Two and a half years ago when I wrote More Than a Tiara as part of Snowflake Tiara, I wasn’t planning on a sequel, but the characters and the setting simply wouldn’t let me go. Marisa’s friend Bren had become a real, living person to me, and I knew I wanted to write this rough-around-the-edges single mom her own happily-ever-after. Nothing clicked together and time went on, time in which I was busy wrapping up the Farm Fresh Romance series, writing the Riverbend novellas, and getting started on the Urban Farm Fresh Romances.
As I was writing Secrets of Sunbeams, the first UFFR, a throw-away character caught my attention. Marietta Santoro, the Italian grandmother who all but runs the Bridgeview neighborhood, was pushing Eden, the story’s heroine, to reconsider her grandson Roberto instead of Jacob Riehl, whom (spoiler alert! LOL) Eden is dating throughout the story.
It seemed Roberto was one of the few members of the Santoro clan to leave Bridgeview. Maybe he’d had enough of his grandmother’s interfering ways and family togetherness. Maybe… maybe Rob needed a romance of his own, in some other setting.
Like… how about Helena, Montana? How would he be nudged into Bren Haddock’s sphere? What bumps would appear in the road of Rob and Bren’s happily-ever-after? And Other Than a Halo was born.
(Also, is it okay to admit that Rob Santoro is right up there with Noel Kenzie as my absolute favorite heroes in stories I’ve written?)
Even though she’s a new woman in Christ, single mom Bren Haddock was no angel as a teen. Now managing the Hiller Farm for a CSA, life is good until a friend offers to enter her daughter into the Little Miss Snowflake Pageant. Old insecurities flare when she meets the intriguing head of marketing the pageant.
Rob Santoro isn’t so sure about handling the pageant portfolio until he meets Bren. Soon he’s fallen for her and her two kids. When a Thanksgiving adventure goes awry, he’s left wondering how to love a woman who refuses to be loved.
What will it take for Bren to retire her tarnished halo and move into the future God has for her?