A Love to Keep

A Love to Keep is a 2003 romance by Cynthia Rutledge, published by Steeple Hill Books as a 250-page paperback.

Lori Loveland takes a fixed-term position as a nanny and treats it as a stage rather than a destination, which gives the novel an ending it has to work against. Drew McCashlin is a widower with two daughters, and the plot's movement is his recovery, both of his capacity to love and of his faith.

The children are the mechanism rather than the background. They respond to Lori, the household begins to look like a family, and the difficulty is that she has already decided to leave when the six months are up. Books in this line were short, published in paperback for a loyal readership, and structured so that the central question is whether a commitment already made can be reconsidered. The six months are named from the outset, so the novel's question is whether a promise made to herself can be revised, and the children's progress is what makes the revision possible. Faith is the second thread: Lori's is steady, and the widower's has to come back before the romance can settle.