Livin’ La Vida Local: A Holliday Home Cinco de Mayo Romance

She’s built a sanctuary in a small-town café — and she’s not about to let a celebrity chef turn her kitchen into a circus.

Claire Laurent traded Paris and New York for the Sierra Nevada town of Holliday Home precisely because no one there cared about headlines or hype. At Café Josephine, she cooks French-inspired food for eight tables of regulars, controls every variable, and never, ever takes risks. So when the mayor leverages her lease renewal to force her into hosting a viral-hungry Cinco de Mayo event with a flashy LA chef, she knows exactly what kind of chaos is about to invade her perfectly ordered kitchen.

Álvaro Medina Reyes doesn’t do anything quietly. He arrives in a cherry-red Mustang, takes up space like he owns it, and cooks with the kind of instinctive passion that makes Claire’s precise measurements look like a personal attack. The fact that he’s secretly broke, desperately courting investors, and hiding his exhaustion behind a performer’s smile? That’s just a bonus reason to keep him at arm’s length. But when the mayor’s terrible ideas force them to team up, Claire discovers that the man who insulted her kitchen setup knows the difference between cilantro stems and leaves — and that matters more than she wants to admit.

Between late-night avocado emergencies, blind taste tests that feel dangerously like foreplay, and a mole sauce that requires them to stop thinking and start feeling, Claire’s carefully constructed walls are crumbling. But when a deep-pocketed Vegas investor offers Álvaro everything he needs — a massive salary, a showcase kitchen, and a soul-crushing menu designed to maximize profit over passion — Claire has to decide whether love is worth the risk…or if safety is the only recipe that ever really works.

Note to readers: All the books in the Holliday Home series are standalone romances with no cliffhangers.