By Design

Wren has never needed a five-year plan.

She has a hometown she loves, more jobs than any reasonable person should have, a stake in the local coffee shop, and an uncanny ability to know exactly who needs a casserole, a favor, or a swift kick in the pants. Her life may look a little chaotic from the outside, but it works just fine for her.

Then Daniel arrives.

Award-winning architect Daniel believes in clean lines, careful plans, and things behaving exactly as they’re supposed to. When an old friend brings him back to town to design an ambitious new shared-work center—one that could bring jobs, entrepreneurs, and desperately needed economic growth—Daniel sees an opportunity to build something extraordinary.

Wren sees a very expensive stranger trying to turn the town she loves into someplace it was never meant to be.

Unfortunately, they need each other.

With state funding hanging in the balance and half the town suspicious of Daniel’s modern vision, Wren becomes the reluctant bridge between the architect and the people whose trust he needs. Soon Daniel finds himself being dragged into coffee-shop conversations, community meetings, unexpected errands, and the strange orbit of a woman who seems to belong everywhere at once.

Wren, meanwhile, begins to discover that beneath Daniel’s immaculate shirts, impossible standards, and insistence that everyone call him by his actual name is a man considerably warmer—and funnier—than he wants anyone to know.

Somewhere between arguments over architecture, compromises neither expected to make, and the quiet moments neither can quite explain, their carefully established positions begin to shift.

Daniel came to town believing good design could solve almost anything.

Wren is about to teach him that the best things in life aren’t always built according to plan.