My Husband Missed Our Daughter's Birthday for Her - A Marriage in Crisis Second Chance Romance #1012161

On our daughter's sixth birthday, she waited at the table beside her owl cake until she fell asleep. Her father was at a celebration dinner, letting another woman call herself his partner in every sense.

Gemma Castellano gave up architecture to raise Esme. She baked the owl cake, booked the rescue owl, and covered for her husband one more time when the puppet show he promised never happened. Then, at 7:12 that night, she saw the photo. Elliot at the head of a candlelit table. His co-founder's hand on his arm. A caption with a heart.

So Gemma packed before dawn, took Esme and the unlit birthday candle, and drove north to her late father's cottage on a quiet Muskoka lake. Her note asked for one thing: the summer.

Elliot Castellano built a fintech company from nothing. He didn't know his daughter's best friend, her favorite color, or that she had been the last child picked up from school eleven times. Now he has a small blue notebook, an old man next door with a sagging dock and very little patience, and a wife who says a title isn't time.

But the woman who wanted his company, and him, isn't finished with this family yet.

• Marriage in crisis, second chance romance with a slow, earned grovel
• A neglected wife who finds her own work and voice again
• A six-year-old who saves her birthday wish, and a father who learns her world
• Cozy Muskoka lake cottage, a gruff neighbor, loons, and an owl box
• Dual point of view, emotional, a guaranteed happy ending, no explicit scenes