The Distance Between Us

A widowed chef who feeds everyone but himself. A food writer who has been starving for a life she was told she wanted too much. The best meals — and the best loves — are the ones you share.

Cal Briggs brings food to every Thursday meeting. He brings soup in winter, salads in summer, bread he baked at 4 AM because dawn is when the grief is loudest and the dough needs kneading. He feeds everyone. He has not, in three years, said a single word in group about himself. His wife died. His restaurant stayed open. His daughters needed breakfast. So he kept cooking. He kept showing up with food for other people's pain because other people's pain was something he could hold — and his own was not.

Iris Nakamura is a food writer who was told her whole life that she wanted too much — too much career, too much independence, too much appetite for a life that didn't fit the mold. She walks into Cal's restaurant to write a profile and sees what no one else has seen: a man who is starving.

He is grumpy. She is persistent. He cooks for everyone and lets no one cook for him. She writes about food the way other people write about love — with hunger, with precision, with the specific attention of a woman who has stopped apologizing for her appetite.

"She asked me when the last time was that someone cooked for me. I did not have an answer. That was the answer."

Still Hungry is Book 5 in The Linden Street Letters — the series finale. Every couple returns. The circle gathers one last time. Dual first-person POV. Medium heat. Guaranteed HEA.

Grumpy-sunshine. Widower chef. Food writer. He feeds everyone but himself. She is done apologizing for her hunger. The table has room. Pull up a chair.

For fans of later-in-life slow-burn romance, widower-chef food-as-love, and series finales that feed the soul.

Free with this complete series.