The Christmas Café: A Wholesome Small Town Enemies to Lovers Romance: (The Evergreen Inn Christmas Collection #3)

She owns the heart of Pine Haven. He's citing her for code violations that could shut it down forever. Now they have ninety days to save her café and figure out if love is worth the risk.

Ruby Martinez has poured her heart into Ruby's Café, the beloved gathering place her grandparents opened seventy years ago. She gave up culinary school to care for her sick grandmother, sacrificed her dreams to keep the family legacy alive, and now runs the café alone while barely breaking even. It's all she has left of the grandmother she loved and the future she abandoned.

Then Cole Harrison walks through her door with a clipboard, a tablet, and the worst news possible.

Building inspector. Annual safety inspection. Critical violations everywhere.

The wiring is outdated. The plumbing is corroded. The foundation has cracks. Ruby has ninety days to fix everything or lose the café forever. The estimated cost? Seventy-five thousand dollars she absolutely doesn't have.

Cole Harrison knows he's the most hated man in Pine Haven right now. But he also knows that outdated wiring kills people. He lost his parents to a preventable house fire when he was sixteen, and he's spent every day since enforcing the building codes that exist to keep tragedies from happening. He can't bend the rules, can't show flexibility, can't let his growing attraction to the passionate café owner compromise safety.

Even when Ruby Martinez looks at him like he's destroying her world. Because he kind of is.

When Cole offers to help with repairs in exchange for meals, Ruby's too desperate to refuse. Working together daily, they discover that the impossible building inspector has a tragic past that drives his rigidity. That the stubborn café owner sacrificed everything for family and forgot to dream for herself. That arguing can turn to understanding, and understanding can turn to something that feels dangerously like love.

But just as they're finding their rhythm, Ruby receives an offer she can't her dream teaching position at San Francisco's most prestigious culinary school. Everything she gave up at eighteen, offered to her now at twenty-eight. And Cole's ready to let her go, convinced she deserves the opportunities he can't provide.

Then the county shuts down all renovation work due to decades-old permit issues. Ruby's ninety-day deadline is still ticking, but now she can't even make repairs. The café will close. Her grandmother's legacy will be lost. And the teaching job in San Francisco suddenly looks like the only rational choice.

Unless Cole can learn that sometimes love means bending the rules. And Ruby can realize that the dreams that matter most aren't always the ones you planned.

The Christmas Café is a heartwarming enemies to lovers romance about second chances, healing from loss, and discovering that home isn't a place you're trapped but a choice you make. Perfect for readers who love forced proximity that sparks into passion, grumpy heroes with tragic pasts, and small-town settings where community saves the day.