Plus-One Problem

Maeve Harrington can manage a gala, a grieving family, and an entire town with opinions. She just can't bring herself to fill the chair beside her.Three years after a cancelled wedding turned her private heartbreak into public property, Maeve has perfected the art of arriving alone and pretending it means she is fine.Then a letter from her late aunt arrives with one impossible instruction: bring a plus-one to the family anniversary dinner—or bring the truth and let it sit in the chair.Unfortunately, truth has terrible timing.Rory Gallagher is back in Emerald Harbour: photographer, professional complication, and the man who disappeared when Maeve needed answers most. He is trying to save the town's crumbling Picture House from redevelopment. Maeve is determined to keep her family's anniversary out of the local gossip machine.Neither plans to uncover a decades-old secret buried beneath altered place cards, missing records, powerful men, and women who were deliberately written out of the story.As Maeve and Rory are pushed into the same rooms—and toward the feelings neither of them successfully buried—the empty chair becomes something far more dangerous than a dinner invitation.To save the Picture House, expose the truth, and finally stop performing their way around each other, they will have to decide whether a second chance is another risk…or the first honest seat either of them has been offered in years.The Plus-One Problem is a witty, emotionally layered second-chance romantic comedy packed with sharp banter, small-town chaos, complicated families, community meddling, old secrets, and an earned happily-ever-after.The manuscript's own author note describes the story as a romantic comedy about belonging, silence, public courage, community, complicated families, old wounds and love that arrives with paperwork.