Blue Note

The best piano player Marcus Fontenot has heard in ten years just sat down at the one piano in New Orleans he lets nobody touch - his.

Marcus used to be the best on Frenchmen Street. Then he lost the music, and the man he loved, in a single night - and built a jazz club where he decides who gets heard and never once steps onto the stage himself. He doesn't play. He doesn't need anyone. He has rules. The first one is the piano.

Josh Keller rode into town on a one-way ticket and his last few hundred dollars, chasing the exact life his bitter father swore would break him. He plays like joy is a dare and smiles like it's a job - and he's decided the impossible, grumpy club owner who keeps correcting his sets is going to love him if it's the last thing he does.

Hiring Josh was supposed to fill a Thursday, not crack open a decade of silence. But the kid plays Marcus's buried music like it's the best news in the world - and just as the walls start to come down, a name from Marcus's past walks back through the door holding the one golden ticket that could take Josh away for good.

Some walls come down slow. Some come down all at once.

The safest place for the thing you love is out in the light - if you're brave enough to give it away.

Blue Note is a steamy, low-angst, grumpy-sunshine MM romcom - a standalone in the City Hearts series.

• Grumpy club owner × sunshine pianist
• Opposites attract · boss and employee · forced proximity
• A New Orleans jazz club worth saving
• Steamy / open door
• Low angst · guaranteed HEA · no cheating · no cliffhangers

Every City Hearts book is a brand-new city, a brand-new couple, and a happily ever after. Read them in any order.