Contents
Book Blurb
Title
A Note From the Author
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dear Reader
Award-winning author Melissa Mayhue returns with a brand new series in a brand new genre. Join her in Chance, Colorado - Where love gets a second chance…
Allison Flynn has spent the last eight years struggling to build the life of her dreams. But a cheating boyfriend, the loss of her beloved job, and her mother’s illness have all conspired to bring her back home again, shutting the door on those dreams.
Logan O’Connor is a man driven by guilt and haunted by the what-ifs of his choices in life. Betrayed by the woman he’d thought he loved, he’s given up any dream of the Happy Ever After he’d once assumed his life would have and devoted himself to his work.
When Allie and Logan cross paths, they’ll need to risk their hearts once more to have any chance at finding what they really want.
Sometimes you have to take a chance to make your dreams come true…
Length: Approximately 300 pages
Ages: 18 and up [story contains sex, mild profanity]
Take a Chance is the first in Melissa’s new contemporary small-town series set in Chance, Colorado. The second book in the series is schedule for release in late spring/early summer 2014.
TAKE A CHANCE
CHANCE, COLORADO SERIES
Book One
by
Melissa Mayhue
© 2013 by Melissa Mayhue. All rights reserved
A Note from the Author:
As an only child, I didn’t realize how lucky I was to grow up with extended family nearby. It wasn’t until I was older that I recognized there’s nothing quite like the feeling of living in a small town. Combine that with my love for the mountains surrounding my home and you have the inspiration for Chance, Colorado. I hope you’ll enjoy meeting the people who live in Chance and—most especially!—I hope you’ll enjoy Allie and Logan’s story.
Welcome to Chance, Colorado - the town where love always gets a second chance!
Here’s the list of stories so far:
1 - Take a Chance
(Allie and Logan’s story)
2 - Second Chance at Love (coming Summer 2014)
(Liz and Ryan’s story)
Want to stay informed as new books become available? Sign up for my New Release Newsletter!
— Melissa
PROLOGUE
Chance, Colorado
Eight Years Ago…
As prom nights go, this one had turned out to be one of the worst ever.
“So what have you got to say for yourself, Allie? Is Lacey telling me the truth? Have you really been dating me just so you’d have a chance to see Logan when he comes home from college?”
Allison Flynn’s hands balled into fists at her sides, clenched every bit as tightly as the growing knot in her stomach. Humiliation at having been exposed warred with hurt and disbelief that her best friend could have betrayed her confidence this way.
But lying to Ryan O’Connor was no way to make herself feel better. She wouldn’t do that to him. He’d been too good a friend to her.
“Yes,” she forced herself to say, the heat of embarrassment threatening to set her face aflame.
“I can’t believe you,” he whispered, shaking his head as he stared at her. “What kind of girl dates a guy just to get close to his brother?”
A desperate girl who fancies herself in love.
“What did you think you’d accomplish? Everybody in town knows Logan’s already asked Shayla Jenkins to marry him after he graduates from college.”
A strange tingle swept through Allie’s body, as if all her blood had rushed to her head and just as quickly rushed away, leaving her world wobbling around her.
Not everybody knew Logan was planning to marry. She hadn’t known. Not even her best friend, Lacey, had known, or she would have told Allie. And since Lacey was Shayla’s sister, if anybody should have known, it was her.
Unless… Unless Lacey had known and that was why she’d betrayed Allie’s secret.
“And using me like this? If nothing else, I thought we were friends. This is low, Allie,” Ryan continued. “Slinking-on-your-belly-in-the-mud kind of low.”
What if Lacey had known and that was why she told Ryan about Allie’s attraction to his older brother? What if she’d told because her strongest loyalty was to her older sister instead of to her best friend? Allie’s grandmother always did claim blood was thicker than water.
“I’m sorry,” Allie managed through quivering lips when Ryan stopped talking. “We are friends, Ryan. I never meant to hurt you. I was wrong to have…” She stumbled to a stop, numbed by the pain in Ryan’s expression. “I don’t know what else to say to make it better. Just… I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, you really are,” Ryan answered, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “Sorry, that is. Come on, let’s go. I’m taking you home. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
He didn’t say the words aloud that he didn’t want to be with her anymore, but he might as well have. She felt their stinging rebuke to the center of her being.
The silent car ride home was the longest of Allie’s life. Ryan said nothing to her, not even when she stepped out of the car.
“I’m really sorry,” she tried once more, leaning down to look in the window, but he didn’t spare her a glance as he gunned the motor.
Watching the dust flung up by his tires as he drove away, Allie knew that no matter how awful she felt right now, things were only going to get worse from here on out. By Monday afternoon, everyone at school would know what she’d done. By Tuesday morning, everyone in town would know what a scheming sneak she was. Worst of all, Logan would know.
How could she ever have trusted Lacey Jenkins with the most secret desires of her heart?
She’d lost her best friend tonight, and that betrayal hurt, but she could only place part of the blame on Lacey. Through her own deceitful stupidity she’d lost Ryan’s friendship and the respect of everyone she’d ever known.
All because she thought she was in love with someone who barely knew she even existed.
“Love,” she huffed, chewing the word and spitting it out.
What did she know about love, anyway? Nothing but what she’d read in those books with happy endings and, considering the way she felt right now, there was no happy ending in her future. In fact, if this was what love felt like, it was sheer misery and she wanted no part of it ever again.
With a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and headed up the walk toward her house, praying that her parents had already gone to bed. They’d hear about this soon enough but please, oh please, not tonight.
By tomorrow she’d be stronger. By tomorrow she’d be able to lift her head and look beyond all this to focus on her future.
A future tha
t she now knew couldn’t possibly include Logan O’Connor.
She let out a shaky breath and pulled open the old screen door.
None of this mattered. Everything would be okay. She wouldn’t allow this awful night to be a total loss. It hurt like hell, but she’d learned a valuable lesson. Never again would she trust anyone with her deepest feelings. Never again would she sacrifice her integrity for any man.
The humiliation she would suffer when everyone learned what an idiot she was would be a burden, but it would only last for the next three months. Thank God she’d applied to out-of-state schools in spite of her dad’s objections. Come August, she was out of here.
She wasn’t going to be like the women in this town. She wouldn’t spend her life dependent on some man for her happiness like her mom and so many of the others she knew. She’d strike out on her own and take a chance to build the life she wanted for herself.
And once she had Chance, Colorado in her rearview mirror, she was never, ever coming back.
CHAPTER ONE
Brooke Army Medical Center
Present Day
Allie Flynn held her cell phone at arm’s length and inhaled a deep, slow breath, giving herself a few necessary seconds to regain her composure. With all the stress in her life right now, the last thing in the world she wanted was an argument with her grandmother.
Putting the phone back up next to her ear, she forced herself to continue much more calmly than she felt. “All I’m saying is, she should be here. Matt needs her. We almost lost my brother, Mama Odie. Her only son. Matt almost died. Doesn’t she understand that?”
Not only had her mother come up with an excuse not to travel to Germany when Matt had been transported there after the roadside attack in Afghanistan, now she wouldn’t even come as far as San Antonio, where he’d been sent to complete his recuperation.
“What’s wrong with her? What kind of a mother acts this way?”
“Oh, for piss’ sake, Allie. You don’t have a clue about what’s going on with your mother.” Irritation colored Odetta Flynn’s normal, no-nonsense tone. “You should count yourself lucky to have a mother as good as Susie. If anything, she’s always been way too easy on you and your brother both. But I won’t let you fault the woman for not sitting at her son’s bedside in San Antonio when she’s laying flat on her back in the hospital over in Grand Junction.”
“What?” Allie’s voice rang with an edge of hysteria that she couldn’t begin to control. “When did this happen? Is she okay? Why didn’t you guys call me?”
“Because she didn’t want you to know, that’s why. Told me you had too much going on right now and she was worried about you being all stressed out,” her grandmother huffed. “But I’m damned if I’m going to stand here and listen to you bad-mouth your mom like that. She’s been sick since well before what happened to Matt. If you’d been around her at all, you’d have known that. It just finally got completely out of hand day before yesterday. If it hadn’t been for Grainger barking his fool head off, who knows how long she might have laid out there in the back field before we found her.”
This couldn’t be happening. Allie leaned against the big metal door frame, seeking the support her legs suddenly didn’t want to provide anymore, while her stomach curled into a fist-sized knot of fear. Beginning with her father’s death two years ago, her whole world had begun a slow spin out of control. Matt had nearly died and now her mother was in the hospital. It felt as if everything she’d ever cared for was being destroyed, piece by piece.
“What happened?” she asked when she was able to speak again. “Is she going to be okay?”
“We don’t know.” A long pause on Mama Odie’s end of the line was followed by a frustrated sigh. “They’re testing for all sorts of things, baby. You know your mom’s been depressed since your dad’s accident and all that… that garbage that came out because of it. But this is different. It’s gotten to the point that she’s just been so damned exhausted she could barely drag herself out of bed every day. And when she did manage that, half the time she was too dizzy to walk without holding on to something. We’ve tried to keep an eye on her, but she needs somebody over there at the house with her.” Another pause. “A good daughter would move home and look after her mother.”
Oh, Lord. Had her grandmother actually stooped to playing the infamous Flynn guilt card? It wouldn’t work on her. Not this time. Allie refused to be manipulated like that.
“I can’t come back home, Mama Odie. I’ve built a life out here. I have a good job and a serious boyfriend. I can’t move back to Chance.”
She wouldn’t. Eight years ago, when she’d escaped that little wide spot in the road, she’d sworn she’d never go back again and she’d meant it. The world was too big to spend her whole life in Chance, Colorado, where everybody in town knew everything about her.
Her job in Waco was perfect. Or it would be, just as soon as the economy improved enough that the owners could pull their little bookstore out of its death spiral.
And even if the store did close, she still had Drake. He hadn’t popped the question or anything yet, but that didn’t matter. What they had was stronger than any formal bond. He told her so all the time. And though it had taken nearly two years, she’d finally let him inside her defenses. Part of the way inside, at least. Full trust was something she wasn’t sure she could ever give any man.
A disapproving snort sounded on the other end of the line, drawing her attention back to the conversation.
“Blood is thicker than water, and don’t you go forgetting that, young lady.”
Her grandmother didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. Odetta had spent her whole life in their little hometown, so she couldn’t possibly be expected to accept Allie’s need to be anywhere in the world except Chance.
Still, Allie knew her grandmother meant well.
“Once Matt is all settled in here at the hospital, I’ll see if I can get some time off from the store. Maybe I can come and stay for a week or so.”
With each word of her offer, the knot in Allie’s stomach twisted tighter. She hadn’t been home for eight years. Even when her dad had died, she’d made the excuse that she couldn’t get away from work long enough to do more than attend his burial ceremony at Fort Logan in Denver.
“A week or so,” her grandmother scoffed. “You need to get your head on straight, Allison Elise. You better get your priorities in order before it’s too late. What you have out there—a job, some man—they don’t mean jack squat in the long run. Push come to shove, it’s only your family that will be there for you. And now’s the time you need to be there for your family.”
Allie couldn’t have this discussion right now. Not standing here with the smell of alcohol swabs and disinfectant pounding at her senses. She couldn’t even think straight, let alone deliver a convincing argument to her grandmother about what she needed for her own future.
“I have to go, Mama Odie. Promise you’ll call me the minute you hear anything about Mom, okay? I mean it. The very minute.”
“Okay, Allie, I will. But you think hard about what I said. Now, you go tell Matt that his Mama Odie is keeping a dialog ongoing with the man upstairs that he should heal real fast and come home to us where he belongs.”
“I will. Love you.”
Silence pulsed into her ear as she held the phone close to her cheek for a few seconds longer before shutting it down and slipping it into the pocket of her jeans. With a glance down the long, empty hallway, she headed out through the big glass doors and breathed in the fresh morning air.
The nurse would be back any time now to take her up to Matt’s room, but Allie needed a second to sort out her tangled emotions before she spoke to her brother. Guilt was eating her alive, but how could she possibly pull up roots and go back to Chance? She couldn’t.
Here in Texas, she was her own woman. In Chance, she’d simply be that pathetic Flynn girl who’d had the hopeless crush on her older brother’s best friend. She w
asn’t sure her ego could stand that. Besides, she had too many good things in her life to simply turn her back and walk away.
Drake.
Once more she wished he’d been able to get away from work to come with her today. A quick call to hear his voice and she’d no doubt feel more centered and strong enough to face all of these challenges head-on.
Three rings and the call went to voice mail, so she ended it and waited a full minute before trying again. Odd that he wasn’t answering. He should be in the office by now, because he’d said he had a heavy schedule and couldn’t get off work today. That was why he couldn’t come with her.
Only one ring this time before the line came to life.
“Hello, hello!” a familiar female voice sang into her ear as Drake’s voice boomed in the background.
“Goddammit, Cara. I told you not to answer my cell. Hand it over right now.”
Cara? As in her neighbor, Cara? The one who always had some excuse to show up at her front door to ask for Drake’s help whenever he was over? It was always something with that woman——her car wouldn’t start or a door was stuck or she had a box she couldn’t lift. That Cara?
“Hey, lover.” Drake sounded breathless, like he’d been running. “I didn’t expect to hear from you this morning. I thought you were going to be tied up with your brother all day.”
Tied up with her brother and too busy to check on him? Apparently, that was exactly what he’d thought.
“And I thought you had to work. What’s going on there, Drake?”
A surreal stillness settled over her as she waited for his answer. She should have expected something exactly like this. She’d been a fool to think he wouldn’t betray her the first chance he got. She’d been a fool to think he was somehow a better man than her dad had been. They couldn’t help it — not even the best of them. One day, something snapped, and they turned into this.
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