Tangled Thing Called Love is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2014 by Pat Kilday
Excerpt from Crazy for You by Juliet Rosetti copyright © 2013 by Pat Kilday
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54915-0
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi
Cover photograph: Lorand Gelner/Getty Images
www.readloveswept.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
The Editor’s Corner
Excerpt from Crazy for You
Chapter One
Beauty is only skin deep,
But ugly goes clean to the bone.
—Dorothy Parker
Fawn Fanchon was seventeen years old when she walked into a swamp and disappeared from the face of the earth.
She had wide-set hazel eyes, glossy dark hair, and a heart-shaped face. She was five feet five, a slender, long-legged girl who managed to pull off chic even in Goodwill jeans and dollar-store jewelry.
She disappeared the evening she was crowned Miss Quail Hollow. Her fellow contestants, mostly the tall, athletic blondes Wisconsin grows like sunflowers, included a cheerleading captain, a homecoming queen, and a state tennis champion. They were girls whose mothers bought their daughters pageant gowns from Neiman Marcus, whose fathers were small-business owners and insurance agents, whose families sat down to the dinner table every night for well-balanced meals and discussions of world events.
Fawn’s mother had died three years earlier from a ruptured appendix, her father drove a forklift at a birdseed plant, and her family, who depended on food stamps, often had suppers of microwave popcorn, eaten in front of the television at ten thirty at night.
All the other girls wore bikinis for the swimsuit competition, but Fawn wore a one-piece bathing suit she’d borrowed from an aunt, managing during her brief spin down the runway to look classy while making the bikini-clad girls seem slightly trashy.
For her talent number, she belted out “Summertime” in a surprisingly powerful alto. Nobody had realized Fawn could sing. The Girls from Good Homes had barely registered that Fawn was in the competition. Yet when the preliminary scores were posted the day before the finals, there was Fawn Fanchon’s name, leading all the rest.
That’s when the knives came out.
That’s when the Neiman Marcus girls grasped that a dark horse was streaking up on the outside rail. That’s when the red food coloring was splattered across Fawn’s gown at the oops-it’s-that-time-of-the-month spot; that’s when the cayenne pepper was sprinkled into her blusher to burn her cheeks; that’s when Bet the judges liked your BJs!! was scrawled across her locker in turquoise nail polish.
The evening gown competition was held on the last night of the pageant. Fawn wore a pink beaded dress she’d sewn on her mother’s old sewing machine, dangly earrings she’d made from a crafts store kit, and high-heeled silver sandals bought at a rummage sale.
If you freeze the videos taken at the moment Fawn is announced as the winner, you can catch the naked hostility on the other girls’ faces before they paste on their If it couldn’t be me, I’m glad it’s her masks. If looks were lasers, Fawn would have burst into flames.
Delirious, disbelieving, laughing and crying at the same time—one of those girls who looks beautiful even while weeping—Fawn Fanchon was crowned Miss Quail Hollow on a high school stage that smelled like moldy curtains, handed a Kiwanis Club scholarship check that would pay for her first semester at college, and applauded by an audience weary of cheerleaders and homecoming queens.
Fawn stayed behind afterward for photos, interviews with local reporters, and instructions on her new duties. Then, like a deflating Disney balloon, the magic slowly seeped out of the auditorium. The Miss Quail Hollow Pageant banner fluttered to the floor, the runway was dismantled, the lights winked out one by one.
Fawn walked out of the school and headed toward the parking lot. She was alone. Her dad, who’d promised to be there for the finals, had forgotten about the pageant and was sitting in a bar. She tossed her bouquet onto the bench seat of her truck, a Chevy pickup whose front bumper was held on with baling wire. She was still wearing her evening gown, sash, and tiara as she got in, started the engine, and rolled out of the parking lot.
Her truck was found two days later at the end of a dead-end road in a nearby swamp. Prints from Fawn’s high heels were gouged into a muddy path leading down to a fast-moving creek. Her shoes were found on the banks of the stream, her bouquet in a patch of weeds. The creek was dredged, the swamp was searched, a nationwide Amber Alert was issued. But no trace of Fawn, either alive or dead, was ever found.
Her disappearance would remain a mystery for thirteen years.
Chapter Two
Useless piece of junk!
The suitcase was cheap, like everything else Mazie owned, and had a wonky wheel that snagged on every speck of grit in the road. She had to yank it along like a balky pet while clutching a bulging tote bag, a sack of dog food, and a small gray dog who couldn’t walk because the broiling asphalt was too hot for his paws.
Mazie felt close to broiling herself. When she’d started out in the chill of the morning, she’d been wearing a T-shirt, hoodie, and jeans. But by three o’clock on a June afternoon, with the temperature blazing into the nineties, her hoodie was knotted around her waist, her T-shirt was sweat-stuck to her body, and her jeans felt like molten asbestos. Having a long-haired dog clamped against her chest wasn’t making things any cooler.
She desperately needed a drink, but that would have meant unslinging her tote bag and rummaging around for her water bottle. Way too much trouble. Besides, there—visi
ble now around a bend in the lane—was the house, a sight that quickened her heart and gave her aching legs a last surge of energy.
Maguire, read the name on the rural mailbox.
Four years had passed since Mazie Maguire had set eyes on this place, and she was relieved to see that nothing had changed. The farmhouse was a rambling, two-story white frame building with dark green shutters and a wraparound front porch, set on a knoll beneath towering, century-old maple trees. Just beyond were the barns and sheds, the creaking old windmill, and the apple orchard. Mazie drank in every inch of the scene, and tears would have sprung to her eyes if the heat hadn’t dried up her tear ducts hours ago.
Home. Where, when you had to go, they had to take you in.
The door of the house opened and a woman hurried out onto the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Mazie! We expected you hours ago.”
“Gran!” Dropping her suitcase, Mazie rushed forward and hugged her grandmother.
“Why didn’t you call?” Gran asked. “I would have picked you up.”
“I did call. I kept getting a busy signal. So I bummed a ride with Elmer Guthrie.” The elderly man, who lived on the next farm over from the Maguires, had dropped Mazie at the end of the mile-long driveway and she’d trudged from there.
“Must have been those darn kids again, leaving the receiver off the hook.” Gran smiled as Mazie’s dog stretched up to lick her face. She scratched under its chin. “Who’s this, then?”
“Muffin.”
“Well, aren’t you a handsome little fellow,” Gran cooed. “Or do I mean girl?”
“He’s all boy.”
Muffin looked like a furry gray jelly bean with eyes. He was a shih tzu, with the breed’s chubby cheeks, black button eyes, tiny nose, and all-over air of cuteness, a breed whose main defensive mechanism lay in its ability to get humans to go awww and take them home for a lifetime of pampering. But in Muffin’s case, the teddy bear cuddliness disguised a wolverine disposition. Spotting a cat crossing the yard, Muffin went rigid and alert, his fur bristling, a large growl issuing from his small chest. He struggled to break free to get at the cat.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mazie scolded, tightening her grip on him.
Gran held the door while Mazie dragged her things into the house, sighing in relief as the cool inside air slid over her overheated skin. Like her granddaughter, Katie Maguire was small-boned and slim. She’d turned eighty-five this year, although she had the energy of a woman half her age. She wore her silvery white hair in a short, flattering style, her skin was tanned and speckled with liver spots, and she would sooner have gone without her clothes than without her lipstick. She was wearing lavender capris, a lilac floral blouse, and the same oval-shaped eyeglasses she’d worn as long as Mazie could remember.
Mazie set down Muffin, who darted about exploring his new surroundings, tail wagging excitedly. “Where is everyone?”
“Emily had to leave for the hospital a day early. Scully’s with her, and the twins—oh, Lord knows what they’re up to. Let’s get you settled into your room.”
Mazie wrestled her suitcase up the stairs and automatically turned in to the first room on the left, the room where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life. Fortunately, during Mazie’s Goth phase at age fifteen, her mother hadn’t allowed her to paint her bedroom walls black. Now, returning as an adult, she appreciated what a lovely, restful room it was. The walls were pale cream, with a stain on the ceiling that resembled a map of Greenland. The bed was a double with a curlicued brass headboard and a blue and white quilted coverlet. White net curtains hung on the windows, a blue hand-hooked rug rested on the wooden floorboards, and a honey pine dresser with a vanity mirror stood against a wall. She loved this room. She bent to sniff the pink peonies in a pitcher on the nightstand—Gran’s way of welcoming her home—and nearly snorked a tiny ant up her nose.
“You get all cleaned up now,” Gran said. “Bathroom’s open. When you come down I’ll have a root beer float waiting and you can catch me up on all your news.”
Leaving the unpacking for later, Mazie grabbed a change of underwear, shorts, and a sleeveless blouse out of her suitcase. The bathroom was just across the hall, big and old-fashioned, like the rest of the house. Nothing much had changed here, either. Same rose printed wallpaper, same claw-footed enamel tub, same temperamental toilet, same permeating smell of Palmolive hand soap. And still no lock on the door. The lock had come off several years ago after one of the twins’ stunts that involved Styrofoam peanuts, a water polo net, and a bathtub drain plugged up to create a swimming pool.
Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink, Mazie winced. Her eyes were vividly blue against her flushed face, her brown hair stuck to her scalp in sweaty clumps, her nose was sunburned, and ten kajillion new freckles had popped out during the long walk this afternoon. You’d think that by the time a person reached the age of thirty, she would have stopped freckling.
Turning on the hot water, Mazie dumped half a bottle of shampoo into the tub, waited for the bubbles to froth, then climbed in. Oh, sheer, utter, celestial bliss! She worked the suds into her prickly scalp and sank back into the bubbles, tired to the bone. She’d been up since five this morning, when she’d boarded the Greyhound bus in Milwaukee for the two-hour haul to Madison. Then she’d had a three-hour layover before she’d caught the local Coulee County bus, whose route meandered through every town and rabbit hole in southwest Wisconsin before finally reaching Mazie’s hometown, Quail Hollow. Since neither bus line allowed animals, Mazie had smuggled Muffin aboard in her tote bag, sneaking him off when the bus boarded or unloaded passengers to find him a patch of grass to pee on.
Life had been loads simpler when she’d had a car, but her fourteen-year-old Escort had crashed off a cliff a few months ago and gone to car heaven. The insurance had been a pittance, and even working double shifts at a coffee shop hadn’t produced a big enough nest egg to pay for a replacement junker. Two weeks ago the coffee shop had suddenly folded, and now Mazie was living on her paltry savings while job-hunting in a market that didn’t value people with prison records. Before she’d gone to prison she’d taught high school music, but, though her murder conviction had been overturned and she’d regained her freedom, school boards weren’t exactly lining up to recruit ex-convicts.
Mazie had just turned on the hot water tap with her toes when the bathroom door crashed open and two boys barged into the room, raced to the toilet, and flung up the lid. They had their pants half-unzipped before they noticed there was someone in the tub. Abruptly they whipped around, eyes bugging out in surprise.
Hastily zipping back up, the taller boy demanded, “Who’re you?”
“Your aunt Mazie.” She was relieved that the soap bubbles covered her from the neck down. “So now I guess it’s your turn.”
“I’m Joey,” said the boy, who was skinny as a licorice whip, with dark hair and hazel eyes.
Mazie extended a soapy hand and they shook.
“Sam,” piped the other brother, thrusting out his hand, shaking, then wiping his wet hand on his pants. Sam was the younger twin by twenty minutes, with green eyes and coppery hair, built more along Maguire men lines: short and sturdy. The boys were fraternal twins, and although they didn’t look much alike, they shared the same double-dare-ya expressions. They were eight years old, going on nine. Mazie hadn’t seen them in four years, and neither boy seemed to remember her. They smelled like dirt, boy sweat, and—oddly—potatoes.
“You’re supposed to babysit us while Mama’s gone?” asked Sam.
“That’s the plan.”
A now-we-can-get-away-with-murder look passed between the boys, making Mazie’s scalp prickle. The boys’ mother, Emily, had been ordered to the hospital for total bed rest to await the birth of her baby. She’d asked Mazie to come to the farm for a few days to lend Gran a hand while she was gone. Before Emily had even finished asking, Mazie had said yes, delighted at the chance to spend time wit
h her grandmother and to get reacquainted with her nephews.
Besides, she needed to get away from the place where everything reminded her of him, the faithless jerk who’d treated her heart as if it were peanut brittle: made to be broken.
Muffin nosed into the bathroom and the boys went berserk. Love at first sight on all sides. More thrilled with the dog than with their aunt, they asked a million questions—what was his name, what kind was he, what did he eat, could he play dead, could he sleep with them, did he know how to play fetch—all the while tussling and rolling around on the floor with Muffin, who was gleefully barking, his tail going a thousand wags per second, and looking ready to piddle from sheer excitement.
“Can we take him outside to play?” Joey asked. Without waiting for an answer, he and Sam blew the joint, a small four-legged tornado, sucking up Muffin with them. He dashed off without a backward look at her.
“That’s just what I need,” Mazie yelled after him. “Another love ’em and leave ’em male.”
Chapter Three
Damn GPS.
They ought to slap a label on it, Ben Labeck thought. Warning: use with extreme skepticism. May lead to stranding in rivers, swamps, or deserts. The lady with the sexy Australian accent had gotten him from Milwaukee to Quail Hollow with no glitches, but after he’d left the town she’d directed him on a merry chase through country lanes and goat trails until he’d ended up where he was now: in the middle of a gravel pit.
This might be the GPS version of a prank, Ben thought. Maybe the GPS ladies got together late at night, slammed down boilermakers, and laughed until they drooled all over their bras, describing how they’d stranded their gullible drivers on railroad tracks or atop waterfalls.
How did the people around here ever find anything, he wondered. There were no street signs, and every barn and silo looked like every other barn and silo. His eyes burned with fatigue and his legs were cramped. He’d been on an early-morning flight from Los Angeles, which had arrived in Milwaukee at noon. Then he’d discovered that the object of his cross-country quest was in Quail Hollow, a two-hundred-mile drive away.
Tangled Thing Called Love: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 1
