The Hero's Redemption

by Janice Kay Johnson

  When gratitude becomes friendship...and something more.

  Cole Meacham has only been out of prison a couple of weeks after a ten-year term for a murder he didn’t commit. A silent, guarded man, he doesn’t know how to start over again now that he’s free. Destitute and alone, he’s been sleeping in a park. Then Erin Parrish offers him a job plus room and board. The woman with the haunted eyes seems to be the only person on earth who isn’t afraid of him. But she clearly has her own demons, and Cole watches as night after night his new boss and landlord gets in her vehicle and drives...somewhere. It seems she needs his help as much as he needs hers. If only he could be that man she can depend on. And love.

  Cole had taught himself to sleep lightly.

  He snapped to awareness when he heard a car door close with deliberate softness. Lying rigid, he listened. The digital clock Erin had put at the bedside said 2:33. Anyone coming or going in the middle of the night wouldn’t want to disturb the neighbors. Especially if that person was stealing a vehicle.

  When the engine started, he knew it was Erin’s Jeep. He jumped out of bed, reaching the front window just before the dome light went out. In that instant, he saw her. While he watched, Erin reversed, then drove down the driveway. Brake lights flickered before she turned onto the street.

  He didn’t welcome the uneasiness he felt as he stared out at the yard and street dimly lit by streetlights, the closest half a block away. Where was she going? Wouldn’t she have woken him if she had some kind of emergency?

  His mouth tightened. Why would she? What was he but her charity project, after all?

  She might have just been restless. He was projecting to think that whatever ghost haunted her and shadowed her eyes had sent her out into the night.

  And, damn it, Cole didn’t want to feel any responsibility for another human being. Even so, he knew with icy certainty that he wouldn’t sleep again until she came home.

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve been interested for a long time in the experiences of the many men released from prison after very long terms because DNA evidence not available when they were convicted now proves their innocence. How Rip Van Winkle is that? What would it be like to rejoin the world after such a long absence?

  Imagine going to bed one night and waking up years in the future, as he did in Washington Irving’s story. People you loved would have moved on without you or died; your children would be grown. What work history you have is outdated. Is there a place for you at all?

  At least Rip had the advantage that day-to-day life hadn’t changed much. Now transfer that experience to the modern world. Something as simple as standing on a sidewalk with traffic rushing by can be terrifying when you’ve been shut away for so long. You’ve forgotten how to make conversation (especially with the opposite sex). And then there’s technology, which changes with breathtaking speed. You’re bewildered by smartphones, touch screens, car dashboards that look like they belong in the cockpit of a Boeing jet. And, oh, yeah, you don’t have a driver’s license, or a bank account, or acceptable credit history. Now take a deep breath, and best of luck out there.

  Falling in love? That’s a whole other complication (and I so love to complicate the lives of my heroes and heroines).

  So, here’s my Rip Van Winkle story.

  Janice

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  JANICE KAY

  JOHNSON

  The Hero’s Redemption

  An author of more than ninety books for children and adults (more than seventy-five for Harlequin), Janice Kay Johnson writes about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. A USA TODAY bestselling author and an eight-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, she won a RITA® Award in 2008 for her Harlequin Superromance novel Snowbound. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small town north of Seattle, Washington.

  Books by Janice Kay Johnson

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  Her Amish Protectors

  Plain Refuge

  A Mother’s Claim

  Brothers, Strangers

  The Baby He Wanted

  The Closer He Gets

  Because of a Girl

  The Baby Agenda

  Bone Deep

  Finding Her Dad

  All That Remains

  Making Her Way Home

  No Matter What

  A Hometown Boy

  Anything for Her

  Where It May Lead

  From This Day On

  One Frosty Night

  More Than Neighbors

  To Love a Cop

  Two Daughters

  Yesterday’s Gone

  In Hope’s Shadow

  The Mysteries of Angel Butte

  Bringing Maddie Home

  Everywhere She Goes

  All a Man Is

  Cop by Her Side

  This Good Man

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com

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  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  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

  EXCERPT FROM A FAMILY FOR CHRISTMAS BY TARA TAYLOR QUINN

  PROLOGUE

  “NO GUY IS ever going to be interested in me! I tower over all of them!” Alyssa Enger wailed from near the back of the extended van.

  The other nine girls cried out in denial.

  “Why did I have to take after my dad?” Alyssa moaned.

  Erin Parrish hid her grin as she changed lanes on I-5 in northern California to pass a slow-moving RV. As head coach of Markham College’s women’s volleyball team, she also did the driving for away games. Her assistant coach, Charlotte Prentice, was considered too young at twenty-three to be trusted behind the wheel of a vehicle insured by the college.

  Alyssa was the team’s middle blocker because she was six foot one. Erin had met her parents—a mom who, at only five-eight or so, was the shrimp in their family, a dad who had to be six foot six and two younger brothers who’d already shot past Alyssa in height.

  “Boys are scared of you because you’re so beautiful,” declared Stephanie Bell, a setter. “And there are lots of guys taller than you.”

  Maybe not “lots,” but some.

  “Have you met Emmett Stark?” someone asked.

  “Eeew!” several girls squealed.

  Outright laughing now, Erin glanced at Charlotte, whose face was lit by laughter, too. Emmett Stark, freshman and Markham College’s JV basketball center, would surely grow into his body eventually. Right now, he was so skinny he looked ridiculous.

  “We should dress you up as an Amazon for Halloween,” another girl said. Ella Pierce? “Maybe we could use gold paint,
and you could carry a spear.”

  “Where can we get a spear?” someone else asked eagerly.

  “Ohh! I know.” Ginny Simacek bounced in delight. “My brother’s girlfriend did this volunteer thing in Africa, and she brought one home with her! I bet I can borrow it.”

  Erin narrowed her eyes at the rearview mirror. Was Ginny wearing her seat belt? Could you bounce if you were wearing one? The girls had a way of taking their seat belts off for “just a minute,” because they had to grab a bag from under a seat or find a shoe that was kicked off, and then, oops, forgetting to fasten them again.

  “Charlotte...” Erin began.

  Motion caught from the corner of her eye spiked her adrenaline. She turned her head. All she took in was a swirl of dirt and the monster cab of a semitruck roaring straight at them across the median, rearing bigger and bigger. She wrenched the steering wheel and her foot sought the brake, even though she knew it was too late.

  Then crunching metal, stabbing pain, screams. And nothingness.

  CHAPTER ONE

  JOLTED AWAKE, ERIN lay utterly still, her heart pounding. What—But the shuddering sense of horror answered an unfinished question. Which nightmare had it been? The crash itself? What she’d seen as she was extracted from all that was left of the van? The faces of parents? The empty seats in her classroom?

  She stared at the ceiling, unable to make herself move. She could stay in bed all day. Never get up. No one would notice; no one would care. She had no place to be, not anymore.

  Voices played in her head, as they so often did.

  You’re so lucky. Yep, that was her—lucky.

  God must have saved you for a reason. Because He’d condemned her to purgatory?

  You still have the chance to do something extraordinary.

  Make your life count. That one had come with an encouraging squeeze of her hand.

  Who’d told her she owed it to the dead to be happy? She couldn’t remember. Probably hadn’t been able to look that person in the face.

  Nope, of course she wasn’t to blame. She was only the driver. The one all those girls had trusted to get them safely where they were going. They’d trusted her in other ways, too. As an assistant professor of history, lecturing from the front of her classroom, she maintained an invisible distance. But with her team, it was different. She knew every girl—her strengths, her vulnerabilities, her fears, her dreams.

  There’d be no more dreams. Just her own nightmares.

  The ceiling, she slowly realized, needed painting as much as the walls. What had probably once been white had yellowed, like pages in an old book, even showing the brown spots a book dealer would call “foxing.”

  Eventually she rolled her head enough on the ancient, flat-as-a-pancake feather pillow to see the clock—7:26. She’d slept for maybe three hours.

  Erin both craved sleep and dreaded it. The oblivion called to her, but the nightmares always took her back to the worst moments.

  The screams, metal and human. She would never forget.

  Be happy? Really?

  Unfortunately, she was alive, which meant she had to pee. Aching, moving as slowly as an old woman, she pushed herself to a sitting position, swung her feet over the edge of the mattress and looked for her slippers. The wood floors were chilly. Plus, she kept thinking she’d get a splinter. Those floors needed stripping, sanding and refinishing as much as the interior of the house needed painting. The exterior, too—but it would have to be scraped and pressure-washed first.

  Sometimes she wondered if Nanna just hadn’t seen the deterioration. Maybe her vision had been going. She’d lived here most of her life, and in recent years, she hadn’t gone out much. If Erin’s dad was still alive, he would have seen to the maintenance, but Erin had been too far away to be aware of how badly Nanna needed someone.

  “I’m sorry, Nanna,” she whispered.

  Thank you, Nanna, for leaving me this house. She had no idea what she would’ve done if she hadn’t had this refuge waiting for her. Familiar, filled with memories and an occasional moment of comfort that felt like the touch of a small, arthritic hand.

  Once recovered from her injuries, she’d returned to her classes, sticking it out until February, when she and her department head realized at about the same time that she couldn’t stay on at the college. She’d been at Nanna’s house now for...almost three weeks? Made meaningless by grief, the days ran together.

  In the bedroom again to pull a sweatshirt over her sleep tee, Erin said aloud, “I’ll start today, Nanna, even if it’s only one project. I promise.”

  There was no answer, of course, and yet Nanna felt more alive to her than—Nope. Not going there. Couldn’t go there, not if she was going to be able to choke down a piece of toast and actually accomplish something like pulling a few weeds.

  And she did manage, although she had trouble believing she’d lived for no reason but to save her grandmother’s hundred-year-old house from being bulldozed so some new structure could be built in its place.

  Over my dead body, she thought, and wished she could laugh.

  * * *

  A MONTH LATER...well, she was taking better care of herself, which was something, and had painted the parlor, the library and the downstairs hall, as well as the small bathroom tucked under the stairs. She’d stripped the fireplace surround, sanded until her hand and arm ached, and finally stained it and applied a Varathane finish. It looked really good, if she did say so herself. Too bad the molding and floors still looked so bad.

  But in early April, spring could no longer be denied, and today she was going to assess the tools her grandmother had owned, and what needed to be done to get the yard in shape. Of course, she took her life in her hands every time she went down the rotten porch steps. She didn’t think the siding had rotted, except the porch skirt, but couldn’t be positive.

  Erin was acquiring a library of how-to books, since she had zero construction experience and didn’t even know how to replace a washer in a dripping faucet. She’d never refinished a piece of furniture—or floors—and barely knew a dandelion from a peony. She could afford to hire some help, but right now she didn’t want workers in and out of the house, blocking the driveway, wondering about the young woman who probably looked like she’d been rescued from a life raft that had drifted in the Pacific Ocean for three months.

  To get to the detached garage, she couldn’t cut across the yard because it was, well, a thicket. Fortunately, the driveway had been asphalted at some point, although the cracks in it allowed grass and weeds to send down roots. The garage had been updated more recently than the house, probably when an upstairs apartment had been completed. Of course, that was something like forty years ago. There’d been a time when her grandparents had rented out the garage apartment for extra income. Erin remembered from visits when she was a child that a young man not only lived in the apartment but did yard work, too. After Grandpa died, though, Nanna had quit renting it out. Maybe she hadn’t liked the idea of a stranger so close. Erin hadn’t thought to ask.

  She should have visited more often, seen that Nanna needed help. One more reason to feel guilty.

  Join the crowd.

  Now the apartment was dated, to put it kindly. The refrigerator was harvest gold. There was no dishwasher. The showerhead had corroded, the fiberglass walls of the shower showed small cracks and the toilet and sink were both a sort of orangey-yellow that might also qualify as harvest gold. The apartment was at the absolute bottom of her list of needed updates, however.

  Heaving the garage door open, she mentally moved a remote-controlled opener a few notches up on her list.

  The workbench probably hadn’t been put to use in decades. Unfortunately, the tools she located obviously hadn’t, either. Rust was crumbling the teeth of a handsaw. The pliers might work, but the blade of the shovel had long since
separated from the handle. The rake lacked some tines, and the clippers... She squeezed with all her might and nothing happened except a shower of rusty dust.

  Along with the smaller tools, drawers contained tin cans filled with miscellaneous screws, nuts and nails, a hose nozzle, a couple of mousetraps and some object that looked like a branding iron. Very useful.

  The lawn mower... Well, if she could ever scythe the overgrown grass, weeds and blackberries down into something that resembled a lawn, she would need a new mower. This one was destined for the junkyard.

  Today, she decided, hardware shopping she would go. Hi-ho, the derry-o...

  And if she was lucky, the store would have one of those bulletin boards covered with business cards advertising useful people like electricians, plumbers and handymen.

  * * *

  USUALLY, SOMEONE IN a hardware store would buy a particular tool. Clippers with a longer handle than the ones she had, say. Or replace a shovel.

  As he waited for the elderly man leaning on the counter to quit gossiping, Cole Meacham idly watched the woman pushing a cart. She barely hesitated over her choices. Far as he could tell, she bought one of everything. Who didn’t have the basics?

  Her, evidently. She had to be a new homeowner.

  He watched out of curiosity, but she’d caught his eye because she was a woman—and appealing. Long hair somewhere between red and blond, caught up in a messy bundle on the back of her head. She was too thin for his taste—although he wouldn’t swear his taste had remained in cold storage and therefore unchanged—but long-legged and still curvy. A baggy denim shirt hid enough of her breasts to leave him wondering—

  A brusque voice had his head snapping around. “Done with that application?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In this small-town hardware store, the manager had been running the cash register while chatting with his customers. A notice in the window had said Help Wanted. When Cole asked about the job, the guy had hardly glanced at him, but handed over an application.

  Filling it out had taken Cole a whole lot longer than it should have. His hands had shaken, and sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his spine. All those little boxes. Some of them he could fill in, some he couldn’t. He had no current driver’s license. The employment history made him clench his teeth. He either had no recent jobs to list—or he admitted what kind of jobs they’d been. Where they’d been.