On the 16th Day of Christmas by Kristi Pelton

Growing up in the picturesque small town of Mystic, Connecticut, Scarlett assumed that small town love would be thrown into her lap. Hallmark movies preached it. Perfected it. Promised it. A storybook love life should be hers for the taking. A lumberjack. A Christmas tree farmer. A rich executive visiting from the city. She’d won second place in a baking championship on national TV. She is a baker, for God’s sake. Something the romantic Gods love. Yet the closest she has been to love is a failed relationship and a dysfunctional family. Taking a leap of faith, she packed up her life and moved to the other side of the country, hoping to reignite the possibility of small-town love in Astoria, Oregon. Yet two years later, her love life is still a big, fat nothing. Nada. Zero.
Setting off on an obligatory trip back to Connecticut for Christmas, she meets a handsome stranger in a dog park of all places. Since they are both traveling east, they decide to travel separately but together. With his boyish charm and Irish accent, it’s the story Christmas books and movies are written about: A Baker and the Irishman. But after five days of lengthy phone conversations and five nights of building attraction, all it takes is one word to remind Scarlett that fairytales only happen in books and that movies never get it right.
Scarlett has literally provided the romantic gods with every essential item for a good love story, yet there she sits, driving back to her small town…alone. The happily ever after always promised, nowhere to be found. Scarlett thought she had finally found the secret ingredient for her romance recipe but as every baker knows, even the most perfect recipes sometimes don’t work out…or do they?