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Playing For Keeps
Karen Templeton
Single mother Joanna Swan had already married one man with a Peter Pan complex, and one was her limit. So now she is determined that romance is for dreamers–and she is one woman with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Even if she does design custom-made Santa Clauses for a living.And that's where Dale McConnaughy comes in. The sexy-as-sin former baseball superstar–now a toy store mogul–might be irresistible to most women, but Joanna had to resist him. Because after all that she'd been through, what kind of fool would she be to let herself fall in love with another man so determined to remain a boy?For Dale, though, baseball hadn't been a game but a way out of a childhood filled with betrayal and heartache. And even though he'd refused to let the past embitter him, it had left its share of scars–scars that perhaps one woman could help to erase. But only if he could prove to Joanna that, where the game of love was concerned, he was willing to risk all….
Here’s what critics had to say about Karen Templeton’s Loose Screws:
“…bustles with characters and surprises.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An inventive and consistently surprising plot as well as a smart and likable heroine set this romance apart from the pack.”
—Booklist
“…filled with lovable characters and their hilarious quirks…a fun book and a perfect beach read.”
—Romantic Times
“Well written, warm-hearted and funny…an example of Chick Lit at its best…reminiscent of Jennifer Crusie’s work, perhaps crossed with a bit of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum for good measure….”
—Susan Scribner, The Romance Reader
“Get ready to laugh until there are tears! Karen Templeton makes the move from series romance to chick lit with élan.”
—Judith Ripplemeyer, The Word on Romance
Dear Reader,
While I love a good edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller as much as the next person, I’ve long believed the most compelling stories are those found in everyday life—the day-to-day challenges of raising kids and dealing with family relationships; the way life forces us to grow in ways we never expected to; the breath-stealing awe of finding new love. To this end, I tend to write about people the average reader might know, or even be, characters no less exceptional simply because they do eight loads of laundry a week or worry about a learning disabled child or sometimes wonder how they’re going to make it to the next payday. These are people who find joy in the scent of a roasting turkey, the feel of a child in their arms, the satisfaction of knowing that beat-up old minivan in the driveway is theirs. And these are people no less worthy of finding true love simply because they’re “ordinary.”
This book, my first single title for Silhouette, is no exception. Since the story is set in my adopted hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, these people see what I see every day, shop where I shop, deal with many of the same issues I—and most of you—face every day. Yet for five months, as they revealed their fears and hopes and deepest desires to me, their quiet drama kept me on the edge of my seat. I pray they do the same for you.
Playing for Keeps
Karen Templeton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-02531-7
PLAYING FOR KEEPS
© 2003 Karen Templeton
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ®are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Version: 2018-07-18
To everyone who hangs out in the AOL Books Community Writing Series Romance folder—thanks for seven years (and counting)of cheers and commiseration. (Not to mention answers to any off-the-wall question I can think up!) I love you guys.
And to Trish, Holly, Susan and Alice, for reassuring me the story made sense.
And to Gail—I’m holding you to that promise to edit my next three hundred books!
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u39718724-20df-5d79-96a9-14113d0b690d)
Chapter 2 (#u5e8b473b-55ba-5fb5-9dea-8a5c4775437b)
Chapter 3 (#u9d674bdf-5553-51f9-be47-af71163e4229)
Chapter 4 (#u3812bc93-ccf3-546e-a142-964a49c60aad)
Chapter 5 (#u93281b62-b1c5-5d56-8eee-64710dc6c291)
Chapter 6 (#u1a948391-2667-5160-b503-73369ae95dd0)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
If Joanna Swann had learned nothing else in her thirty-two years, it was that bad news rarely came à la carte. If one thing went wrong, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop. This phone call, however, had to make at least the thirty-fourth shoe to drop within the past few weeks, which was sorely taxing her good humor.
For a single bright, glistening moment, the temptation to leave her three children to fend for themselves and to take to her bed was nearly overwhelming. However she scraped together her last ounce of reserve and said, “Mr. Shaw—” she tried to place her relatively new neighbor, but all she was getting was a beer belly and a cowboy hat large enough to shelter a family of six “—how is that even possible? Chester doesn’t even come up to Glady’s knees. Let alone her—”
“I saw ’em with my own eyes! Right out here in my own goddamn backyard! Your goddamn dog got up on the top step of my goddamn back porch and got my bitch pregnant! We were just about to have her bred, too, and we were counting on that income! You have any idea how much a Great Dane puppy with papers brings?”
Her neck muscles cramped from cradling the cordless between her jaw and her shoulder as she tossed Bob the Builder fruit snacks into the boys’ lunch boxes. Joanna glared at the fur bag lying with his head on his paws, bushy white eyebrows twitching. Damn dog had been nothing but trouble from the moment her ex-husband had brought him home for the kids’ Christmas present, year before last. Without consulting her first, natch. And if the kids hadn’t been so attached to the mangy beast, he would’ve long since been history. His manners were atrocious, his libido embarrassingly healthy, and there hadn’t been a fence or wall invented he couldn’t dig out of. But Chester was purebred, so Bobby had said it didn’t make sense to get him fixed until they’d put him out to stud a few times, at least. Apparently, Chester had decided to take the initiative on his own.
Heaven help them, this was going be one butt-ugly batch of puppies.
“No, Mr. Shaw,” Joanna said, eyeing the clock and frowning—Bobby was late picking up the kids for school. Again. “I have no idea how much—”
“Six hundred bucks a pop, that’s how much! And Gladys always has at least ten pups! That means I’m out six thousand dollars, lady. So what’re you gonna do about it?”
“Me?” she squeaked, the sleep-deprivation fog lifting just enough for her to realize where this conversation was going. Glowering, she dumped out an inch of murky water from the bowl she’d left on the counter last night to catch the drip from the leaky roof. “You expect me to compensate you for an…an…accident?”
“Damn straight I expect you to compensate me! Wasn’t my dog that got out, it was yours! Your fault—you have to pay up. We can go to petty court if you like, but that’d only add court costs to what you already owe me. So I’ll be sending you a bill soon as Gladys delivers.”
Wham! went the receiver in her ear just as the father of her three children picked that inauspicious moment to drag his sorry hide through her back door.
“Next time you bring me an unneutered dog, Bobby Alvarez, make sure he knows how to use a condom!” And long as the gun was loaded, might as well get off another round. “And where the hell have you been? Kids!” she bellowed in the general direction of their rooms. “Your father’s here!”
“Whoa, babe, back up.” Bobby dug a blue-and-red-striped tie from the pocket of his top-of-the-line JCPenney sportsjacket, threading it through his shirt collar. “What’s this about the dog and condoms?”
Joanna pointed to Chester, whose eyebrows twitched some more.
“That…thing knocked up the neighbor’s Great Dane.”
Bobby stopped knotting his tie to grin at the dog. “Chester! My man!” He bent at the knees, extending one hand. “Give me five!” The dog hesitated, then belly-crawled to Bobby, eyeing Joanna warily as he shook hands with the only person in the room who currently didn’t wish to see him stuffed. Bobby did the praising thing, then sidled over to the coffeemaker. “This fresh?”
Fumbling to hook an earring one-handed into her left lobe, Joanna gulped down the cold remnants of her first cup of coffee, refusing to let the crooked, charming, you-wouldn’t-really-smack-somebody-this-cute-wouldja? look in those hot-fudge eyes get to her.
“Touch that coffee and die. And since you find your dog’s sexual escapades so amusing, then I guess it’s okay to send the bill to you.”
“Bill?”
“Yeah, bill. As in, for the loss of what would have been a purebred litter. For which the mother-to-be’s daddy is suing me. Us. Which is just what I need on top of the roof leaking. Again. And why the hell are you late?”
“How can you be mad at me for so many things in one breath?”
“A time-saving strategy fine-honed after nine years of marriage. Well?”
“Hey, I’m really sorry, babe. But Tori—”
“And don’t even try to blame this on your girlfriend—”
“Fiancée.”
Joanna reeled for a second or two as shoe number thirty-five bounced off her head. “Since when?”
Something almost like apology flickered in his eyes. “Last night. I mean, this probably isn’t the best time to spring this on you—”
“No, no…” Joanna inserted the second earring. “Now, later, whenever. Congratulations. I guess. Although that’s neither here nor there,” she added, scrambling to get back up on her high horse. “The whole point of my asking you to take the kids to school today was so I could get to my appointment on time…dammit, what are they doing?” Joanna tromped across the kitchen’s tiled floor, her curly hair boinging around her face and annoying the life out of her. “Dulcy! Matt! Ryder! Now!”
“Jo,” Bobby said behind her. “It’s been more than three years since we split up. Time at least one of us moved on.”
Joanna whirled around at the precise moment the dog decided to shuffle back across the kitchen floor. Right in front of her. She clutched the edge of the counter, sloshing coffee all over her left boob. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin and started rubbing at the spot, even though some small, tired part of her brain knew coffee and peach cotton did not mix. She glared at Bobby as her breast jiggled from the onslaught. “One word about wanting to help and you’re dead meat,” she said, then added, “As for your moving on…as I recall, you did that before the ink was dry on the divorce papers.”
“You’re still pissed about the dog, aren’t you?”
“The dog, the roof, your being late…take your pick. Oh, and Ryder’s teacher called. She wants us to come in for a conference.”
To give Bobby credit, concern flashed across his features. “I thought he was doing better this year.”
“Yeah, well, so did I. But apparently not. So believe me, your getting married again doesn’t even make the short list. But honestly, Bobby…” Joanna gave up on the rubbing and looked at her ex. “Can Tori even vote yet?”
“She’s twenty-one, for God’s sake. Besides, in some ways she’s older than I am—”
Which, Joanna thought uncharitably, wasn’t all that much of a stretch.
“—and she’s pregnant.”
At this rate Joanna could open a damn shoe store. “Well,” she said after a moment, “at least no one’s holding Chester accountable for that puppy.”
“That’s why I’m late,” Bobby said, ignoring her. “Tori was so sick this morning, she didn’t want me to leave.”
Oh, no. Uh-uh. Not that she didn’t genuinely feel badly for Bobby’s girlfriend, who clearly had no idea what she was getting herself into. But no way was Joanna about to let sympathy sully the righteous indignation she’d spent the past half hour polishing to a high gloss.
“You are totally out of your mind,” she said.
The corners of Bobby’s mouth pulled down. “Why do you say that? You know how much I love kids.”
