Heart of the City — Susan Crawford

After losing her brother to gang-related violence, elementary schoolteacher Kinley is on a mission to help her at-risk students. When one of them, Justice, is caught in an act of vandalism, she intervenes. Entrepreneur Nash McGuire has gone to great lengths to overcome the poverty he grew up in. When working on a renovation project in his old neighborhood he collides with a juvenile delinquent and his do-gooder teacher. Kinley believes Justice can overcome the influence of his environment; Nash knows the odds and has little patience with Kinley's naivety. But as the boy's mandatory community service forces Justice and Kinley into Nash's life, he can't help but discover a boy searching for love and purposeâ€"a boy very much like he once was. Then Justice is accused of another crime. And Kinley's stubborn belief in the boy's innocence is just too much for Nash to accept…