Summary

Sugar might be sweet, but eighteen years of toting and hauling and working sunup to sundown on the Trask family farm was more than enough for Gabriel Trask, youngest of the brothers. If it wasn't tapping time it was boiling time, stoking the open flame of the evaporator in a sugar house so hot that they kept the back door open to let in the subzero night air. Working the family farm imbued him with a strong work ethic—and a strong ethic for finding the kind of work that didn't leave him with an aching back.

It isn't that he doesn't appreciate the Trask legacy, it was just that he doesn't want it to be the yoke around his neck. Legacy is fine for his brother Jacob, who thrives on it. Gabe, now in charge of the Hotel Mount Jefferson, a Victorian grand resort hotel, safeguards a legacy of his own.

Hadley Stone comes to the Hotel Mount Washington in late November, with the assignment to whip the hotel into shape, Marriott style. When Gabe finds out, sparks fly. But as the weeks roll by and Christmas approaches, Hadley finds herself falling in love with the hotel, which provides her with a home and family she's never had. And she finds herself falling in love with Gabe Trask...