A heartwarming story of starting over, second chances, and love at fifty.
When Cleo March realizes her life has become mostly routine and grit, she tells herself she’s lucky. She has a marina diner to run and the Loop Ladies to walk with. After her divorce, Cleo shaped her days into something functional, familiar, and safe. So the last thing she wants is Snowmelt Shores deciding this is the year everything gets romantic again.
Then the trolley bell rings.
For the first time in years, Hearts-on-the-Trolley is back, and the entire town shows up. Everyone pays five bucks, writes a message on a heart, and the trolley carries them in plain sight. Cleo ends up in the middle of it all, serving bowls of her infamous chowder to family and friends, as well as neighbors who keep her laughing between ladles.
And her first love, Theo Quill, is there too, right where she can’t avoid him.
He’s running the Reservoir Roast cart, making strangers feel seen, and turning the whole thing into a public rivalry: Team Chowder vs Team Steam. It starts as a joke and quickly becomes the town’s favorite running gag. Cleo tells herself it’s just a playful Valentine stunt, not a second chance.
Until someone pulls an old heart from the archives. What it says changes everything.
It means the story Cleo’s told herself for years might not be the whole truth. Maybe she didn’t imagine what she felt back then, and Theo didn’t disappear the way she believed. Now the trolley is ringing, the whole town is watching, and the one person she never really got over is standing right in front of her.
At fifty, is Cleo ready to try again, or did she miss her chance?
Genre: Romance
When Cleo March realizes her life has become mostly routine and grit, she tells herself she’s lucky. She has a marina diner to run and the Loop Ladies to walk with. After her divorce, Cleo shaped her days into something functional, familiar, and safe. So the last thing she wants is Snowmelt Shores deciding this is the year everything gets romantic again.
Then the trolley bell rings.
For the first time in years, Hearts-on-the-Trolley is back, and the entire town shows up. Everyone pays five bucks, writes a message on a heart, and the trolley carries them in plain sight. Cleo ends up in the middle of it all, serving bowls of her infamous chowder to family and friends, as well as neighbors who keep her laughing between ladles.
And her first love, Theo Quill, is there too, right where she can’t avoid him.
He’s running the Reservoir Roast cart, making strangers feel seen, and turning the whole thing into a public rivalry: Team Chowder vs Team Steam. It starts as a joke and quickly becomes the town’s favorite running gag. Cleo tells herself it’s just a playful Valentine stunt, not a second chance.
Until someone pulls an old heart from the archives. What it says changes everything.
It means the story Cleo’s told herself for years might not be the whole truth. Maybe she didn’t imagine what she felt back then, and Theo didn’t disappear the way she believed. Now the trolley is ringing, the whole town is watching, and the one person she never really got over is standing right in front of her.
At fifty, is Cleo ready to try again, or did she miss her chance?
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Laurel Leigh's Hearts on the Trolley