She's best friends with the single dad cowboy's brother, and has watched two friends find love with the sexy new cowboys in town. When Gray Hammond comes to Whiskey Mountain Lodge with his son, will Elise finally get her own happily-ever-after with one of the Hammond brothers?

Elise Murphy tends to the grounds and animals at Whiskey Mountain Lodge—and she's just fine working with plants and animals who don't talk back. She's shy and petite, but is finding her place among the louder Whittaker family the longer she works for them.

She's also incredibly lonely and tired of being on the sidelines. But she doesn't know how to break out of the mold she's lived in for so long, despite her best friend's urgings to do so. If her best friend wasn't one of the Hammond brothers, who's so full of charm and confidence, Elise might think he actually understood.

Gray Hammond has visited Whiskey Mountain Lodge in the past, and with his parents off on a cruise for the holidays and his job at the family company wrapped up, he decides to take his son to the lodge for Christmas to visit his two older brothers who now live in Coral Canyon. When he gets introduced to Colton's best friend, Gray can hardly remember who he is or where he came from.

What he knows is that Elise is gorgeous, and her shy spirit is exactly what his more analytical mind likes. He has no job to get back to, and plenty of reasons to keep all women out of his son's life. His life too, he tells himself. But he can't help the gravitational pull to Elise, and as they get to know each other, he wonders if they could make a relationship—and a family—work.

Can Elise find true love with her best friend's brother? Or will Gray's fears and worries about his son keep them on neutral ground?