Springtime at Hope Cottage
Page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Annie Rains
Preview of Snowfall on Cedar Trail © 2019 by Annie Rains
Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
“Last Chance Bride” copyright © 2012 by Robin Lanier
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First Edition: March 2019
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ISBN: 978-1-5387-1398-3 (mass market), 978-1-5387-1399-0 (ebook)
E3-20190212-DANF-ORI
E3-20190123-DANF-ORI
E3-20181022-DANF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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
Epilogue
Lula’s Three Sisters Stew
A Preview of SNOWFALL ON CEDAR TRAIL
About Annie Rains
PRAISE FOR ANNIE RAINS AND HER SWEETWATER SPRINGS SERIES
A Bonus Story: LAST CHANCE BRIDE
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Epilogue
About Hope Ramsay
Fall in love with these charming small-town romances!
Newsletter
For Vic Rains, in loving memory.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have been possible without the help of so many. I’d like to thank my family, who put up with me working in the mornings, at night, on car rides, and all the times and places in between. Your patience and understanding, support and encouragement keep me going. Also, thanks to my husband, Sonny, who bounces ideas around with me for these imaginary characters that I love so much (but I love you more, of course).
I want to send out a huge thank-you to my talented editor at Grand Central / Forever, Alex Logan, who makes my work infinitely better. Thank you to the entire Grand Central / Forever team, including sales, marketing, production, and the art department, for all your hard work! And to my tireless agent, Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency, for believing in these books and in me. ❤️
Thanks to my critique partner, Rachel Lacey, and to my other #GirlsWriteNight ladies: April Hunt, Tif Marcelo, and Sidney Halston. I’m so glad we’re in this together.
A very special thanks goes out to Julie Bailey for reading this book and making sure I got Tuck and his Cherokee family just right. I so appreciate your time and feedback, and I appreciate having you as a reader!
And as always, my books wouldn’t be possible without all my wonderful readers who invest their time and hearts in these stories. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!
CHAPTER ONE
Definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Or, in Josie Kellum’s case, New York City. She’d barely stepped off the jet bridge and into the airport before she’d realized she was in for a culture shock. And that was saying a lot, considering her home state was a proud blend of people from around the world. All cultures and people except perhaps the sort that lived deep in the mountains of North Carolina.
Readjusting the carry-on bag on her shoulder, Josie weaved her way toward Baggage Claim. Just looking around, she could guess who the locals were, arriving back home from their travels. They didn’t seem to be in a rush to go anywhere unlike the travelers she’d seen just a couple of hours ago at LaGuardia Airport. Even now, Josie was rushing, though her flight had landed early, and for the first time in ages, she wasn’t chasing a deadline.
She stopped at Baggage Claim and retrieved her brightly colored luggage.
Understandably, her best friend, Kaitlyn Russo, couldn’t meet her here today. Kaitlyn ran a successful bed and breakfast, which demanded someone always be there to play hostess. When Josie had assured Kaitlyn she could grab a cab to Sweetwater Springs, Kaitlyn had only laughed.
“A forty-five-minute drive will cost you those red-soled shoes you love so much.”
“Christian Louboutins,” Josie corrected. “And they’re more than shoes.” They were one of her only indulgences. “So I’ll just rent a car, then.”
“When was the last time you actually drove a car, Jo?”
Kaitlyn raised a good point. Josie took public transportation everywhere she went. She didn’t own a car, and she’d never driven one down the side of a mountain.
“Don’t worry,” Kaitlyn told her. “I’ll find someone to pick you up. Mitch has a friend that drives that way all the time. Maybe he can swing by and drive you in.”
Mitch’s friend. That was the extent of Josie’s knowledge on who she was looking for right now as she scanned the surrounding area. There were a few people standing against the wall near Baggage Claim. An older man with white hair. A middle-aged guy in a uniform of some sort. Maybe Josie should’ve thought to make a sign to hold up that read MITCH’S FRIEND.
As she was pondering what to do next, someone grabbed her left shoulder. Reflexively, Josie whirled around, catching one heel of her Christian Louboutins on the wheel of her rolling luggage. She tried to steady herself with the handle but it retracted with her quick movement.
Am I being mugged? Her gaze darted to her checked laptop bag as she stumbled. Luckily the front flap was still open from where she’d grabbed a breath mint earlier. Grabbing her can of pepper spray, she righted her body and met two darker-than-night eyes cast in a tanned, angular face. The man had shoulder-length, silky black hair, and he was, for lack of a better word—which was saying a lot for a journalist—gorgeous.
She held up the spray, targeting the man’s face. She’d purchased the can after taking a self-defense class recently. It’d been research for an article that her new bos
s had shot down with sniper efficiency, saying it wasn’t sexy enough. What did Bart know though? Protection in all senses of the word was very sexy.
“Whoa!” Her attacker took several steps backward and held up his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Defending myself. You grabbed me from behind.”
His brows gathered. He could be a model. He didn’t need to attack innocent women if he was struggling financially. This guy was far better looking than some of the models in the popular magazine that she worked for.
“I didn’t grab you from behind. I tapped your shoulder…Are you Kaitlyn’s friend?”
Josie swallowed hard. “Are you…Mitch’s friend?”
He gave a small nod before glancing back down at the pepper spray still primed at his face.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to touch strangers without a proper greeting?” she asked, shoving her can into her luggage. “That’ll get you killed in some places.”
“And evidently blinded here,” he muttered, rolling out his shoulders. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Josie cringed. “I’m sorry. I just…I was expecting you to be holding a sign and standing over there.” She gestured toward the small group of people along the wall.
The man followed her gaze. “Okay. Any other expectations I should know about?” he asked, looking back at her. “Because I happen to like my eyes. I prefer to keep them.”
She kind of liked his eyes too. And his face. His skin was a perfect bronze color, which, coupled with his high cheekbones, made her suspect that he had American Indian heritage. “Um, no. Well, yes. I guess we should make proper introductions since we’ll be spending the next forty-five minutes in your vehicle together.” She held out her hand. “I’m Josie Kellum. Aka Kaitlyn’s friend.”
He took her hand, and a shock wave of warm tingles slid up her fingers and down her spine. “Tuck Locklear. Mitch’s friend.” He looked down at her luggage. “I’d like to help you with your bags, if that’s okay.”
Her cheeks flared hot. “Um, yes. That would be great. Thank you.”
Way to go, Josie. She tended to get a little high-strung after pulling several late-nighters in a row. It was a combination of not enough sleep, too much caffeine, and too little human interaction. She’d needed to finish up edits on a few articles before this trip though. That way she could relax a little bit and let her hair down, so to speak. There was also her overactive imagination, a hazard of being a writer, that had made her leap from an uninvited touch to the assumption that she was being mugged.
Tuck led her to a blue Jeep Wrangler Sahara in the parking lot and loaded her luggage into the back while she climbed into the passenger seat, where a large chocolate Lab lifted her head from the floorboard behind her.
“Oh, hi there. And who are you?” she asked, turning to pet the dog’s head.
Tuck climbed into the driver’s seat. “This is Shadow,” he told her before addressing the dog. “Lie down.”
Shadow looked at Josie once more and then did as Tuck asked.
Josie noticed the dog’s harness read THERAPY DOG in large block letters. She wondered why Tuck needed one, but considering they’d only just met and she’d already tried to single-handedly blind him, it was probably best not to pry. “Thank you again for picking me up,” she said, facing forward and pulling on her seat belt.
“It’s not a problem.”
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she filled the silence with the next obvious question. “So, what do you do?”
“Do?” He glanced over.
“For a living. I’m the executive editor for the lifestyle section of Loving Life magazine.”
Work was always her crutch in social situations. Other people tended to tell tales of their latest vacation. Or they whipped out pictures of their significant other or their pair of angelic-looking kids. Some even had cute, far-too-spoiled dogs that they showed off proudly on their cell phones. Everyone had someone, even Lisa Loner, the woman who’d been dubbed the office’s wallflower. Just last week, Josie had been cornered by Lisa in the hall while going for her third cup of coffee. Lisa had been bubbling with excitement to show off her new engagement ring and tell the dramatic story of how the guy she’d just met had proposed.
Even though Josie was skeptical of the whirlwind relationship, she also found herself feeling a void in some way. She’d chosen her career over chasing dreams of romance and a family of her own. A successful career is what she’d always wanted but somehow, lately, it didn’t seem to be enough.
“I do physical therapy,” Tuck said.
“Oh.” Josie looked over, trying to fit her driver into the mold of all the physical therapists she’d met before. Most of them were clean-cut ex-jocks wearing khakis and polo shirts. Although handsome, Tuck had hair that scraped along the tops of his shoulders and his muscles were lean rather than bulky. He wore a relaxed pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt. “Kaitlyn said you come this way often. Do you work at a hospital nearby?” she asked.
“There you go with those expectations again.” A smile lifted his defined cheeks. “No, I see patients in the wild, meaning at their homes, out in public, and sometimes literally in the woods. It’s more natural than using exercise machines in an air-conditioned building with a TV mounted on the wall.”
“Sounds interesting,” she said, keeping to herself the fact that, if she were a patient, she’d prefer the machines and daytime television.
“Shadow is my partner. She works alongside me most of the time.”
Hearing her name, the Lab lifted her head once more.
Josie was about to pet her but then pulled her hand away. She’d written an article on canine-assisted therapy once. There were rules about socializing with the dogs.
“It’s okay,” Tuck said. “Shadow isn’t working right now.”
“Oh. Good.” Josie moved her hand and petted the top of Shadow’s head. She was soft and leaned into Josie’s touch. “What a good girl you are.” Even though the dog wasn’t working right now, Josie felt herself immediately relax.
Then her cell phone dinged loudly from her purse. She faced forward, pulled the phone out, and checked the caller ID. Her stress level immediately jumped right back up—both because work was a major stressor these days and because she’d taken that moment to glance out her window at the steep drop of the mountainside.
She turned away from the window only to lay eyes on her driver, which spiked her blood pressure for a whole different reason.
* * *
Tuck knew the type. Work obsessed, self-absorbed, and judging by her luggage and fancy leather purse, materialistic.
Not his type.
He listened as Josie talked on the phone, suddenly sounding firm and a tad bossy. His own phone vibrated in the middle console. He shifted his gaze for just a second as he navigated down the mountain. Sweetwater Springs was only another ten miles away, and he couldn’t get his passenger to her destination soon enough.
Tuck recognized the number on his caller ID as the same one that had called earlier in the day. A Beverly Sanders had left a message asking him to call her back. He hadn’t yet. He wondered if the woman was a prospective patient. If so, she should’ve called his office number. He had a secretary that he shared with the local home-health occupational and speech therapists in Sweetwater Springs. Only current patients got his cell number, and only to use during emergencies.
After a moment, his phone dinged with another voicemail. He’d check it later. Right now, his passenger was still talking on her own phone.
“All right, Dana. Yeah. I’ll take care of it…I know I’m on vacation but this can’t wait. Uh-huh. Bye.” Josie clicked a button on her phone and placed it on her lap.
From the corner of his eye, Tuck caught her looking at him. She opened her mouth to speak. Can’t we just ride in silence the rest of the way?
“So, Kaitlyn and Mitch are happy, huh?” she said.
Tuck gave a small nod. “Mitch i
s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time.” And Mitch deserved it after all his years of running from the ghosts of his past. Tuck, on the other hand, was faced with his late wife’s ghost every day. Even now, after moving to a new home on Blueberry Creek last winter, Renee seemed to be everywhere.
His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly as he refocused on Josie.
“Kaitlyn seems happy too,” she said. “I miss her back home in New York. We used to have lunch together at least once a week.”
Tuck guessed that Josie had to schedule those lunch dates in her calendar. She probably had to schedule her showers too.
And he shouldn’t be thinking about her in the shower. While they might not have clicked personality-wise, her looks hadn’t gone unnoticed. Although a widower, he was still a red-blooded male who hadn’t had sex in over two years. Josie had long, blond hair that was pulled back in a tight ponytail at her nape. Her skin was smooth and creamy. When she’d captured his attention with a can of pepper spray primed at his face, he’d stared at her long enough to see that her eyes were almost a turquoise blue.
Her phone made a ridiculous, high-pitched meow from her lap.
Shadow stood at attention in the back seat and gave a soft woof.
“Sorry. That’s just a text message alert,” she told Shadow. “I don’t have any cats stowed away with me—I promise.” She read the text and started laughing to herself.
In contrast to the meow, this was a pleasant sound. Tuck caught himself smiling for a moment.
Then Josie’s phone meowed again. And again. It continued to meow while her fingers tapped along the screen rapidly in response until he turned his Jeep onto Mistletoe Lane where the Sweetwater Bed and Breakfast was located.
He pulled into the driveway of the two-story Victorian house that his friend Mitch and his fiancée, Kaitlyn, had inherited last October and parked. “This is it.”
“Wow.” Josie stared out his windshield at the inn for a moment. “I can’t believe Kaitlyn owns this place. It’s amazing.”
“You should see the inside. She’s a talented interior designer.”
Josie turned to him. “She’s the best at everything she does, including being a friend.”