A landlord's voicemail box in Tucson that only answers for plumbing emergencies. What begins as a battle over property lines becomes a conversation in red pen, then becomes brown butter pasta, then becomes something neither Margot nor Eli saw coming?a rooftop at sunset, two people who weren't looking for connection, finding it anyway.

This is a contemporary romance about learning to want things again. About the small intimacies that rebuild us: a shared garden, a cooking lesson, the willingness to be seen by someone who's also learning to look. It's tender and electric, funny and honest, the kind of story that reminds you why you fell in love with romance in the first place.

Perfect for fans of character-driven, emotionally intelligent contemporary romance.