She came back for her father.
She didn't plan on coming back for anything else.
Aria Hartley left Palm Haven at twenty-two with a plan, a career, and no intention of looking back. Ten years later, she returns to a town she barely recognises — glass and neon where fibro and fishing boats used to be — and to a father whose health won't wait for a convenient time.
She didn't plan on Sandbar. The rooftop bar that has put Palm Haven on every influencer's map, built by the one person she never quite managed to stop thinking about.
She didn't plan on Kai Carter.
He left once too. Without a word, without a reason, without giving her the chance to understand why. Now he's back — permanent, successful, standing behind a bar that glows gold against the headland — and the look he gives her across a crowded room makes it clear that five years and a lot of silence haven't changed a single thing.
Aria is here for one week. To help, to fix, to leave clean.
That's the plan.
Some tides pull you under.
Others pull you home.
Palm Haven Hearts Series — Book One
If you love small-town romance with heart, heat, and a coastline you can almost taste, Sandbar is the book you've been waiting for.
the palm haven hearts series
Book 1: Sandbar
She came back for a week to Palm Haven, but the Palm Haven Hearts Series had other plans.
Book 2: Reckoning
He built a glass palace to hide from the past, but the past just came home.
Book 3: Lowtide
He spent his whole life taking care of everyone; no one ever thought to ask what he needed.
Book 4: Signal
She performed joy so well that she forgot what the real thing felt like — until someone saw through the sequins.
Book 5: Undertow
He arrived in Palm Haven with a backpack and no name worth speaking. She gave him a reason to say it out loud.
Book 6: Firebreak
She built her whole life around keeping rooms safe, never expecting someone to want to keep her safe too.
Book 7: Current
His family had his whole future planned, but she was the one question they hadn't accounted for.
Book 8: Span
She had been holding everything up for so long, forgetting what it felt like to want something just for herself.
Book 9: Faultline
He learned everything about being a man from the wrong man, and now someone was showing him there was another way.
Book 10: Clarity
She had been invisible for twenty-five years while he had been leaving notes on her cleaning cart for six months.
Book 11: Harbour
A father, a son, a debt that couldn't be paid in money, and the question of whether forgiveness has to be asked for to be real.
Book 12: Archive
She had documented this town's entire story in the Palm Haven Hearts Series, but it took a stranger to notice she'd left herself out of it.
Book 13: Saltwater
His family built this town, and her money helped tear it down. Love was never supposed to be this complicated — or this necessary.
Book 14: Mise en Place
She rebuilt her kitchen from scratch after the industry tried to erase her. He was the first person to call what she made art.
Book 15: Blueprint
Everyone in the family knew who she was supposed to be; she was the only one who didn't.
Book 16: Spring Tide
Twenty years, one question: what does success cost when the thing you built is bigger than the love that started it?
Book 17: Headland
Their daughter was twelve and already making music that made strangers cry. The question was whose story it belonged to.
Book 18: Open Water
He stayed so his children could have a home, but now his son was leaving, and he wasn't sure how to love someone into going.
Book 19: Kingtide
The reef they'd protected for fifteen years was under threat, as was everything they'd built above the waterline.
Book 20: After
Twenty years, twenty stories, one town that decided what kind of place it wanted to be. This is what happened after.
