The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter

When a disgraced architect returns to her coastal Maine hometown to restore the family lighthouse, the last person she expects to work with is the gruff contractor who broke her heart fifteen years ago—and the last thing she expects is to fall in love with him all over again while choosing between the career she destroyed herself for and the small-town life she swore she’d never return to.

Maya Chen’s architectural career ended with one catastrophic building collapse. Three people injured. Her reputation destroyed. Six months later, she’s hiding in her Boston apartment when her father calls: the historic lighthouse he’s kept for forty years is crumbling, the town council has mandated expensive renovations, and he needs her help. Returning to Cape Harmony, Maine—the coastal town she spent twenty years trying to escape—feels like admitting defeat. But the lighthouse holds her mother’s memory, and her father is aging. She has no choice.

The catch? The renovation contractor is Finn MacAllister. The same Finn who was her first love. The same Finn who let her go fifteen years ago when she chose Boston over their small-town future. He’s spent those years becoming the man everyone depends on—raising his sister after their father died, caring for his mother with Alzheimer’s, building the family construction business into something respected. He’s rooted in Cape Harmony deeper than lighthouse foundations. And he’s never forgiven her for leaving.

Six months of renovation stretches ahead. Morning coffee rituals. Tight spaces in the lighthouse tower. Storm-trapped nights in the keeper’s cottage. Salt-spray mornings and forced proximity they can’t avoid. As they restore the lighthouse her mother loved, Maya and Finn can’t escape their chemistry or their past. Old feelings resurface as forcefully as the ocean battering the rocks below. But when Maya’s dream firm in Boston offers her a chance at redemption—the junior associate position that could rebuild her shattered career—she faces the same impossible choice that destroyed them fifteen years ago: the career she sacrificed everything for, or the man and the home she never stopped loving. Finn won’t ask her to stay. He did that once. This time, Maya has to choose for herself.

In a town where the ocean never forgives and the lighthouse never lies, two people who took different paths fifteen years ago discover that the bravest choice isn’t always the biggest one. Sometimes coming home is harder than leaving. Sometimes staying requires more courage than running. And sometimes love is worth rebuilding stone by stone—even when it takes fifteen years to get it right.

TROPES:
• Second Chance Romance
• Small Town Romance
• Grumpy/Sunshine
• Forced Proximity
• Later-in-Life Romance
• Lighthouse/Coastal Setting
• Returning Home
• Opposites Attract • Dual POV

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Closed Door