Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set

by Grover Swank, Denise

  Our chests were close again, the stains on my off-white t-shirt highlighting the crisp cleanness of her dress.

  “Lucy will take your money inside,” I said, nodding to the doors behind her. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

  I turned just as her mouth popped open, but I didn’t look back.

  “Thanks for the tasting,” she said, making sure her voice was loud and clear.

  “Go ahead and say it louder, princess,” I threw behind me. “You’d be in just as much shit as I would.”

  She didn’t respond to that, and when I chanced a glance back in her direction, there was steam rolling off that cute face of hers as she ripped the door to the welcome center open.

  And I couldn’t help it — I chuckled.

  I didn’t mean to ruffle her feathers, but damn if I didn’t like getting under that pretty bird’s skin.

  Chapter 3

  Ruby Grace

  “Ergh!”

  I gripped the steering wheel on my convertible tighter, not even attempting to tame my hair as it blew around in the wind. Mama would be upset that I’d messed it up after she fixed it that morning, but I didn’t care.

  I needed the wind to blow away my anger.

  “Look at you, using big words again,” I mocked in my best Noah Becker voice.

  I turned the wheel, making another tour through town. I wasn’t ready to go home yet, wasn’t ready for Mama to hit me with a thousand questions on what kind of flowers I wanted and whether I wanted ribbon or twine around the edges of the ceremony chairs. I hadn’t even been home from college for two full days and she was already driving me mad.

  My stomach sank at the thought of the University of North Carolina, of the university I’d wanted to attend ever since I took a road trip with my best friend there when we were sixteen. I’d gotten in, and my first year there had been everything I’d hoped it would be.

  But I wouldn’t be going back.

  “Oh, you don’t want to?”

  Noah’s voice hit me again, like it was the ping pong ball and I was the paddle beating it against the wall.

  I sighed, another grunt of frustration rolling through me as I let my left hand hang over the edge of my door. I slowed the car down as I hit the Main Street drag, not wanting to give any of the small town cops a reason to give me a ticket.

  Lord knows they were bored enough that it didn’t take much.

  I wasn’t even sure why I was so annoyed and frustrated with Noah. He was just making conversation, just asking questions — but they were questions no one else had asked. And, to make it worse, they were questions I didn’t have answers to — at least, not reasonable answers.

  I had the ones I’d been told, the ones I’d rehearsed, the ones I’d repeated to myself night after night until they stuck, until I believed them, too.

  But it wasn’t just his questions that had thrown me, it was the man, himself.

  I think I recognized him even before he told me his name. Maybe that was why I’d been so insistent that he tell me. It was hard to forget the boy I crushed on as a young girl, and continued to fantasize about up until the very day I left Stratford.

  The first time I’d laid eyes on him, I was only nine years old, and he was the cute boy who sat in the pew in front of me in church.

  The last time I’d seen him, he was a drunken mess, yelling at his older brother at a farm house party about who was man of the house now that their dad had passed away.

  That was five years ago, when I was fourteen and sneaking into my first party. I remembered I didn’t drink a drop that night because I was afraid I’d end up just like Noah Becker.

  But five years had changed him.

  He wasn’t a mess anymore.

  That pecan brown hair of his that used to curl around his ears was cut clean and short now, making his strong jaw stand out even more than it had when he was a boy. Those eyes that had tipped me off to who he was before he’d offered his last name were the same as they were the last time I’d seen him — cobalt blue, almost gray around the pupil — but now, they were a little less haunted, and a little more determined, like he had something to prove, just like I did. His arms and chest were fuller — a sight I got to inspect quite closely after he stripped his shirt off — and he was tan the way only a man who works outside can be.

  He’d grown up, from a boy to a man, and everything about him was just bigger. His presence was larger than life.

  More than anything, his confidence poured off him in waves, or maybe it was cockiness. Either way, he’d thrown me. I’d walked into that distillery with my head as high as my heels, and I was prepared to show this town that I was the new Ruby Grace Barnett — polished and poised just like my mother, ready to take on this town with my husband-to-be as the future State House Representative of North Carolina. I’d left that knobby-legged, freckle-faced little girl behind and come back as a well-to-do woman.

  At least, that was the plan.

  In reality, I’d stood barefoot on Noah’s dirty old t-shirt and giggled as I poured whiskey from a barrel for the first time.

  Classy. Mama would be proud.

  And maybe that was the most frustrating part — that not only had I strayed from the plan, from the woman I wanted others to see me as, but that I’d also had fun in the process.

  The truth was, I could have stayed in that old, grimy warehouse full of whiskey barrels with Noah Becker all day. He made me laugh, and for that one hour in time, I wasn’t just Anthony Caldwell’s future wife. I wasn’t a smile and a handshake and a side kick.

  I was just me.

  But Noah’s questions at the end of our tour had whipped me back into reality real fast, and here I was, finally making the turn toward home.

  Back to the real world for Ruby Grace Barnett.

  My phone rang as I pulled down our long driveway, the familiar white house stretching out before me. It was two stories, completely symmetrical, with a porch that wrapped all the way around. Like any southern belle’s dream, there was a swing on the porch, and a garden Mama had cared for as her own pride and joy for my entire life. An American flag hung proudly from above our stairs, waving in the gentle, Tennessee breeze.

  I kept my eyes on that flag until I dug my phone out of my bag, smiling at the picture on the screen. It was Anthony’s smiling face, his arms around me in one of my favorite dresses, the picture one we snapped at his parents’ lake house that spring.

  “Hey, you,” I answered.

  “Hey, yourself. How’s my beautiful fiancé today?”

  “Tired,” I answered on a sigh, putting the car in park. I held the button to bring the convertible top back up, the sun fading from my shoulders.

  “More wedding planning?”

  “All the wedding planning. But, the good news is, I have your wedding gift taken care of.”

  “Oh, is that so? What’dya get me?”

  I smiled. “Well, I can’t tell you, now can I? It wouldn’t be a surprise, then.”

  Anthony laughed, and I let my head fall back against the head rest, picturing what he looked like then. I missed his laugh, his smile, his arms around me.

  More than anything, I missed our conversations.

  Before he proposed, we would talk for hours — about everything. We’d talk about our dreams, our plans for the future, our pasts, our families, our deepest fears. But after the proposal, all of our conversation shifted to the wedding, to me becoming his wife.

  “Fair enough. I can’t talk long, but I wanted to see how you were doing. Dad’s got me working with this media crew covering my first run for State House Representative. It’s been madness over here.”

  “I’m sure it has, but you’ve wanted this forever,” I reminded him. “Your dreams are starting to come true.”

  “And you’ll be there beside me when they do.”

  I smiled, but couldn’t help but notice the way my stomach dropped at his words. I was happy for him, and a part of me couldn’t wait to move back to North Caro
lina after the wedding. Of course, I wished I was going back to the university, but I wasn’t really sure why.

  This was what I’d always wanted. It was what I’d always hoped would happen.

  I was marrying someone with the same political heart as my father, and his father, and his father’s father. It was what my family had always wanted for me. If anything, Anthony was more — he didn’t just want to be mayor, he wanted to be president.

  And I would be his first lady.

  My smile grew a little more genuine at that, at being in a position where I could make a difference. That’s what had always appealed to me about living in the political circuit. I could help children, or battered women, or the homeless. I would have a platform, a goal, and a voice to raise.

  And a husband who would stand beside me, just as I would him.

  “I miss you,” Anthony said on a sigh, bringing me back to the moment.

  “I miss you, too. But I’ll see you soon. Six weeks.”

  “Six weeks,” he repeated. “And then you walk down the aisle to me.”

  My stomach dropped again, and I placed a hand over it just as my mother appeared on the front porch. She hung her hands on her hips, her eyes hard on me.

  “Well, the wedding planner is waiting on me,” I said. “Good luck with the media circus over there.”

  “Thanks, babe. Talk to you soon. Tell your mom I said hi.”

  I laughed. “If I can get a word in edgewise, I’ll do that.”

  Mama was already down the porch and en route to my car by the time I pushed the driver side door open. She held the handle, eyes wide as she took in my appearance.

  “I cannot believe you put that top down after I spent all that time on your hair this morning, Ruby Grace,” she tsked, but she offered a hand out to take my bag, anyway.

  “I got it,” I said, stepping out and shutting the door behind me.

  Mama looped her arm through mine, the other hand picking at my tangled strands.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Fine,” I answered as we climbed the porch stairs. “I still think it’s way too much to spend on a barrel of liquor.”

  “It is,” she agreed. “But, it’s good to support the community, and your father has built a great relationship with the distillery over the years. Anthony will enjoy it, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t even think he drinks whiskey.”

  “He will once he’s in this family,” Mama said with a chuckle. “Your father will make sure of that.”

  It was true. Anyone who married into the Barnett family, or any family in Stratford, for that matter, had to be a whiskey lover. Our town was built around the Scooter Whiskey Distillery, and it was our main source of income. It brought us tourism, fame, notoriety. If you lived in Stratford, you either worked at the distillery or had family who did. It was our livelihood.

  Scooter Whiskey was known all over the world. You were hard pressed to find a bar that didn’t carry it, and more than the whiskey itself, Scooter was a brand. Women wore the logo stretched across their breasts in tight little tank tops. Men wore it on their motorcycle jackets and tattooed it on their arms. There were houses all over that were decorated with Scooter Whiskey barrels and neon lights, with glasses and barware, with posters and branded chairs.

  It wasn’t just a whiskey, it was a lifestyle — and Stratford was where it was born.

  “Speaking of which, where is Dad?”

  Mom waved me off. “Oh, you know him. He’ll be working until at least seven, and then I’m sure he’ll find somewhere to play cards or bet on horses.”

  I nodded. Tennessee didn’t have a single casino, but drive to any state border and you could find a way to gamble. Dad had always been big into cards and horses, sometimes sporting events, and if he wasn’t at the casino on the Georgia state line, he was at one of the council members’ houses, where they’d make a casino of their own.

  I hung my purse on one of the hooks in our mud room, kicking off my heels and wincing as my feet adjusted to being flat on the hardwood floor. My toes ached, the balls of both feet on fire, my ankles screaming.

  Mama bent to retrieve the shoes as soon as they were abandoned, shaking her head at me.

  “These are designer heels, Ruby Grace. You don’t just kick them off. Go put them away in your room.”

  If only she knew where I’d kicked them off less than an hour ago.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She handed them to me, but before I could make my way upstairs, her hands were in my hair again, trying to fix the mess the wind had made. I studied the faint lines on her face as she did, seeing so much of her features in my own reflection now that I was nineteen that it somewhat scared me.

  Her hair was the same burnt orange as mine, though hers was cut just above her shoulders, and our noses were identical, the tips of them rounding in a little button. Her eyes were mocha brown where mine mirrored the hazel of my father’s, and her freckles were more pronounced, her skin as pale as Snow White’s, where mine was easily bronzed in the summer sun. She was rail-thin and just barely over five feet, where my curves were slight but still present.

  We were different in so many ways, and yet in so many others, exactly the same.

  I wondered if I was looking at my future, at the woman I would become — a wife, a mother, a last name known all over town.

  Or maybe all over the nation.

  She sighed, giving up on my hair and hanging her hands on her hips again. “Well, why don’t you go up and get changed. Your father will be home in an hour or so. Come help me with supper and we can talk about the photographers again. I talked Mr. Gentry down on his price. And we need to make a decision between ribbon or—”

  “Ribbon or twine on the chairs,” I finished for her, fighting back a sigh. “I know.”

  I made my way upstairs, my feet aching with every step, but Mama kept talking.

  “Yes, and your sister said we can video call her after dinner to talk about the shades of pink for the flowers.” Her voice grew louder when I hit the top stair, making my way down the hall toward my old room. “Can you bring that book down here? Oh, and—”

  “The seating chart,” I said at the same time as her. “I’ve got it, Mama. Be right down.”

  When my bedroom door closed behind me, I pressed my back against the wood, closing my eyes and reveling in the momentary silence.

  If my older sister, Mary Anne, were here, she would be in heaven. She was older than me by four years, and as soon as she graduated college, she ran off to Europe, hell bent on chasing her dreams of being a fashion designer. So far, Dad had said about all she’d done was blow through his money and kiss foreign boys. I didn’t know if that was true, but I did know three things for sure.

  One, she would have loved this wedding stuff more than I do. And she would have known what decision to make, what colors to choose, where to sit who at what table.

  Two, I envied her a bit, that she got away from this town, from her responsibility as a Barnett daughter.

  And three, she wasn’t here — and even if she was, she could never save me from the mile-long wedding to-do list I was faced with.

  I sighed, letting my head fall back against my door. I was supposed to be excited about all of this, wasn’t I? Shouldn’t I want to plan the seating chart, and care about the color of the flowers, and get excited about the photographs and the cake cutting and the first dance? It was my wedding. It would only happen once, and it felt more like a chore to me than the big day I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl.

  I loved the man I was marrying, and I loved the town we were getting married in.

  I had the dress of my dreams, my best friend to stand by my side, and the honeymoon of a lifetime planned in the Bahamas.

  Everything was perfect, and if you asked any of my friends, they’d say I was the luckiest girl in Tennessee.

  So then why did it feel like I was drowning?

  * * *

  “Why, that can’t possibly be t
he Miss Ruby Grace, can it?”

  My best friend, Annie, flourished her thickest Tennessee accent from behind the front desk at Stratford’s only nursing home, her gap-toothed smile wide and welcoming as I let the door shut behind me. When I unwrapped the mint spring scarf from around my neck, she gasped, pressing her hand to her chest.

  “Why, it is. Oh, heavens. Someone give old Mr. Buchanon his blood pressure medicine before she walks through the halls.”

  I chuckled, hanging my purse and scarf behind the desk before I lifted a brow. “Haven’t seen you since Christmas, and that’s the welcome I get?”

  “Well, I’d jump up and hug you, but it’s a little more difficult these days,” Annie said, gesturing to the watermelon of a belly she had blooming under her oversized scrubs.

  “How about I assist?”

  I reached down, and when Annie’s hands were in mine, I pulled her up, both of us laughing as she leaned back to balance out the weight of her belly. It was hard to believe she was the same girl I’d road tripped to North Carolina with just two summers ago, the same blonde, giggly girl I’d stayed up too late with on countless nights, laughing and dreaming and making plans for our future husbands, our future families. I was so sure we’d room together at UNC, or chase our dreams of traveling the country and helping others in AmeriCorps. It didn’t matter what we did — I just knew we’d do it together.

  But when Annie fell in love with Travis, everything changed.

  It wasn’t out of place for a nineteen-year-old to be pregnant in Stratford. Half my graduating class was already married and popping out babies. But, seeing my best friend with a stomach the size of Texas was new for me. It was proof that we were older now, that life had changed, that all those dreams we’d had on the days we’d played house as kids were coming true.

  She was a wife. Soon, she’d be a mother.

  And I wasn’t far behind her.

  “Annie, you look…”

  “Fat? Sweaty? Like I did our freshman year with all this acne?”

  I laughed. “You look beautiful. You’re glowing.”