Rico's Garden — Eve Lilas

Celebrated chef Rico Alvarez is living a life he knows he doesn't deserve and, given his past, would never have believed possible a few years earlier. Surrounded by the finest things money can buy he leads a sterile life of comfort and loneliness, and that suits him just fine-that is, until gardener Eden Stuart runs him off the road with her dilapidated old farm truck. His anger at her recklessness soon gives way to unforgettable attraction. More than vegetables and flowers grow in Eden's lush garden-healing and warmth grow there too. Despite his awakening love Rico makes it clear that sex is all he has to offer Eden-it's all she'll ever get from him. Love without trust is meaningless and nothing more than personal vanity, Eden tells him, trust is everything. Rico knows she's right but trust is a commodity unaffordable to a man with so much to hide and everything to lose-sex isn't.