Common Grounds
Change of Plans
He orders the same thing every single morning. He never expected the barista to change his whole life.
Diccon
Life is pretty great when you work at your family’s coffee shop, which is also a beloved queer community hub. I get to serve coffee, sing terrible order-call harmonies with my best friend and brothers every morning, and flirt with the cutest, most buttoned-up regular Common Grounds has ever seen. Theo Callihan is a gorgeous, green-eyed, buttoned-up architect who orders the exact same plain black coffee every single day like his life depends on it.
I've been crushing on the guy for months and too chicken to do anything about it. So when fate, and a cup of genuinely terrible blueberry coffee, finally throws us together, I'm not wasting my shot.
There's just one teeny, tiny problem. Theo isn't only the hottest customer who's ever made my pulse skip, he's the architect behind the construction project that could shut my family's café down for good.
Turns out falling for someone is a lot more complicated when he might also be the reason you lose everything you love.
Theo
The one thing life has taught me, ever since that one time in second grade I sat on the wrong reading cushion and my whole world fell apart, is to obey the rules at all costs. So getting handed the wrong coffee order at Common Grounds should have ruined my entire week.
Instead, it gave me an excuse to keep talking to Diccon Meyers, the bubbly, infuriatingly easy-to-love barista I've been quietly obsessed with for months. For the first time in my life, breaking my routine feels like exactly the right call.
Until Diccon finds out I'm the architect behind the development project threatening to bury his family's café in eight months of noise, dust, and blocked-off streets. Now I have to prove that falling for him was the one change of plans I got right.
Change of Plans is a sweet-but-steamy MM contemporary romance perfect for fans of grumpy/sunshine pairings, coffee shop meet-cutes, opposites-attract chemistry, slow burn rivals-to-lovers, and small-town found family. With a free-spirited barista hero, a rule-bound architect learning to embrace a little chaos, real stakes around saving a beloved small business, and a guaranteed HEA (no cheating, no cliffhanger), this very low-angst, coffee-soaked series opener is the start of the Common Grounds series.
Quit Playing Games with My Heart
Falling for your employee, who is also your brother’s best friend, wasn't in the employee handbook. So he rewrote it.
Brian
First rule of being a best friend: don’t fall for your bestie’s older brother. Especially if he’s your boss.
I've broken that rule spectacularly.
My crush is the last thing Common Grounds needs, what with construction ripping up the storefront and foot traffic disappearing by the day. I've got exactly one shot at saving the place I've come to think of as home and impressing Sam in the process: games night. It's the best idea I've ever had. It's also the perfect excuse to spend more time with Sam, who is off-limits, and infuriatingly, everything I want.
One kiss during cleanup changes everything. Sam and I might just have a chance after all. Until I overhear something I shouldn't, and it sends me straight back to old shame I've spent years hiding from. Including the one thing I've never told anyone at Common Grounds.
Sam
I wrote the rulebook. Literally.
After one very avoidable workplace scandal, I drafted an employee guidelines document so airtight it should come with a warning label. It's kept me professional, careful, and safely un-entangled for three years. But now the café is bleeding customers, and when Brian walks into my office with a games night pitch that might actually save us, and I realize the heart doesn’t care about rules.
Is this the beginning of a beautiful love story or the beginning of the end for Common Grounds?
Grab your coffee and settle in! Common Grounds is open, and love is on the menu.
A small-town MM contemporary romance featuring a slow-burn boss/employee, best friend’s brother romance, a struggling coffee shop saved by one brilliant idea, forced proximity at work, a big-hearted hero with hidden dyslexia, a near-miss misunderstanding, found family, and a guaranteed HEA.
Built to Last
Coming Soon!