When journeying by bus to surprise her boyfriend for Christmas, Holly meets a charming cowboy who accompanies her.

Aspiring astronomy professor and Christmas enthusiast Holly is crushed when her longtime boyfriend Adam schedules a business trip and leaves her alone over the holidays, but when she decides to surprise both Adam and her parents with a Christmas visit, fate--or perhaps the Christmas spirit--intervenes. Holly's bumpy holiday travel makes a turn onto the road to romance when she and her bus companion Luke forge an instant connection over their love of constellations and Christmas. In the spirit of the season, Holly invites Luke and his brother Bull to join her family and Adam for Christmas, which instantly creates a competition between Luke and Adam for Holly's attention. As sparks fly like shooting stars between Holly and Luke, will Holly decide to play it safe and stay with Adam or to thank her lucky stars for the Christmas gift of romance with Luke?—nitrokng

In the lead-up to Christmas, the future for Holly Jensen, a Ph.D. candidate in Astronomy at Brenfield University of Chicago, looks as bright as the stars she studies. She has just submitted her dissertation and should hear shortly if it has been approved. She has the inside track on a permanent teaching position opening up at Brenfield in the new year, it almost guaranteed to be hers if her dissertation is accepted, and she's on the shortlist for the Geneva Lewis Fellowship (Lewis is her professional idol). But with all this going on, she's unable to head home to New York City for Christmas with her parents. But she will spend Christmas with her boyfriend of three years, corporate lawyer Adam--until at the last minute he heads to New York himself to court a new client for a permanent job with his New York-based software company. Adam has long implied that their future together will be more secure (altar-bound) when their professional lives are settled. Holly's plans also change at the last minute when she hears that her dissertation has been accepted, meaning that she has no reason to stay in Chicago over the holidays to work. Then she finds an inexpensive bus ticket to New York to surprise both her parents and Adam for Christmas. En route, Holly meets Luke Shetland, a Texas cowboy/rancher who is participating in a rodeo in New Jersey and plans to spend Christmas with his older brother Bull Shetland, a full-time rodeoer and his only relation. In spending time with Luke, Holly may have her eyes opened to the true love she sought with Adam, that true love which has always presented itself to her in the form of her parents' marriage.—Huggo