No Excuses. Willow Creek, #6

An opposites attract, grumpy heroine vs. golden retriever hero, age gap romance. She grumbles at him and feeds him fried bologna sandwiches for dinner. He does everything he can to make her smile. Roxie Greene is a ball buster, and River Montgomery isn't used to it. When everyone warned him about signing up to be her farmhand, he assumed they were exaggerating. They weren't. Roxie Greene does everything she can to keep River Montgomery at a distance because she knows he's working on her lavender farm as a last resort and he'll leave like everyone else.
She's nearly forty and she's been hurt too many times. She's not letting her golden retriever help get close enough to disappoint her again. River Montgomery is just trying to claw his way back from the darkness and desperation and pain and addiction that destroyed him. He might only be twenty-eight, but he's learned life is short and you have to do everything you can to make it sweet. He wants to take all the brittle pieces of Roxie Greene and glue them back together.
If she'll let him.