Collins Brothers

The girl who broke his heart at seventeen teaches French at the school he just bought.

Giovanna Dumont came home to Cape Cod to serve out what her mother's will demands. One year in the dead woman's house, one year in a steady job, then she collects and disappears again. Until that clock runs out she teaches French to ten teenagers who earned a place in an international competition in Paris. She has the tickets. She has the trophies. Then a new law requires a male chaperone, the flu takes every man on her list, and the principal cancels the trip three days before takeoff.

Sean Collins buys the school out from under that principal, the man who fired him the week doctors found the cancer. He walks into the office to savor it and hears Gigi through the door, arguing for her students. Ten years of silence, and her voice still undoes him.

He survived the cancer. He buried a wife. He is raising a three-year-old boy. He is the last man who should sign the chaperone form. He signs it.

One week in Paris. Ten students who decide their teachers belong together and lock the two of them in an elevator to prove it. A blackmailer who wants a million dollars. An accusation Sean never earned. And the truth about Gigi's mother that neither of them survived the first time.

Second chances only work when somebody stops running.

Tropes: second chance, first love reunited, forced proximity, single dad, cancer survivor hero, boss and employee, next-door neighbors, matchmaking teenagers, a surprise wedding, Paris.

Narrated by Victoria Pinder in an AI digital voice.