(Charmed Love, #3)

Publication date: October 23rd 2025

Genres: Adult, Holiday, Romance

In the small town of Hazard, sometimes love is the greatest Christmas miracle.

Alina McAllister is starting fresh in the charming town of Hazard, Rhode Island, with a simple plan: take a docent job at the Historical Society and embrace the magic of the season. But when her landlady Hazel suffers a stroke, everything changes. Hazel’s grumpy yet undeniably handsome grandson, Carter Bestwick, swoops into town determined to sell the cottage and move on with his corporate life. He needs Alina to leave—immediately.

With nowhere to go and a snowstorm trapping them together, Alina and Carter are forced into close quarters. What starts as a tense, begrudging arrangement soon sparks undeniable chemistry. As they clear out the attic, they discover Hazel’s magical wedding bands—heirlooms passed down through generations since the Revolutionary War—and find that sometimes, the magic of love is closer than they think.

In this heartwarming, opposites-attract holiday romance, Alina and Carter may just find that the greatest gift of all is an unexpected love.

Excerpt

There it was again—scratching at the lock. Someone was definitely trying to get in.

Alina crept, step by barefoot step, down creaking stairs, holding the banister and her breath. She paused at the landing before rounding the corner. She peered down the remaining steps into dimness. She’d left the porchlight on. Through a little square stained-glass window of a dove in flight, a shadow shifted—a head, the head of someone tall. She tensed. And then she heard it—a man, cursing.

He didn’t sound like he was sneaking. He sounded frustrated.

The doorknob rattled once, twice. Then the door shook, hard.

Bam!

Had he kicked it?

Alina shot down the steps to grab up an umbrella from the metal urn in the tiny entryway. She raised it up high over her head, ready for battle.

The door flew open, smacking the wall. Alina shrieked.

A man—six feet tall (at least) and, even in the dimness, obviously handsome—charged into the cottage, still cursing, this time softer and under his breath.

Ready to defend her haven, umbrella poised to smash into his head, Alina hesitated.

The man halted under the mistletoe when he saw her.

“What on earth…”

The umbrella popped open. Meany, perched on top of the bookcase, hissed and dived superman-style, claws out. The intruder, arms flailing to defend his face from flying cat claws, stepped sideways and slipped on the hand-hooked throw rug. Stumbling backward, he slammed into the wall.

He appeared so disheveled, so discombobulated, and so exasperated that Alina dropped the now-open umbrella patterned with images of cats and dogs falling through raindrops. She put her fist to her mouth to choke back a laugh. He looked ridiculous and not scary at all, especially with snow in his hair melting down his face and onto notably wide shoulders.

He got his wits, steadied himself. With a passing glare at the cat—now seated on the bunched-up throw rug casually washing its privates—the intruder turned his wrath on Alina.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my grandmother’s house?”

Alina’s laughter died. She blinked.

“Hazel’s your grandma?” Alina’s heart lifted at the thought of Hazel’s family finally coming to see her. “But that’s wonderful!”

“Excuse me?” The scowling man shook himself a little and brushed at the snow on his jacket.

Alina hesitated at his expression. “It’s… wonderful… that you’re here. You know she’s in the hospital, right? The nurses said her grandson calls every day. And now you’re here. You’re Carter, right?”

His angry gaze homed in on her face. “Who. Exactly. Are you?”

“Alina.”

They stared at each other.

“Alina who?” He spoke slowly and with emphasis, like she was a child or someone who didn’t understand English.

“Alina McAllister. Oh dear, Hazel didn’t tell you. I’m the new docent for the Hazard Historical Society.”

“And, what, you just thought you could squat here while my grandmother is in the hospital?”

“Squat! Oh, you—that’s awful. I am not squatting. I will have you know that I never squat.”

“Ever,” said Carter, with a disbelieving eyebrow raise.

“Ever,” bristled Alina.

“Is that right? How about you explain then, what exactly you’re doing here in the middle of the night.”

Alina put her hands on her hips. “I live here.”

Carter blanched like she’d struck him. She’d been so pleased to meet Hazel’s grandson, finally, after hearing so many high praises from the nursing staff taking care of Hazel. Carter Bestwick this. Carter Bestwick that. The nurses talked like he was a hero who would save the day and make everything better.

Alina visited her landlady every day to comfort her and keep her spirits up, wondering all the time why the sainted grandson had yet to appear. One of the nurses, Maddy, said she knew Carter from high school, and that he was, oh, so responsible. And now, here he was—oh, so arrogant and scathing and not anything, anything at all, like what Alina had pictured. He was certainly nothing like Hazel. Alina wasn’t even sure how they could be related.

Carter was studying her like she was distasteful, like a bug to be squished. “You can’t be here,” he said.

And that just did it.

Alina planted her bare feet firmly, despite the cold seeping into them from the hardwood floor. She stood straighter—to her full height of five foot four—her spine rigid. “You need to leave,” she said, wishing her voice hadn’t trembled as she said it.

“Leave? Me? You expect me to leave?” His voice rose as his six feet towered over her. “Oh, that is not happening.”

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About the Author

Having lived in both California and Texas, award-winning author Aimee O’Brian now resides in the beautiful wine country where she writes dark, sexy, funny romance. With her three children grown and experiencing their own adventures, she and her husband are free to explore the world. When she’s not reading, writing, or planting even more flowers in her garden, she can be found stomping through ancient ruins and getting lost in museums.

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