Once Upon a Winter Beast: A Sweet Beauty and the Beast Rom-Com Retelling (Once Upon a Time in Colorado)

Once Upon a Winter Beast: A Sweet Beauty and the Beast Rom-Com Retelling (Once Upon a Time in Colorado)

He’s all thorns. I bring the twinkle lights. Somehow, we make the season sparkle again. Chloe I run a photo studio that smells like balsam candles and hot cocoa—where kids grin in front of a fake tree farm because I'm avoiding the real thing. It used to be one of my favorite places, and it's owned by the one man I promised myself I’d never orbit again. Aiden Wheeler used to be all warmth and evergreen. Now he’s locked gates and sharp edges, with a Christmas tree farm that hasn’t felt like Christmas since the day his world cracked. Mine’s cracked too—leaks in the ceiling, bills piling up, and a daughter who deserves more than a mom holding life together with towels and hope. So when a desperate favor turns into a ridiculous proposal—marry him, on paper, to save the farm he’s shouldering and the season I’m drowning in—I should laugh and walk away. Instead, I say I’ll think about it. Because under the flannel and the frost, I still see the boy who once made everything feel easy. And when he shows up with cookie supplies for my daughter like it’s the most natural thing in the world, something stubborn in me thaws. Aiden I learned the hard way that responsibility doesn’t soften grief—it sharpens it. I'm shouldering our family tree farm and a legacy I can barely hold up. And now I'm facing a steep debt, and an inheritance clause I can't ignore anymore. Not if I want to keep it all. Chloe was never part of the plan. But she walks into my life like light through a cracked door, stringing warmth through a house that’s been cold for too long. She doesn’t ask me to be less broken. She doesn’t try to fix me. She just stays. At some point, it stops being about a clause or a contract. It’s about rebuilding something that matters—with steady hands, shared work, and the quiet hope that some castles don’t crumble. They just need new beams. And someone brave enough to believe they’re worth saving. This winter, love doesn’t arrive in a ballroom. It shows up in flannel sleeves, tangled lights, and the choice to come home, one evergreen at a time. This book was previously published as Love at the Christmas Tree Farm , but has been altered and expanded (considerably) to fit the fairytale it was originally meant to be. Once Upon a Winter Beast is a cozy, closed-door, (light) magical-realism Christmas romance featuring a marriage of convenience, second chances, small-town charm, holiday magic, a single mom, a Christmas Tree Farm, light grief themes, one bed, and a Beauty and the Beast winter enchantment that brings them back together. Once Upon a Time in Colorado: Once Upon a Sugar Plum - Once Upon a Winter Beast - Once Upon a Rose