Chocolate Cherry Cabin

An enemies to lovers Christmas romance with a single mom & a NHL hockey coach!

The last thing Hannah needs is to have the hunky bane of her existence move in next door.

But he did.

And just in time to witness the collapse of the perfect life she’d always said she’d have. She’s divorced, her youngest son keeps sticking his tongue out at the town gossip, her job doesn’t pay enough, and if she wants to keep her broken family in the same time zone, she’s going to have to move halfway across the planet.

But her new neighbor Louis, an NHL coach, insists that Hannah’s still that take-charge woman with big dreams he used to know, and that now is a perfect time to reinvent herself. And possibly even find some room in her heart for a man like him…

Will these two old rivals find a chance to not only see eye-to-eye, but heart-to-heart as well?

Find out in this charming, small town sweet romance about the guy next door, a single mom, and a heartwarming holiday Christmas romance filled with second chances at love.

Note: This Christmas romance was previously published as Unexpectedly in Love and has been rewritten to fit into the Hockey Sweethearts series. The hero now has his own scenes!

Oh, no.
Nope.
There was no way Louis Bellmore was her new neighbor.
Hannah was going to toss that thought straight from her mind and keep hanging her outdoor Christmas lights and ignore the tall figure in the yard behind her. She adored the month of December, and thinking about that man would ruin her mood with fabulous efficiency.
Think about Christmas. Think about the way the holidays bring people together, highlighting their innate kindness and generosity.
Unlike Louis, who had been horrible to her in high school. Always judging, always acting as though her plan to marry her high school sweetheart wasn’t enough.
Hannah yanked at her lights. They were too loose. How had Calvin always made them look so perfect?
As she struggled with the tangle of wires she caught a glimpse of her seven-year-old tearing by with his elbow out—a sure sign he was attempting another wrestling move on the inflatable snowman in the front yard.
“Thomas, cut it out! You’re going to wreck poor Frosty.”
“He had it coming! He’s a wily, frozen-headed monster!”’
Hannah readjusted the ladder, shifting it around the corner. Where had Thomas learned his wrestling moves? Surely not from his father, who was mild-mannered and on the same parenting page as she was. Other single moms might worry about the impact of their ex’s lax rules and schedules, but Thomas was given the same boundaries when he was at Calvin’s house, which meant no wrestling.
Maybe Thomas was picking up things from his older brother Wade? Ever since the separation a year and a half ago, and then the subsequent divorce, Wade had been more physical in expressing himself.
From the ladder, Hannah could see that Thomas had managed to wrangle the seven-foot-tall snowman into a headlock. Their golden retriever, a rescued dog that Thomas had renamed Obi-Wan Kenobi after the Star Wars character, was barking and dancing as though a stranger had entered the yard.
“What was I thinking, buying that snowman?” she muttered. Wade had been in love with the idea of snow, and he’d requested the yard decoration as well as mitts so he could pretend he lived in Alaska instead of sunny Texas. She’d quickly got on board, hoping to coax more smiles from her eldest. Instead he’d rejected it all once Thomas got excited about it.
“Obi, hush!” Hannah called. “And Thomas, cut it out. You’re getting the dog excited!”
Something caught her eye as the canine continued to bark. There was a stranger, although not in their yard. The new neighbor, who’d moved in a few weeks ago, was rolling some fancy grill, which had likely cost as much as all the furniture in her living room, from his truck. She watched him go behind the fence and hedge that separated the two yards, and around to the back of his house.
This man had the same lanky build and improbably wide shoulders, but it couldn’t be Louis. There was no way he’d move back home to Sweetheart Creek. Like she and Calvin, and so many of their classmates, he’d left town after high school. In fact, the last time she’d seen Louis he’d been across the street from the police station, smirking, as she’d shuffled out with her parents, shoulders hunched and completely mortified.
One day she might think the graduation prank had been funny. Her friends April and Jackie already did, but that was likely because they’d been the ones to dare her to join them and hadn’t been caught. Their horses had been faster, their riding skills impressive. In their identity-masking costumes they’d ridden through the school hallways, vanishing almost as fast as they’d appeared.
Hannah less so. Once inside, her horse had balked, and she’d been so afraid of hitting her head on a door jamb that she’d been busted almost immediately.
That would have been okay, but one of the teachers had spooked her horse, which promptly kicked in the football trophy case, then left behind a stinky, steaming pile.
One of the many cowboy students had settled the horse and led it back outside with her astride, inadvertently delivering her to the waiting sheriff.
She’d earned a bit of street cred for performing the dare, and would have felt proud if Louis hadn’t been there, waiting and smirking outside the police station when her parents had sprung her loose.
If it really was him next door, it would only figure that he’d return to town now, when she was working on cleaning up the implosion of her meticulously planned life. The plans he’d scoffed at.
It had over a decade, but just thinking about Louis still had the power to rile her.
It couldn’t be him next door, though. Sure, her neighbor had that same tightly-packed brawn, but Louis was coaching for the NHL now. He wouldn’t choose to live in a small house beside her old cabin. He had the means to buy something nicer. Much nicer.
Plus he was a man of adventure, and Sweetheart Creek was so quiet. There wasn't much more than barn dances and a cranky armadillo that chased people down Main Street when it came to entertainment.
And since it couldn’t be Louis, she needed to shove aside her introverted nature and bring him a plate of her semi-famous chocolate cherry cookies. Not the burned ones, or the ones where Thomas had gone nuts with the chocolate chips, but the nice ones.
The neighbor came back through his side yard, causing Obi to bark again. His jacket was zipped up to his chin, and Hannah couldn’t quite make out his features even from her perch on the ladder. But when the dog let out another bark, the man turned, and Hannah caught a very familiar blue-eyed gaze. She let out a yelp as her foot slipped on the rung, nearly sending her tumbling to the ground.
It was Louis. Louis Bellmore.