In the misty coastal town of Saltwhistle Bay, Laurel, once a mermaid of the deep, traded her shimmering tail for human legs twenty years ago to escape an arranged marriage beneath the waves. Now she pours her longing into perfect sea-salt croissants and lavender scones at Siren's Rise Bakery, determined never to return to the ocean that still whispers her true name.
Everything changes when Rowan Calder, a rugged, infuriatingly handsome fisherman with storm-gray eyes and a knowing smirk, begins leaving hand-carved lures on her doorstep each dawn. These are no ordinary fishing lures; each one pulses with old mer-magic, tugging at the remnants of Laurel's bond to the sea. Against her will, her feet carry her to the shoreline at midnight, where Rowan waits, barefoot and unafraid, pulling her into moonlit dances that taste of salt and danger.
The more lures appear, the stronger the call becomes. Scales flicker beneath her skin, her legs ache to split back into a tail, and dreams of drowning love flood her nights. Rowan claims the lures are payment for a debt the sea owes him, an ancient bargain struck when he saved a mermaid child (Laurel herself) from a whaling harpoon. He says only true love's kiss can break the enchantment pulling her under, or she'll return to the waves forever on the next equinox moon.
As passion ignites between the stubborn baker and the fisherman who refuses to let her flee, Laurel must decide: fight the lure of the ocean and the man who wields it, or surrender to both and discover that the greatest magic was never in her tail, but in the heart she tried to leave behind.
