Book excerpt: This Christmas, a childhood promise comes calling… Clementine Hardy always wanted to be a librarian in her Marietta hometown. But at thirty, she fears she’s become too predictable—so she quits, books a European vacation, and accepts a research job in New York. Then on her birthday, a hunky piece of her past arrives, drops to bended knee, and proposes in front of half the town. Bad boy celebrity chef Jude Barlow is done with the bright lights and late nights. He sells his Manhattan restaurant and volunteers in Africa to clear his head. A year later, he’s a new man with a new goal: find the girl from summer camp—the most practical woman he knows—and collect on the pinky promise they made when they were twelve. Clem won’t marry a guy she hasn’t seen in nearly two decades, no matter how attractive or how talented he is in and out of her kitchen. But why does he have to look more delicious than the chocolate creations he concocts for the Graff Hotel? More delicious than anything in New York?