No Place Like Home — Barbara Raffin

When life handed Dixie Rae Carrington lemons, she made lemonade. Widowed in her mid-twenties, her husband's life insurance depleted by a custody battle with her father-in-law over her son, and the mortgage on her dream restaurant more than she can handle, she starts over with a defunct farm alongside a rural Wisconsin highway. She turns the first floor of her grandmother's farmhouse into a restaurant, the upstairs spare room into a rental, and the empty barnyard into a haven for cast-off animals. When life handed Sam Ryan lemons, he ran. But, after running away from his problems and obligations all his adult life, Sam's uncle offers him a means back into the good graces of his family. Unfortunately, what the family patriarch wants Sam to do is vilify his son's widow, Dixie. But Sam quickly realizes there's no dirt to dig up on Dixie-that she's a model mother, and hers is the family he's always wanted. Now Sam just has to hope Dixie doesn't find out what's really brought him into her life.