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Silver Run: A Sweet Later-in-Life Beach Romance (Cortez Book 1)
Paperback
Series: Cortez, Book 1
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 5 2026
Pages: 316
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.79 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
She came back to Cortez to sell her grandmother's old netmakers' hall and say goodbye. She did not plan on a reason to stay - or on getting back the bright, painting part of herself she thought she had packed away for good.
At fifty-five, Tess Whitaker has a tidy townhouse in Raleigh, a grown son who worries about her, an art room she retired from too early, and one last errand: drive down to Cortez, clean out the little netmakers' hall her grandmother Dess left her on the fish-house dock, and sell the failing old building to whoever will take it. Two weeks. In and out. Back to her careful, shuttered life - the one where she has not touched a paintbrush since the morning she buried her husband.
Then she meets Gil Buckner - the quiet, widowed net maker down the dock who mends the things nobody thanks him for and has kept Dess's hall dry and standing for years without telling a soul. And she climbs the dock stairs to the Netmakers' Hall, the net-hanging room and Friday-night gathering where the whole village used to come fry mullet and tell lies under the old dock lamp - only to find it shuttered and sagging, the lamp dark on the piling, and a smooth developer's survey stakes marching down the waterfront.
A retired art teacher who grew up on her grandmother's dock suppers and net-hanging bees cannot quite walk away. So Tess stays past her two weeks, and she and Gil start bringing the old hall back board by board - two people who thought their best years were behind them, learning that the brightest light on the bay might be the one they keep lit for each other. But a private resort wants the whole waterfront, her son wants her home, and Gil swore a long time ago that he was done hoping for anything past the next tide.
A sweet, clean, slow-burn second-chance romance with no spice and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Welcome to Cortez, where every book is a new couple, a fresh start, and a happy ending.
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