My work in progress

    A MERRY MESS

She’s fighting to keep her past in the past.

He’s fighting a father who refuses to retire. 

After one disastrous decision destroyed her career and shattered her confidence, Ingrid is determined to build a quieter life. She lives in the cutest tiny house, has a great job, and Iris, the sweet landlady who treats Ingrid better than her mother. 

Mickey has spent years waiting to inherit the family business, but his father has done nothing more than talk about it. Learning about the community Christmas pageant from Ingrid, his pretty, prickly neighbor, Mickey volunteers his father. Hopefully that will get his dad off his back, and maybe ignite the spark that seems to be kindling between his dad and Iris, their landlady. 

But Mickey’s dad can’t keep his mouth shut. He offends Iris with his mansplaining and refuses to accept that Mickey knows what he’s doing. Now Mickey wonders whether running Rossi & Rossi was ever really his dream.

What he does know is that he wants more time with Ingrid, who pulls away, not wanting to reveal the colossal mistake still haunting her. Yet when the pageant is in peril, she accepts Mickey’s unwavering support and attention.

Thrown together by a shared backyard and a beloved community event, Mickey and Ingrid bond as they fan the flames between the older couple. But when a major corporation takes aim at Keeney Building Supply, both budding relationships falter and the happiest time of the year turns into a merry mess. 

The fourth in the Keeney Builds series, A Merry Mess is a small-town, friends-to-lovers, holiday romance between a lonely woman eager for a fresh start and a restless man unsure of his future.