The Pumpkin Festival Proposal

Seven years away, and the first thing Harvest Hollow tells Maeve is that she still can't park. Maeve Callahan left her small town for a design career and never once looked back. Then her grandmother's voicemail changed everything. Maeve, sweetheart, I know you're busy, but the farm's in a bit of a spot. Now she's standing in the community center she skipped cobblestones past as a kid, a tablet full of pitches in her hands, trying to save the family farm by saving the 37th Annual Pumpkin Festival. Thirty percent more attendance. Food trucks. A festival app. She's rehearsed every word. And the man glaring at her from across the orange felt is the last person she expected to face. Jasper Holloway. Flannel sleeves rolled up, dirt under his nails, that small scar above his eyebrow, looking at her like she's a stranger who wandered into his living room. "Present what?" he says, flat as a closed door. He's got his own stake in this festival, his own debts, his own reasons to distrust the city girl with the color-coded slides. Then Caroline Whitaker says the words that turn the whole room cold: the farm's in debt, and it's public record now. The farm is failing. The town is choosing sides between tradition and change. And the secret tying Maeve and Jasper together, the one neither of them has spoken aloud, won't stay buried under the hay much longer. Forced to work side by side through scarecrow dances and hayrides gone off course, they fall into something neither one planned. A promise they couldn't keep. A lie that won't stay down. A proposal that could cost them everything. As the harvest moon rises over Harvest Hollow, Maeve has to decide whether saving her grandmother's land means risking the one heart she swore she'd never break again. The Pumpkin Festival Proposal is a cozy, heartfelt small-town romance about a friends-to-lovers second chance, forced proximity, a family farm in trouble, a buried secret, and coming home. Perfect for readers who love autumn small-town romance, friends-to-lovers and forced-proximity tropes, save-the-farm stakes, slow-burn yearning, and the cozy warmth of RaeAnne Thayne or Debbie Mason. A standalone romance with a happily-ever-after.