Their Last Second Chance

by Shirley Jump

  Will old secrets jeopardize their new start?

  Nobody in Stone Gap knows that Melanie Cooper’s perfect life is a lie. But the struggling journalist isn’t the only one keeping secrets. A decade ago, Harris McCarthy broke Melanie’s heart. Now her high school sweetheart is the town hero whose story could jump-start her career—a story Harris doesn’t want told. Will Melanie’s chance for redemption cost her a future with the man she never stopped loving?

  For a minute, Melanie was seventeen again and caught in the shadows of the high school bleachers while Harris kissed her and turned her world upside down.

  Even now, almost a decade later, he had that effect on her. She wasn’t here to kiss him or fall for him. She put her hands between them—damn, when did his chest get so solid and muscular—and pushed hard, stepping back as she did, and colliding with the ladder. Before she caved to more than just a kiss. “What was that?”

  He grinned. “A kiss. Unless it’s been so long, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be kissed by me?”

  She definitely hadn’t forgotten that. “That wasn’t part of catching up.”

  “I’m sorry. I must have misread you.”

  He hadn’t misread her, not one bit. In fact, every single nerve and hormone in her body had been leaning toward Harris, begging for a kiss. The logical side of her brain, however, was the party pooper who’d reminded her that she was here for a job, not a one-night stand with a man she’d never truly forgotten. Yet another reason to keep this light and breezy and focus on the story, not on the man.

  * * *

  THE STONE GAP INN...

  Where Love Comes Home.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for returning to the Stone Gap Inn! This month’s read is all about the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves about what our lives are really like.

  Melanie Cooper has become a master at pretending everything is fine. But she’s really deceiving everyone around her—because she doesn’t want her family to worry that her seemingly perfect life isn’t so perfect anymore.

  We’ve all done that, I think, at one time or another in our lives. Social media, very often, is a fictitious portrait of our lives, a snippet of time where everything is fabulous, the house is clean and the kids are behaving perfectly. I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had maybe five seconds total where all those things aligned at the same time!

  Life is messy, and these characters in Stone Gap slowly come to realize that being messy is totally okay. That it’s perfectly acceptable to not have all your ducks in a row, and to admit that, every now and then, you need a little help. So take a couple hours to put up your feet, let the laundry wait a bit, and have a cup of tea and a fun read. I’ll be doing the same at my house, because sometimes there are way more important things in the world than dust bunnies.

  Happy reading!

  Shirley

  Their Last Second Chance

  Shirley Jump

  New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Shirley Jump spends her days writing romance so she can avoid the towering stack of dirty dishes, eat copious amounts of chocolate and reward herself with trips to the mall. Visit her website at shirleyjump.com for author news and a book list, and follow her at Facebook.com/shirleyjump.author for giveaways and deep discussions about important things like chocolate and shoes.

  Books by Shirley Jump

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The Stone Gap Inn

  The Family He Didn’t Expect

  The Barlow Brothers

  The Firefighter’s Family Secret

  The Tycoon’s Proposal

  The Instant Family Man

  The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

  Harlequin Romance

  The Christmas Baby Surprise

  The Matchmaker’s Happy Ending

  Mistletoe Kisses with the Billionaire

  Return of the Last McKenna

  How the Playboy Got Serious

  One Day to Find a Husband

  Family Christmas in Riverbend

  The Princess Test

  How to Lasso a Cowboy

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  To my editor, Susan Litman, for loving the Barlows

  and Stone Gap just as much as I do, and for

  making every single book the best it can be.

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from A Baby Between Friends by Kathy Douglass

  Excerpt from Love and the Laws of Motion by Amanda Weaver

  Chapter One

  Melanie Cooper told her first lie at the age of five. Or, at least, the first lie she remembered. She’d been playing in the creek a quarter mile away from home—a forbidden destination, but too tempting to avoid. The creek was her favorite place in the entire world, chock-full of crawdads and little minnows that flickered like silver coins.

  She’d heard her mother calling her and had run for the hole in the fence, hoping to sneak in as if she’d never left. Her knee connected with the fence, and by the time she’d scrambled into the yard, the gash had become a geyser. When her mother asked her why she had taken so long to come in, Melanie had made up an elaborate story about a lost puppy and tripping over the curb trying to bring him back to his owner. Her mother had ignored the leaving-the-yard violation and made a big deal about Melanie’s big heart, delivering a rare dose of praise. In that moment, Melanie had learned that lying was the best way to get out of trouble—and win her hypercritical mother’s approval.

  So it stood to reason that she would end up working at City Girl magazine, where lying was part of the job description. She spent her days writing articles about how to lose twenty pounds in ten days, filling them with tips like drink green tea, grab an extra workout, take the stairs at work, and the editor would plop a miracle-promising title on the cover and sell twenty percent more copies to all those people wanting instant weight-loss results.

  As she pulled into Stone Gap, North Carolina, heading down Main Street and across town to her sister Abby’s house, Melanie knew she was going to have to be extra convincing when she lied to Abby. Her older sister wasn’t some gullible reader in the grocery store looking for the untold secret to erasing cellulite. She was smart, and she knew Melanie well. Too well. If Melanie’s story faltered one bit, Abby would see the truth.

  And the last thing she wanted Abby to know was that Melanie’s hard-won perfect life had fallen apart.

  Her throat closed, and she forced herself to take in a deep breath. Another. It would be okay. She’d turn this around, somehow. Plus, she had a job offer waiting for her at a prestigious online news magazine, if she could prove that she had the chops to write about more than just diets and mascara. That’s why she didn’t need to tell Abby—all would be set to rights again soon. Besides, Abby was getting married next weekend, and she had Ma staying with her, which was a herculean task unto itself. The last thing Abby needed to worry about was her little sister’s latest crisis.
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  Or crises, plural, considering she’d lost her marriage, her home and her job in relatively quick succession. Melanie’s entire life had become a string of empty promises and false leads, as if working in a fiction-creating world had colored her own reality.

  Melanie took a right, then swung down the tree-lined cul-de-sac and into the driveway of Abby’s bungalow. It was the perfect little house, ringed by red geraniums and decorated with a porch swing that made a lazy arc in the breeze. A blue bicycle leaned in the shade of an oak tree, and a football waited in the sun for a game of catch. The fall air carried a sense of home as foreign to Melanie as a nor’easter to a Floridian. Years ago, she’d thought—

  Well, it didn’t matter. Years ago was done and over.

  Melanie tipped down the mirror, checked her makeup, then straightened her T-shirt and brushed invisible lint off her jeans before she got out of the car and strode up the stairs.

  Jacob came running out of the house first, wearing a Transformers T-shirt in bright yellow that made him look like a minibus. “Aunt Melanie!” He barreled into her legs.

  Melanie let out an oomph, then bent down and swung her five-year-old nephew up and into her arms. “How’s the best Jacob in the world?”

  “I’m playing soccer! Mommy says I’m really good. And Dylan is my coach and we have lots of fun and we won our first game!”

  Melanie laughed. “That’s awesome, buddy. Goodness, you’re getting big.” She lowered him to the ground—her nephew seemed to have grown six inches and added twenty pounds since the last time she saw him two Christmases ago. He slid his little hand into hers and pulled her up the stairs and into the house, talking nonstop the whole time about school, soccer and his new puppy. The simple affection of Jake’s tiny fingers in hers tugged at Melanie’s heartstrings. Emotion choked her throat, but she pushed it away just as she entered the kitchen.

  Abby was pulling something out of the oven. She set the casserole pan on the stove top, then turned, a ready smile on her face. “Melanie! You’re here. How was the drive? I can’t believe you drove all the way from New York.”

  A yellow lab puppy scrambled to his feet and bounded across the kitchen, all feet and tail, before skidding to a stop in front of Melanie. “That’s Dudley,” Jake said. “He’s got a dinosaur name.”

  “A dinosaur name?” The puppy nudged Melanie’s hand, his tail thwapping on the floor.

  “Yup. My dentist, Dr. Corbett, gave me a book ’cause I was so good when I got my teeths cleaned. And the book had Dudley the Dinosaur in it. But he wasn’t a scary dinosaur. He’s not the kind that can bite you. He’s the kind that eats his vegetables. And brushes his teeth.”

  Melanie laughed. “Sounds like a very smart dinosaur and a very good name for a dog.”

  “Dylan got him for us.” Jake hugged the dog’s neck and kissed his forehead.

  “Well, he’s adorable.” Melanie set her purse in an empty chair, then set her phone on the table. No calls, no texts, no miracles on the notification screen. That was okay. Just walking into Abby’s house eased some of the tension in Melanie’s shoulders.

  “He’s trouble is what he is,” Abby said with a laugh. Undoubtedly, she was taking the puppy in stride, as she did everything else. Abby had always had this easy casualness about her, in the way she looked, the way she parented, the way she got through life. Today, her brown hair was back in a loose ponytail, and she was wearing a pale lime V-neck T-shirt with dark blue skinny jeans. A small round diamond sparkled on her left hand. Abby smiled, a genuine glad-to-see-you smile, but Melanie could see the strain in Abby’s eyes, the stress of the last few days since their mother had arrived. “You got the entire fur-and-little-person welcoming committee.”

  “And got to hear all about soccer, the puppy and how much he likes his teacher, just in the walk down the hall.” Melanie ruffled Jacob’s hair. “Sounds like he’s been a busy boy.”

  “Busy should have been his middle name.” Abby opened her arms and drew Melanie into a tight hug. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.” Melanie held on a little longer to Abby than Abby held on to her. A part of Melanie wanted to open up, to let the tears fall, to tell Abby the truth. Maybe she should. Maybe Abby would have just the right words of wisdom. “Oh, and congratulations again. I’m so happy for you.”

  “Thank you. Dylan really is an amazing man. I’m incredibly happy to be marrying him.”

  When Melanie drew back, she caught the joy in Abby’s eyes, matching the sparkle of the ring on her finger, and Melanie couldn’t do it. All her life, Abby had been the one to protect Melanie, to bandage her wounds when she fell down, to comfort her when a date stood her up, to bail her out when she got in trouble. How could she dim the look in Abby’s eyes? Tell her that her finally well-adjusted, settled little sister had completely upended everything?

  Again.

  Melanie couldn’t bear to see the look of disappointment that would follow. Those eyes that would say here we go again and be followed by constant fretting and advice. She’d thought—they’d both thought—that those times were behind them. The days when Melanie was brought home by the cops for underage drinking or caught skipping school or sneaking home at three in the morning were in the past.

  Back then, Abby had been the one to cover for her sister, to sit Melanie down, time after time, and stress the importance of graduating high school, going to college, getting a job, being responsible. It had taken a couple years for the message to sink in, and even then Melanie had slipped off the path more than once, coming close to ending up in jail and nearly making a decision that would have ruined her life. Slow to grow up was what her mother had called her, and maybe Ma was right. But she really thought she’d done it—that she’d figured out the rule book and been rewarded with success. It had all been perfect...until it wasn’t. Because here Melanie was at twenty-nine, alone, jobless and adrift.

  Not exactly a shoo-in for the Most Successful award at the next high school reunion.

  “So...how’s Ma?” Melanie asked, then lowered her voice. “Driving you nuts?”

  Abby sighed. “She’s retired now and bored, and telling the whole world about how terrible her life is. I love her, Mel, but...”

  “She sucks all the fun out of the room like a social vampire?”

  “Exactly.” Abby laughed. “Anyway, Ma is taking a nap right now. She should be down for dinner.”

  Just as well. That gave Melanie a little more time to avoid the double sister-mother inquisition. Together, they might be able to ferret out the truth. “How’s the wedding planning going? And please don’t tell me you’re one of those brides who is filling tiny Mason jars with homemade jam and sending a dressed-up baby goat down the aisle? Because I wrote a story about that, and I’m just saying, goat wrangler is not part of my maid of honor duties.”

  Abby laughed, slid a cookie sheet filled with biscuits into the oven and then stirred a pan of vegetables, while Jake peeled off and headed for the living room and a mountain of Legos on the carpet. “Not quite. But I do hope stress reduction is something you do, because the caterer got the flu, so I had to find someone else, and the band has dropped off the face of the earth. Thank God Meri Barlow is helping me. She’s photographing the wedding and has been a great resource for finding replacement people, like her sister-in-law Rachel, who is a part-time wedding planner. I swear, planning a wedding is more stressful than being a mom.”

  “Well, you don’t have to add worrying about me to that list. I’m great. Couldn’t be better.” Yep, lying in person was almost as easy as lying in print. Maybe she could write an article about that. Except she no longer had a job at a magazine and nowhere to publish something like “Ten Tips for Hiding Failure from Your Family.”

  “And Adam? How’s he?”

  “He’s...good. Busy with work. Said he’d try to visit next time.” She hadn’t seen her ex-husband
in over a year, when she’d sat across from him in the judge’s chambers and signed her name on the final divorce decree. He and his pretty face and magazine-ready smile had walked away without a backward glance. Last she knew, he was living in a condo in the Bronx with Cheri, the twenty-one-year-old receptionist at his agent’s office. One of those girls who put a smiley face over the i in her name was prone to giggling fits.

  Melanie had been intending to tell her sister and mother about her divorce. But she hadn’t been able to find the words, especially when Ma went on and on about how proud she was of her married writer daughter. It had been easier to continue pretending everything was fine than to admit her life had been crumbling for a long time. That she’d gone back to being the family failure.

  “You know, you don’t have to stay at the inn,” Abby said. “I can put Jake into Cody’s room and Cody can take the couch if you want to take his bed. It’ll be a little cramped, but they’re boys. They’ll be fine. Besides, between school and work, Cody is hardly ever here.”

  Staying here and disrupting Abby’s teenage son, as well as little Jake, would mean seeing her mother at all hours, not to mention talking to Abby on a daily basis. Melanie could only keep up the everything’s fine charade so long. Doing it from breakfast to bedtime would be impossible. And though she could ill afford the room fee for the inn, she knew staying there would make it possible to keep the truth from becoming obvious. “Aw, thanks, sis, but I’ll be fine. I’ve got some work to do, anyways, so even if I stayed here, I’d be holed up in my room most of the time. I’m sure you have a zillion things to do for the wedding, and this way, you won’t have to worry about me, too.”

  Abby cocked her head and studied her little sister. Melanie held her ground and put a bright smile on her face. Everything’s fine, everything’s fine.

  “Okay, if that’s what you want. But if you change your mind, you always have a place here,” Abby said.

  “Thanks.” Melanie gave Abby a quick hug. “You’re the best.”

 
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