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Hometown Honey
Kara Lennox
Won't Get Fooled Again…Days before her pending nuptials, single mom Cindy Leller learns that her husband-to-be has taken off for parts unknown–with all the money Cindy had in the bank! On a mission to get back what's rightfully hers, Cindy accepts the help of cute childhood friend turned gorgeous local sherif Luke Rheems. Hours spent together on the road tracking down her ex makes Cindy realize just how much she's missed Luke's strong, reassuring presence. And once he bonds with her little boy, Cindy begins to acknowledge what she's been missing all along: true love. But will trusting another man be her downfall–or the happily-ever-after she deserves?Blond Justice: Betrayed…and betting on each other.
“Luke, put me down!”
Cindy sputtered indignantly. Being picked up reminded her far too much of the way they used to horseplay when they were teenagers. Back then, she’d reveled in his strength, in how he could lift her as though she weighed nothing. Even as she’d squealed for him to put her down, she’d loved the feel of his strong arms around her legs, his hand on her butt and her view of his back muscles.
The memories came back to her in a flash, so vivid she almost passed out. Suddenly she was seventeen and hopelessly in love.
She didn’t need this, and wiggled in earnest. “Luke, I mean it. Put me down.”
She must have accidentally knocked him off balance, because they landed in a tangle of arms and legs.
Luke didn’t make any attempt to climb off her. His face was very close, and she could actually feel his heartbeat through his chest, hard and fast.
Cindy closed her eyes, helpless to resist as his lips descended on hers.
Dear Reader,
I think everyone has certain themes they look for when they pick up a book. One of the things I truly love is when the heroine of a book is in terrible, terrible trouble, and no matter what she does, things just keep getting worse—and then the hero shows up and makes things even worse!
So in creating my new trilogy BLOND JUSTICE, I took three very different ladies on the brink of fulfilling a dream and put them in the same terrible trouble—they’ve been bankrupted, humiliated and ruined by the same Romeo con man. Only by finding each other, joining forces and becoming best friends can they bring this slimy guy to justice. But along the way, each finds romance in a very unexpected place.
In Hometown Honey, Cindy Lefler has lost everything, and now she’s about to lose her son. In such dire straits, most women would melt if a dishy guy like Sheriff Luke Rheems came to their rescue. But not Cindy. Luke is the last guy she wants involved in her problems. What Cindy won’t admit is that he poses a threat to her heart more frightening than any con man!
I can say without reservation that I had more fun writing BLOND JUSTICE than anything I’ve ever written. I hope my enjoyment shines through.
Kara Lennox
P.S. I love to hear from readers! E-mail me at karalennox@yahoo.com or contact me via regular mail at P.O. Box 4845, Dallas, Texas 75148.
Hometown Honey
Kara Lennox
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Texas native Kara Lennox has been an art director, typesetter, textbook editor and reporter. She’s worked in a boutique, a health club and an ad agency. She’s been an antiques dealer and even a blackjack dealer. But no work has made her happier than writing romance novels. When not writing, Kara indulges in an ever-changing array of weird hobbies. (Her latest passions are treasure hunting and creating mosaics.)
Books by Kara Lennox
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
942—PLAIN JANE’S PLAN * (#litres_trial_promo)
951—SASSY CINDERELLA * (#litres_trial_promo)
974—FORTUNE’S TWINS
990—THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR
1052—THE FORGOTTEN COWBOY
1068—HOMETOWN HONEY † (#litres_trial_promo)
For Pam and the crew at Norma’s Café. Your biscuits are the true inspiration for the “Miracle Biscuits.” I have worked out the details of many a story sitting at one of your red vinyl booths, sucking down coffee from a bottomless cup.
Contents
Chapter One (#uab2413c9-740b-5feb-909d-ef1d4c810d38)
Chapter Two (#ubd9cd5e2-4f3d-5ca2-bd5b-b6208449a52b)
Chapter Three (#ue7f04593-1af4-5df8-b0ce-e378efa5eeac)
Chapter Four (#ue49e4bcf-2c59-55a0-b55b-405a2fc56dfd)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“Only twelve thousand biscuits left to bake,” Cindy Lefler said cheerfully as she popped a baking sheet into the industrial oven at the Miracle Café. Though she loved the smell of fresh-baked biscuits, she had grown weary of the actual baking. One time, she’d tried to figure out how many biscuits she’d baked in her twenty-eight years. It had numbered well into the millions.
“I wish you’d stop counting them down,” grumbled Tonya Dewhurst, who was folding silverware into paper napkins. She was the café’s newest waitress, but Cindy had grown to depend on her very quickly. “You’re the only one who’s happy you’re leaving.”
“I’ll come back to visit.”
“You’ll be too busy being Mrs. Dex Shalimar, lady of leisure,” Tonya said dreamily. “You sure know how to pick husbands.” Then she straightened. “Oh, gosh. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
Cindy patted Tonya’s shoulder. “It’s okay, I know what you mean.”
She still felt a pang over losing Jim, which was only natural, she told herself. The disagreement between her husband’s truck and a freight train had happened only a year ago. But she had picked a good one when she’d married him. And she’d gotten just plain lucky finding Dex.
“It’s almost six,” Cindy said. “Would you unlock the front door and turn on the Open sign, please?” A couple of the other waitresses, Iris and Kate, had arrived and were going through their morning routines. Iris had worked at the café for more than twenty years, Kate almost as long.
Tonya smiled. “Sure. Um, Cindy, do you have a buyer for the café yet?”
“Dex says he has some serious nibbles.”
“I just hope the new owner will let me bring Micton to work with me.”
Cindy cringed every time she heard that name. Tonya had thought it was so cute naming her baby with a combination of hers and her husband’s names—Mick and Tonya. Micton. Yikes! It was the type of backwoods logic that made Cindy want to leave Cottonwood.
Customers were actually waiting in line when Tonya opened the door—farmers and ranchers, mostly, in jeans and overalls, Stetsons and gimme hats, here to get a hearty breakfast and exchange gossip. Cindy went to work on the Daily Specials chalkboard, suspended high above the cash register.
“’Morning, Ms. Cindy.”
She very nearly fell off her stepladder. Still, she managed to call out a very pleasant, “’Morning, Luke.” The handsome sheriff’s deputy always unnerved her. He showed up at 6:10 a.m., like clockwork, five days a week, and ordered the same thing—one biscuit with honey and black coffee. But every single time she saw him sitting there at the counter, that knowing grin on his face, she felt a flutter of surprise.
Kate rushed over from clearing a table to pour Luke his coffee and take his order. The woman was in her sixties. at least, but Cindy could swear Kate blushed as she served Luke. He just had that effect on women, herself included. Even now, when she was engaged—hell, even when she’d been married to a man she’d loved fiercely—just looking at Luke made her pulse quicken and her face warm.
She refused to blame herself. It was just hormones. The man was sexier than the devil himself, with that curly chestnut hair and those eyes, green and dark as a cool, mossy pond. In high school, he’d worn his hair long and unruly, sometimes past his shoulders, as part of his go-to-hell image. He’d made girls drool back then when he was still a skinny teenager. He’d inspired Cindy to do a lot more than drool. Now, with that uniform and the wide shoulders to fill it out and the hair cut shorter in a futile attempt to tame it, he was even more mouthwatering.
“So, how are the wedding plans coming along?” Luke asked Cindy. A bystander might assume the question was borne of polite curiosity, but Cindy knew better. Luke Rheems had despised Dexter Shalimar on sight, and he never missed an opportunity to subtly remind Cindy that he thought she was a fool for marrying Dex.
“There aren’t many plans for me to make,” Cindy said breezily. “Dex is handling all the arrangements. We’re flying to Lake Tahoe, getting married in a little chapel in the mountains and then Dex is going to teach me to ski.” It was the sort of vacation she’d always dreamed of. She and Jim had visited Lake Tahoe before, of course. She’d gasped at the breathtaking scenery, the opulent homes, the flashy casinos. But there’d been no money for skiing or gambling, and they’d slept either in their truck or at a cheap motel.
This time, her honeymoon would be four-star hotels, fancy meals, private skiing lessons.
“Dex handles a lot for you, doesn’t he? The sale of your restaurant and your house, your wedding, your honeymoon. He’s chosen where you’ll live—”
“Dex is in real estate,” Cindy broke in, climbing down from the stepladder. She couldn’t spell and argue with Luke at the same time. “Why shouldn’t he handle my real-estate transactions? It’s what he’s good at. As for our home, yes, he did pick it out and furnish it. But I’m no good at decorating—he hired an expert to do that. Anyway, I’ve seen it and it’s perfect. A no-fuss penthouse with all maintenance taken care of.”
“And no backyard. Where will Adam play?”
She lowered her voice, getting truly irritated. “Don’t you start laying that guilt trip on me. My son is going to have a fabulous childhood. Dex has business all over the globe, so we’ll all travel the world together. Adam will meet and play with children of all cultures. He’ll frolic in alpine meadows and on Jamaican beaches. He’ll sample fresh foods from Italy and Indonesia. You act like he’ll be deprived simply because he doesn’t have a postage stamp of grass to call his own.”
“I happen to believe a child does need a few blades of grass to call his own.”
“And when you have a child of your own, you can raise him in a little backyard like a rabbit in his hutch. With the same view, seeing the same people, eating the same foods day in and day out.” She knew she should stop there, but he’d hit her hot button. “And he’ll grow up to be just as closed-minded and provincial as everybody else in this town, afraid of anything that’s strange or foreign or the slightest bit different.”
Luke arched one eyebrow at her, surprised by her outburst. “Is that how you see your Cottonwood neighbors? A bunch of ignorant, closed-minded xenophobes?”
Cindy was embarrassed to admit she didn’t know what xenophobe meant. But that was part of her point—and part of why she wanted something different for Adam. Sure, she’d traveled the country, but she’d never been to college. She wasn’t well read. She didn’t know anything about stylish clothes or entertaining or even how to fix her hair, which was currently pulled back in a loose ponytail. Dex had never criticized, but if she was going to be the wife of a high-society millionaire, she was going to have to work on her shortcomings.
To mask her ignorance, she changed the subject. “You’re just raining on my parade because you’re jealous.”
“Jealous? Oh, yeah, right. Of Dex? He’s a pencil-neck weenie.”
“Now you are obviously desperate, resorting to name-calling. By the way, I never heard the results of your big investigation into Dex’s background. You were going to uncover all his terrible secrets, right? The three other wives, the jail time, the sixteen illegitimate children?”
At least Luke had the good grace to look slightly ashamed. “He checked out,” was all he said.
As Cindy had known he would. She hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck yesterday. She’d done a little checking of her own. Dexter Shalimar, though notoriously publicity wary and camera shy, was considered Houston’s hottest bachelor and one of its richest residents. His company, Shalimar Holdings, was one of the largest privately owned real-estate-development companies in the nation and one of the few that didn’t take a terrible beating during the recent recession. He’d never been married, had no children, had never been arrested. He was a major contributor to several charities and had come in seventeenth last year in the Boston Marathon. What was not to like?
As to whether she loved him—well, that was another matter. Jim would always occupy a very special place in her heart, and he couldn’t be shoved aside. But she was very, very fond of Dex, Adam seemed to adore him and she knew of many strong marriages based on mutual respect and affection.
Luke finished his biscuit and took his coffee in a to-go cup, as always. At about seven-thirty, the town-square business owners started arriving. Then, a little later, the moms who’d gotten their kids off to school showed up, along with the retirees. The breakfast trade had hardly let up before the early lunch crowd started trickling in.
It was a good, busy morning. But then, the café had always been a moneymaker. An unofficial historic landmark, it had supported Cindy’s family comfortably for generations. Still, Cindy had never felt any real attachment to the business. She’d worked here evenings and weekends and summers since she could remember, with the exception of the eight years she’d traveled the country with Jim in his 18-wheeler. To her, the Miracle Café meant turning down every other opportunity that had come her way—cheerleading, drama club, soccer. Her parents had worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week, and she’d been expected to follow suit.
The workload had only gotten worse since her mother’s death. As the sole owner, Cindy found it nearly impossible to take a long weekend, much less ramble around the country.
Now that she had Adam, she thought as she transferred a selection of meringue pies from cooling racks in the kitchen to the glass-fronted bakery case out front, the café was even more confining. She brought the baby to work with her, as Tonya did, where all the waitresses and even the busboys took turns spoiling him. But Cindy herself was so busy, she didn’t feel as if she spent enough time with him.
That would all change in a couple of months, she thought with a warm glow. She would travel from one adventure to another, the way she’d always dreamed. And once she and Dex were married, she was going to travel with him—she and Adam. She’d seen a lot of her own country before Jim’s death. Now, the world would be her oyster.
“Cindy?” It was Tonya, a water pitcher in one hand, menus in the other. “Those two ladies in booth three want to speak to you.”
Cindy glanced over to the booth by the window. In it sat two women, both blond, both obviously not from Cottonwood. One was dressed in a business suit, her artfully highlighted hair twisted into a complicated configuration atop her head. The other had really funky, spiky, frosted hair and an abundance of silver jewelry.
Could be a real-estate agent and her client, she thought optimistically. Cindy smoothed her apron, wiped her hands on a towel and, with a parting glance at Luke that told him to stop messing with her, she approached the women.
“Hello,” she said brightly. “I’m Cindy Lefler, owner of the Miracle Café.” She stretched her hand out in greeting to the one in the business suit.
The other woman squeezed her hand briefly. She didn’t smile. “Sonya Patterson. And this is Brenna Thompson. Please, could you sit down?” She indicated the red vinyl banquette across from her.
Cindy sat next to the one called Brenna, feeling apprehensive. “What can I do for you?”
Sonya set a leather briefcase on the table and snapped open the locks. She withdrew a color photo and slid it across the table toward Cindy. “Do you know this man?”
The photo was a bit blurry, as if it had been blown up. Clearly the man in the picture had had his arm around someone else, who’d been cropped out.
“Of course. That’s my fiancé, Dexter Shalimar,” Cindy said tightly.
Sonya’s eyes seemed to grow brighter and Brenna sat forward slightly. “The real-estate tycoon?” Brenna asked. “That Dexter Shalimar?”
“Yes. Is it so unbelievable that he would want to marry a waitress?”
Neither woman answered Cindy’s question. Instead Sonya asked, “Do you know where he is? Right this moment, I mean?”
