A Mystery Man for Jo (Hope Valley Romance #5)

Jo Bailey has had enough. Pushed too far, she resigns from her high-profile job and goes back to sleepy Hope Valley to manage her newly-married mother's 'little hobby' -- a quirky bookstore that seems to be more of a community center than a real business. How can Jo (Harvard-educated and the daughter of a prominent business tycoon) possibly fit in with the demands of a community that clearly has no clue about how a business should operate? For heaven's sake, what kind of bookstore has a craft group taking over on Fridays and ladies playing canasta on Thursday mornings?

Not only that, she learns that her mother has saddled her with some old geezer who sets up camp daily in a corner of the bookstore to write his memoirs. His memoirs. Isn't a bookstore about buying books, not writing them?

Jo, expecting her days to be quiet and ordered, is in a state of shock. Determined to make the bookstore pay, she starts planning changes -- but meets with gentle resistance from all the locals, including Mr. Smith, the writer of memoirs. She is shocked to discover that Ashton Smith is not the doddery old octogenarian that she expected, but a handsome mystery man who is bound and determined to keep his real agenda a secret.

Jo is equally determined to find out what he's really up to, sitting there tapping away at his laptop every morning for three and a half hours! He appears to be taking far too much interest in the townspeople and Jo's own affairs for someone who is merely writing his life history. So... what's going on?

By the time Jo manages to winkle out The Mysterious Mr. Smith's secrets, it's all too late. She has already lost her heart to him. And she would never have guessed his guilty secret...