She isn’t giving up—on her town or herself

An accident cost Tracy Jackson not only her high-profile job but also her ability to easily communicate. Back in her California hometown, she’s working at the bakery and painstakingly relearning how to speak. Now she has a new mission: to protect her community from Chad Healy.

The travel writer is in Harmony Valley to cover the Harvest Festival. And—big surprise—he’s helping Tracy make her dreams happen. But his lampooning style could hurt her town’s longtime traditions. Filled with conflicting emotions, can Tracy find the words to let Chad know how she feels before he’s gone for good?

“Take a deep breath, relax and say something else.”

Before Tracy could shrug him off, he added, “Pause after the first word.”

“I can’t.” How she hated to admit she had a weakness.

He massaged her shoulders, thumbs delving deep into her tense muscles. “Think Olympic athlete. Nothing comes easy to them. And yet they triumph. Take a—”

“Will...you stop with the coaching already?”

“That was awesome.” Chad moved to her side, draped an arm over her shoulder and gave her an air-stealing squeeze.

She shoved his arm off. “Seriously? Now you’re being nice to me?”

“Hey, I’ve always been nice.” Chad grinned. Grinned!

She wanted to slug him. She wanted to shout at him. She wanted to kiss him.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harmony Valley!

Just a few short years ago, Harmony Valley was on the brink of extinction with only those over the age of sixty in residence. A younger generation is moving back to town, but if the only industry around—a winery—doesn’t succeed, that could end.

Before a car accident, Tracy Jackson was a rising star in the advertising world. Now she’s working in slow-paced Harmony Valley as a coffee barista and waiting for her chance to get her life back on track. Travel writer Chad Bostwick has got a lead on a story in Harmony Valley, only it’s not going to be a kind, fluff piece. Satire is how he’s built his following. Tracy’s the only person in town who realizes Chad might derail revitalization efforts. She’s determined to make him see that the charm in Harmony Valley is the real thing.

I hope you enjoy Chad and Tracy’s journey to a happily-ever-after, as well as the other romances in the Harmony Valley series. I love to hear from readers. Check my website to learn more about upcoming books, sign up for email book announcements (and I’ll send you a free sweet romantic comedy read), or chat with me on Facebook (MelindaCurtisAuthor) or Twitter (@melcurtisauthor) to hear about my latest giveaways.

Melinda Curtis

www.MelindaCurtis.com

A Man of Influence

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Melinda Curtis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning and USA TODAY bestselling author MELINDA CURTIS lives in drought-stricken California with her husband, small dog and bossy cat. Her three children are all in college in another state, which means she’s constantly wondering if they’re eating right, studying hard and making good decisions. Despite knowing they don’t eat right, they do make her proud.

Melinda enjoys putting humor into her stories, because that’s how she approaches life. She writes sweet contemporary romances as Melinda Curtis (Brenda Novak says of Season of Change, “found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, steamy reads as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz says of Cora Rules, “wonderfully entertaining”).

Thanks to all the readers who enjoy the Harmony Valley series. Your kind words and love of the characters make Harmony Valley a joy to write.

And thanks to my parents, who are old, quirky and stubbornly independent, traits shared by many of the older characters in the series.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

“YOUR SERVICES ARE no longer required.” The chairman of the board for Bostwick Lampoon magazine fixed Chad Healy Bostwick with the kind of stare one gives to spoiled, stinky sushi.

“You’re firing me?” A week after his father died, Chad hadn’t thought he could feel any emptier. He was wrong. His insides felt as hollow as a jack-o’-lantern on Halloween. He rubbed a hand over his designer tie, just to make sure no one had carved triangular features in his chest.

“We’re taking the Bostwick Lampoon in a different direction,” the chairman said, in a voice gruff with age and years of cigarette smoke and maybe—just maybe—regret over what he was doing. Barney had been a friend of Chad’s father during their student days at Stanford. He’d known Chad since the day he was born. He had to realize what he was doing was wrong.

But there was the spoiled and stinky sushi stare. And him giving Chad the ax.

A quick glance around the boardroom—at dour and pitiless faces—and Chad realized how few friends he had left at the magazine. He reached for his coffee, misjudged the movement and grappled the cardboard cup with both hands to save it from spilling.

Silence filled the room, but it couldn’t fill the empty spaces inside Chad.

“This is my company.” His voice felt as weak as a fighter’s jab in the last few seconds of the fifteenth round. Never mind that Chad was editor-in-chief and managed the other writers. Never mind that he wrote The Happy Bachelor On the Road—a popular travel column for the magazine. He owned 49 percent of the publication his father had started over fifty years ago. “You can’t take it away from me.”

But since stockholders controlled 51 percent of the shares, they could fire him.

“We’re honoring your father’s last wishes.” Barney handed Chad a sheet of paper.

“Postmortem manifesto?” Chad perused the document on Bostwick Lampoon letterhead, his gaze catching on a paragraph in the middle.

My son, Chad Healy Bostwick, has done a brilliant job leading the magazine. But every so often a periodical has to reinvent itself to stay relevant. Chad is not my choice for the job.

Unable to read any more, Chad crumpled the paper in his fist.

This was the thanks he got for taking care of his father during his three-year battle with cancer? This was the thanks he got for thirteen years of service? The Bostwick Lampoon was a send-up of the news of the day. It was supposed to be a clever vehicle to make people laugh. Chad couldn’t work up so much as a chuckle.

He used to laugh. Back before he’d had to run the company. He used to smile. Back before he’d had to fire people with kids and mortgages. He used to joke. Back before his father was struck by the Big C. The Bostwick Lampoon didn’t like what he’d become? They’d made him this way!

Doreen, his father’s assistant, led Chad out. She and a security guard stood in Chad’s office as he packed his personal belongings in a single box and thought about the man he used to be. They didn’t care that he took the lead sheet from his team’s last story meeting. They didn’t seem concerned that he might try to beat them at their own game.

At the top of the list was a small town called Harmony Valley.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS THE “what ifs” that drove Tracy Jackson crazy.

What if she could eat as many oatmeal raisin cookies as she liked and still fit in her skinny jeans? What if she didn’t have to get up every morning at 4 a.m.? What if she’d participated in that brain shock therapy after her car accident?

Yeah, no way was Tracy going to let anyone attach an electrode to her head and send a jolt of electricity through it.

Since cracking her skull against a semitruck, she’d gone from being a motormouth to being idle in a conversation. She talked in short sentences, especially when she got flustered. She had the occasional brain fart when she couldn’t remember a word. Doctors said her progress toward beating expressive aphasia was hindered by the stress Tracy put on herself.

Stress? How about high self-standards?

Before the accident, Tracy had been among the top of her class at Harmony Valley High School. She’d been a double major in college. She’d thrived on the fast-paced, competitive jungle of a large advertising agency. After the accident, she’d used her advertising connections to land a television news production job.

Okay, so maybe television wasn’t the best fit for her current verbal skill set. She’d had a meltdown live when the reporter she was working with had vomited at a crime scene. Tracy’d had to take over the microphone and she’d gone as mute as a deer in the headlights. Maybe that’s why her news station job had been phased out—their way of firing her without actually firing her. And maybe being canned had forced her to sit down and think about listening to what the doctors ordered so that her life wouldn’t seem like a dead end at age twenty-six, so that she could take another fork in the road and work on overcoming aphasia.

Mildred Parsons rammed her walker into the counter of Martin’s Bakery in Harmony Valley, bringing Tracy back to the fork she sat at in the road. “Two pumpkin spice scones and a latte.” With her poofy white curls and poofy pink cheeks, Mildred looked like Mrs. Claus. The lenses of her glasses were as thick as ice cubes, and were apparently just as hard to see through. She squinted at Tracy and handed over her wallet. “I should have a five in there. Keep the change, dear.”

“Thanks.” That quarter tip would really help build Tracy’s retirement fund. She took the five and handed the wallet back.

Mildred bumped against the counter again as she turned. Bang-turn. Bang-turn. Bang-turn. A perfect 180—not—that got her out of the way of the next elderly resident.

The morning rush was in full swing.

While Tracy made Mildred’s latte, she took Agnes Villanova’s order—hot green tea and a vanilla scone. Accepted Agnes’ exact payment. Plated the scones. Served them. Took Rose Cascia’s order—chai latte with soy milk, no scone. Admired the former ballerina and Broadway chorus girl’s kick-ball change. Made change. Wondered what was keeping bakery owner Jessica in the kitchen—she could use her help.

Greeted Mayor Larry in his neon green and yellow tie-dyed T-shirt—coffee, two packets of sweetener, no cream. Smiled patiently while Old Man Takata debated whether to order the bran muffin or the chocolate croissant. There was no debate. He always went with the croissant. But his indecision gave Tracy time to make another pot of coffee.

Tracy didn’t need to say much as a baker’s assistant. She just had to move quickly. She was the only thing moving fast in this remote corner of Sonoma County. In a town where the average age of the one-hundred-plus residents was in the seventies, most things went at walker speed. Case in point: the game of checkers being played in the corner between Felix, the retired fire chief, and Phil, the should-be-retired barber.

The town council sat at a table in the middle of the bakery. Mayor Larry espoused the merits of controlled growth, while Rose, the no-growth advocate, tried to talk over him with her high-pitched outside voice. Eunice Fletcher sat quilting in the window seat, occasionally glancing down at Jessica’s baby in a small playpen. She was about due for a coffee refill.

It was just another Friday morning in Harmony Valley. Tracy felt no stress at all.

And then he walked in.

Morning sunlight glinted off the blond highlights in his brown hair and outlined his broad shoulders. His eyes were the dark brown of coffee, no cream. Those eyes catalogued everything in the bakery, as if he thought there’d be a test later.

The conversation in the room dwindled and died. Chairs scraped. All eyes turned toward the newcomer, because Harmony Valley wasn’t a pass-through town. It was practically the end of the road.

“Don’t. Scare. Him.” Dang it. Stress jabbed repeatedly at her stilted speech button like a child playing ding-dong ditch. Tracy swallowed her sudden discomfort and waved the man to the counter.

“Who came in?” Mildred asked, voice on the max volume setting. Apparently, she hadn’t put in her hearing aids this morning, and couldn’t see through her ice cube lenses.

Mr. Golden Glow chuckled as he approached the counter. He moved out of the sunlight and became...no more normal. Still gorgeous. He walked as if he owned the room, exuding a vibe Tracy had always admired—power, prestige, a winner of corporate boardroom games. Didn’t matter that he wore jeans and a polo shirt. That walk said suit and tie. His confident air said, “I know people who can get you a job.”

Tracy’s mouth went dry, because she needed a better job. Unfortunately, she could practically feel the full extent of her vocabulary knot at the back of her tongue, clogging her throat.

She tried to remember her latest speech therapist’s advice. Breathe. Relax. Turn your back on the person you’re talking to.

Okay, that last one was Tracy’s antidote. But it worked. Not that there were many opportunities to turn her back mid-conversation or in an argument without looking like a total jerk.

And how could she forget the advice of her speech teacher in college? Breathe. Relax. Imagine your audience is naked.

“What’s good here?” Mr. Tall, Perfect and Speech-Robbing stepped in front of her.

Tracy’s gaze dropped from his steel gray polo to the counter. Oh, for the days she dared imagine the opposite sex naked. “Coffee.” That was good. Normal sounding. If you didn’t count the frog-like timbre of her tone. She cleared her throat. “Scones.” She waved a hand over one of the pastry cases that her boss, Jessica, worked so hard to fill.

“Why do you suppose he’s here?” Rose, never shy, asked the room, shuffling her feet beneath the table. That woman never sat still.

“Maybe he’s lost,” Eunice piped up from the window seat.

“Not lost,” the stranger said cheerfully, smiling at Tracy as if they shared a private joke.

The joke was on him. This was Harmony Valley, where people had no respect for personal boundaries and could have taught the FBI a thing or two about interrogation.

“Visiting relatives?” Mildred squinted his way.

“Strike two.”

Tracy had never been a believer in eyes twinkling. But there you go. His did. Despite that power-player vibe. Or maybe because of it. Her body felt a jolt of electricity, as if it ran on twinkles, not caffeine.

Old Man Takata held up a chunk of chocolate croissant. “Health inspector?”

“Thank you all for playing.” The newcomer grinned, scanning the menu board above Tracy’s head while the room erupted with speculative conversation.

Tracy felt the urge to apologize for her hometown homies. “We don’t get many...” She searched for the word amidst the nerve-strumming intensity of his very brown eyes. “...strangers here.”

“No worries. I’m a travel writer.” His voice. So silky smooth. Like the ribbon of chocolate Jess put on the croissants. “I’m here for the Harvest Festival.”

If he thought that would bring the room back to normal, he was wrong. The bakery customers exchanged dumbfounded glances. This was what Harmony Valley had been waiting for—exposure. No one really believed it would ever come, because the town had been off the radar for a long time. More than a decade.

When Tracy was a teenager, the grain mill had exploded. To this day, Tracy couldn’t think about her mother and her mother’s co-workers being burned alive without a sickening churn in her stomach. Back then, Tracy had been devastated, too young to understand the ramifications beyond the heart-wrenching grief over losing Mom. Without jobs, the majority of the population had moved away. Those who’d remained were mostly retired. But now there was a new employer in town. A winery, started by Tracy’s brother and his friends. People were returning. New businesses were opening. What they needed were tourists and the dollars they’d bring. What they needed was this man and his readership—whatever that might be.

“Thought I’d come up early,” the travel writer added. “Find a room, and do a story on the town and its winery.”

Mildred gaped. Rose gasped. Phil covered a snort with a cough and received several dirty glances.

Tracy sighed. Yes, there was a story here. Probably too many. There just wasn’t a hotel within a thirty mile radius. Rumor had it the Lambridge twins were going to open a bed and breakfast—next spring. Mr. Travel Writer wouldn’t find a room this week unless he wanted to bunk with Mildred.

“A travel writer.” Mayor Larry stood in all his tie-dyed dignity, tossing his gray ponytail over his shoulder and approaching the counter. “Welcome, welcome. I’m the mayor.” Larry gave the town council the high sign—a repeated head tilt toward the door, as in: emergency meeting needed to find the travel writer a place to stay.

But Rose only had eyes for the newcomer, Mildred was legally blind and Agnes was digging in her purse.

Larry pumped the travel writer’s hand as if he drew water from a well. “Why don’t you sit down and let Tracy bring you some coffee and a scone?”

Tracy held her ground because Mr. Travel Writer didn’t seem like the black coffee type. If she had to guess, she’d go with a shot of espresso with a splash of half and half. Besides, the hunky travel writer hadn’t accepted Mayor Larry’s offer.

“The town council meeting will start in five minutes,” Agnes said, proving she’d received the mayor’s message after all. “Phil, you’re on the agenda today.”

Phil, the town barber and the Lambridge twins’ grandfather, glanced up from the checkerboard. He was the one person in the room who hadn’t been staring at their visitor, most likely because the guy had crisply cut hair and no need of a visit to Phil’s barber chair. “But my game—”

“Can wait.” Mayor Larry grabbed Phil’s spindly arm and helped him up.

Agnes, Mildred and Rose mobilized. The fire-drill search for a hotel was in full swing.

“It’s not even Tuesday,” Phil wailed, referring to the town council’s regular meeting day as he allowed Larry to lead him out the door.

And just like that, the morning rush was over.

From his playpen, Gregory gave one of his happy-to-be-alive shouts. Eunice leaned over and quacked at the baby, eliciting giggles from Jessica’s son.

Chocolate croissant eaten, Old Man Takata moved into Phil’s spot with a rattle of his walker.

Before Takata could settle in Phil’s seat, Felix executed a three-hop move and grinned. “King me.”

“Seriously?” Takata grimaced.

The bakery quieted enough that Tracy could hear the creak of the oven door as Jess worked in the kitchen. Her speech therapist would have encouraged her to start a conversation with the newcomer, who still stood across from her at the counter and who looked nothing like a travel writer, not that she’d ever met one before. But all Tracy could think about was how normal she looked at the moment and how that image would shatter if she opened her mouth, how the warmth in his eyes would turn pitying and how low her spirits would then sink.

She said nothing, but her head began to nod as if trying to fill the silence with movement.

“I swear, I showered this morning.” The travel writer tugged the placate of his polo as if airing out his shirt. “I’ve never emptied a room before.”

“It wasn’t you,” Tracy fibbed. Good. Very good. She could appear intelligent. If she could just get a handle on the nervous head nodding.

“That’s what my last girlfriend said.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

Was he flirting with her?

Tracy used to love to flirt. She used to be the Queen of the One-Liners, the Princess of Comebacks, the Junior Miss of Verbal Jousting. Now she was just a head-nodding simpleton. “Latte? Sssss-cone?”

His smile softened like chocolate on a warm spring day. He probably thought he was so gorgeous he made her tongue-tied.

Little did he know, Tracy’s tongue was permanently in knots.

* * *

“YES TO BOTH latte and scone.” Chad introduced himself and smiled at the pretty, petite blond behind the counter. He’d spent the past month relearning the feel of lips curving upward over his teeth, the deep sound of his own laughter, the subtleties of a nuanced joke.

He’d slept in, eaten junk food and driven up the western coast from California to Canada and back again with a laptop, a small suitcase and the box he’d taken with him from the office in his trunk. He’d enjoyed the culture, sophistication and women the cities of Portland and Seattle had to offer. It wasn’t until he’d returned to an empty penthouse in San Francisco that he’d remembered the story lead sheet and thought about what was next for him.

The choices he faced...

He could freelance or write for someone else. He could work in editorial for another publication. Or he could start his own travel magazine—one tailored to other happy bachelors. Take his relearned smile and remembered laugh and be so successful Barney and the Lampoon and the father he’d buried would regret letting him go.

And didn’t that bring a smile to his face?

According to his research, Harmony Valley had nearly been a ghost town until a winery begun by dot-com millionaires had breathed life into it. A winery founded by wealthy bachelors in the middle of nowhere? Now, there was a story. The “why” behind it intrigued Chad. What did this small town have which made it special to three single men? The buzz was the town may be barely breathing, but it abounded with quirky traditions it was loath to give up.

So here he was in Harmony Valley for the Harvest Festival, hoping he wasn’t too late and could beat the Lampoon to the story. He’d landed on a new name for his column and had the Happy Bachelor Takes a Different Path website all set up with content loaded from his experiences in Portland and Seattle. All he needed to do was press publish. But first, he needed a strong lead article. Something that set this phase of his travel life apart from the previous thirteen years.

Yep, here he was in Harmony Valley, the smallest small town he’d ever seen, looking for a unique experience for bachelors. Only problem was: he didn’t write about small towns. He wrote about hip and happening urban locations that hip and happening urban bachelors wanted to visit.

This was...

Shades of his elderly parents.

Harmony Valley might just as well have been a retirement community. He’d seen a few people walking around—all white-haired, wrinkled or balding. He’d driven a circuit of the downtown blocks a time or two—there were only a few each way. There were more empty buildings than businesses. And this was the only bakery.

He glanced around. Where was the local sheriff? Where were the local trades? Where were the moms coming in to get a morning dose of caffeine after dropping off their kids at school? Where were the singles setting up shop for an hour or two to get work done and perhaps meet someone?

They were all conspicuously absent.

Still, Chad soaked in the ambience that was Martin’s Bakery. In a way, it had the hidden-treasure vibe his Lampoon readers appreciated. A window seat with a deep cushion and pillows, a collection of tables and mis-matched wooden chairs that looked as if they’d been here for a century. The yellowed photos of bakery workers hanging on the wall seemed to prove that point. Dark brown beadboard trim was capped with a chair railing on the side wall. Three bakery cases made an L shape in the space. A large chalkboard hung on the wall behind the register. The daily special: pumpkin scones. And the coffee... Chad breathed in deeply. The coffee smelled rich and fresh, as if it had just been ground for him.

So maybe the people weren’t hip. Gray and white hair, walkers and canes, polyester pants and orthopedic sneakers. At least they looked healthy. And maybe they weren’t happening in the where-it’s-at sense. The two old men reset their checkerboard instead of an online game. But they had a certain spunk. He just wasn’t sure what Harmony Valley offered made for a good first column to launch his online travel magazine.

Chad claimed a table next to the old woman quilting in the window seat. There was a crib beside her with a cooing baby. She had the air of a talker, and Chad needed details to decide if this story was worthwhile. There was still time to drive to San Francisco for the Union Street Wine Walk or Monterey for a celebrity golf event.

The old woman’s hair was an unusual color, a purplish-gray more suited to the alternative scene in Soho than a remote corner of Sonoma County. She wore bright pastels—pink, yellow, lime green. The kind of colors he associated with spring. Her complexion was free of age spots and had a healthy pink glow.

She glanced at him over the edge of her black-rimmed readers, much like a chaperone making sure he behaved at a middle school dance. “We don’t get too many drop-ins this far out from the highway, especially not writers.”

“I’m looking for undiscovered gems.” Rare, those gems. And the places that weren’t jewels? The dud locations he’d written about in the past were among his most popular columns at Bostwick Lampoon. Currently, the town was more dud than diamond, which cheered him up.

“We’ve always been a gem.” The old woman stared at him, as if they were playing a game of who would blink first. “The winery is changing things here.”

“For the better?” A sly opening in case she didn’t want Harmony Valley to change.

“Yes.” She gazed down at the baby, who gripped his toes and crooned softly. “Before the winery came to town, I’d never seen a baby born. And I’d never imagined such a beautiful creature would be the result of the horrors of childbirth.”

Chad opened his mouth to reply, but said nothing. Was the baby hers? She had to be staring down eighty. His parents had had Chad in their fifties—late, but not this late. The old woman should have thought this through. Parents needed to be young enough to keep up with their kids.

She didn’t notice his doubt. “I mean giving birth... The pain and the bl—”

“Eunice.” Tracy delivered Chad’s order with a warning for his talkative neighbor. Her shoulder-length blond hair was just-out-of-bed tousled. Her bright blue eyes reflected both intelligence and vulnerability. “We agreed. Childbirth details. Are not. Bakery. Appropriate.” Tracy blew out a breath and turned to Chad, avoiding eye contact by looking at his shoulder. “Anything else?”

He brushed at the cap of his sleeve and whatever it was Tracy saw there. “No, thanks.” He was grateful she’d saved him from the details of childbirth no bachelor wanted to hear. “Is the baby yours?” Because despite it being medically possible for it to be Eunice’s, he sincerely hoped—for the child’s sake—it wasn’t.

“The Poop Monster?” Hands up, Tracy backed away. “No.”

“Gregory is Jessica’s. She’s the owner here. I’m his godmother.” The pride in the old woman’s voice was unmistakable. “Isn’t he the most perfect baby you’ve ever seen?”

Chad leaned in for a closer look. Gregory paused in playing with his feet to stare back. He must have decided Chad passed muster, because he gave him a drooly smile that plumped up his already chubby cheeks. As babies went, the Poop Monster was cute and practically the only town citizen not to run at the sight of him.

Gregory kicked his feet and made a sound like a small motorboat.

“He likes you.” Eunice’s gaze turned to Chad and speculation. “Do you like babies? Are you married?”

“Eunice!” Tracy froze mid-turn. She had tentative curves, as if she’d recently gained or lost weight and couldn’t decide if she was going to gain or lose more.

“I don’t mind questions.” Questions led to conversation. Chad liked to get the measure of a town. But he couldn’t seem to get a bead on Harmony Valley. Or Tracy.

“Good.” Eunice removed her glasses and deposited them on her head, fluffing her purplish curls into place around them. “Men always ask about jobs. We women need more important information. Where are you from?”

“San Francisco.” Who knew for how long. The penthouse he’d shared with his dad, once filled with hospital equipment and round-the-clock nurses, seemed more like a mausoleum than a home.

“Welcome to Harmony Valley.” Eunice leaned forward, opening her eyes wide and blinking slowly in a way that was oddly hypnotic. “Are you or have you ever been married?”

“No.” Wait a minute. Chad sat back in his chair. He was always looking for an angle on a story, asking personal questions in a way that didn’t intimidate, not the other way around. “How’d you do that?”

“It’s my eyes.” Eunice blinked them in rapid succession. “They’re violet, just like Elizabeth Taylor’s. I’ve been told they have special powers.”

Shades of retired superheroes. Chad almost laughed. Almost, because her stare had worked on him.

“It’s the shock.” Tracy picked up a rag and spray cleaner, along with a gray tub for dirty dishes. “Of all that purple.”

Eunice harrumphed, as if used to Tracy’s teasing, and then fluffed her hair again. “Where is Jessica? She promised to try one of my mother’s recipes. I don’t see Horseradish-Doodles in the case.” She stood, smoothing her pink polyester pants and setting the orange and navy quilt pieces aside, and then she marched toward the kitchen with a sly half glance at Chad. “Watch Gregory for me, will you?”

“Let’s pray...” Tracy’s back was to Chad as she cleared a table in the corner. “That we never sell Horseradish-Doodles.”

“Horseradish-Doodles.” Chad had traveled all over the world. To the dirtiest dives and the most luxurious five-star establishments. He’d never heard of Horseradish-Doodles. “Is that a salty snack or a cookie?”

“Who knows?” Tracy shuddered.

Chad made a mental note to include Eunice and her Horseradish-Doodles in his piece.

In the playpen, the baby’s kicks became more violent. He gave a little shout.

“Gregory wants you to pick him up.” Tracy didn’t turn around.

“I’m not sure that’s wise.” Chad didn’t do babies. He’d heard there was a trick to it—picking them up, holding them, changing their diapers.

The old men playing checkers chuckled.

“Ah.” Tracy turned and stared at Chad’s shoulder once more. “You’re one of those bachelors.”

Intrigued as to how she’d lump him, Chad pretended ignorance by taking a sip of his latte.

“You’re afraid babies are contagious.” Tracy’s smile. It was honest and mischievous. It hit Chad in the gut, warming him quicker than his latte.

Gregory shouted louder. Chad ignored him, trying to dissect the appeal of Tracy’s smile. He liked women with sophistication and polish. Tracy didn’t wear any makeup. Her black A-line apron wasn’t sophisticated. She was as simple and homey as the town seemed to be.

Seemed? Nothing was as it seemed in Harmony Valley.

Someone called for Tracy in the kitchen.

“Go on. Pick him up.” Tracy carried her loaded tray toward the swinging kitchen door. “He won’t break.”

“You’re leaving him with me?” Chad could be a kidnapper or a child molester. He could grab the kid and be out the door before the checkers champs could say, “King me.”

“Thirty seconds.” Tracy disappeared through the swinging kitchen door. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she’d been grinning.

Gregory shrieked, a test run to a full-blown tantrum, for sure.

The old men chuckled some more. Feminine laughter cascaded from the kitchen. These people didn’t think he could do this.

Chad could pick up the kid. He could change a diaper. He’d changed them for his father. He’d changed so many he’d vowed never to change a diaper again.

He bent over the edge of the crib, getting a more pungent whiff of the Poop Monster. “You don’t want me, kid.”

Gregory grinned and drooled. But when Chad didn’t pick him up, he kicked out again, blinked like Eunice and then shrieked.

Chad felt as if he was being studied, tested and stalked. By a baby. Not to mention the women in the kitchen.

Gregory gave another shriek, and then his lower lip began to tremble and his eyes to water.

“Don’t do that.” Chad reached for the kid. “They’ll think I’m torturing you.”

Before his hands reached Gregory, the kitchen door swung open. A woman with an olive complexion and a thick, dark ponytail hurried toward the crib. “Eunice, Gregory isn’t a meter you use to measure a man. I’m so sorry.” She swept Gregory into her arms and spun him around. “Hello, baby mine.”

Gregory rewarded his mother with a round of giggles that eased the tension in Chad despite the awful smell coming from the kid’s pants.

Eunice returned to the window seat and tsked. “I had such high hopes for you, Chad.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU WANT ME to ask Leona if that travel writer can spend the night with her?” In the barber shop, Phil Lambridge was beside himself with jealousy. He paced. He paused. He sounded as if he might cry. “Alone? Unchaperoned?”

Mildred clenched her remaining molars together so she wouldn’t shout. Phil was a traditional man. He was still in love with his ex-wife twenty years after she’d divorced him. Mildred wanted to tell Phil to get over it and take one for the Harmony Valley team, to man up and do the right thing. But what good would it do? Phil would still be jealous and still walk on egg shells around Leona.

Rose flitted about the narrow shop. “We need a hotel room for that travel writer. Your granddaughters are going to open a bed & breakfast in Leona’s house anyway come spring.”

Agnes sat in one red barbershop chair, nodding in agreement. Larry sat in the other red chair, nodding in agreement. Mildred sat on her walker just inside the front window watching Phil angst and pace. Phil was a tall, gangly man with limbs that moved with marionette uncertainty. He was just so...so...ridiculously endearing.

“You know how Leona is,” Phil said. Given her vision challenges, Mildred could only see his sharp nose and chin. Both stuck out stubbornly. “Until those girls sign on the dotted line, that home is Leona’s castle.”

Everyone knew how Leona was. Bitter. Caustic. Penny-pinching. She gave no charity and expected none in return. But she lived in what had once been a mansion in Harmony Valley. She kept up the hundred-year-old Victorian like a showplace. It was their only chance to impress upon the travel writer that Harmony Valley was a good tourist destination.

“You ask her, Agnes.” Phil was a cream puff. It was why Leona had kicked him out two decades ago. She needed a strong man to stand up to her.

Mildred didn’t need a man. But she wanted one. And for some unknown reason, her heart was set on wanting Phil. For the life of her, Mildred couldn’t figure it out. She’d been a race car driver back when men would do anything to keep women off the track. She’d been independent forever. Why did Phil and his gentle ways make her feel as if she was forty again?

“It’s settled then. The town council will make the request.” Mayor Larry could also be filed under “Non-Confrontational Man.” He wouldn’t risk alienating Leona, because she still voted. “Do what you have to, ladies. Phil and I will go back to the bakery and entertain our guest until you come up with a workable solution.”

Phil moaned.

A few minutes later, Agnes parked her late model, faded green Buick in front of Leona’s home.

Mildred got out using the door for support, waiting for Agnes to bring her walker from the trunk. “This is going to be a waste of time.”

“Not necessarily,” Agnes said. “It’s a beautiful home and she doesn’t get to show it off very often.”

“It’s not as pretty as mine.” Rose had a much smaller painted lady, and a history of arguing with anyone who’d listen that hers was superior.

Even with her glasses, Mildred couldn’t see the details on the Victorian, so she couldn’t judge. In her eyes, Leona’s home was a green hulk with white trim that towered over the back fence of Mildred’s small Craftsman-style home. In forty years of being neighbors, she’d heard Leona’s caustic laugh over that fence. She’d heard her sing off-key as she gardened. She’d also heard some searing arguments between Leona and Phil before their official break-up. She’d always be Team Phil.

“How many steps are there?” Mildred’s annoyance increased. Growing old was a pain in the tuckus. Back in the day, Mildred would have skipped up the steps the same as Rose was doing now.

Of course, Rose had sundowning syndrome, which meant when she got tired, she got loopy. Mildred had all her marbles. The macular degeneration was stealing her vision and a car crash decades ago had weakened her knees. But Mildred would take her marbles any day of the week.

Agnes carried Mildred’s walker up the steps in one hand, holding on to Mildred’s arm with the other.

Leona opened the front door and stared them down. “Well, if it isn’t the town council.”

Mildred didn’t need to see details to recognize Leona’s salt-and-pepper hair in its usual tight beehive. She wore a blue dress—and heels, from the sound of her feet on hardwood—and probably had her mother’s pearl choker around her neck. There was no way Mildred was wearing a skirt and heels just to hang around the house. Did the woman never let her hair down?

“Leona.” Agnes had the unique talent of putting both sweetness and authority into her tone. “We’ve come to ask a favor.”

“I will not contribute to the Harvest Festival bake sale.”

It was hard to imagine soft-hearted Phil being in love with this dragon. She hadn’t even invited them in. And Mildred was standing in the brisk morning air with her walker!

“That’s not the favor.” Agnes should have been mayor. There was both respect and determination in her words. Of course, she wasn’t in love with Phil, so she probably had more patience for Leona than Mildred did. “May we come in?”

“If you must, but wipe your feet. I just did the floors.”

Mildred navigated carefully over the threshold, wishing it’d been raining and she’d rolled her walker through the mud. Leona brought out the most uncharitable thoughts in Mildred. Her mother wouldn’t have approved. Of course, her mother hadn’t approved of Mildred racing either.

Leona’s house smelled of furniture polish and disinfectant, sterile and off-putting, like the owner herself.

While Mildred sat in her walker, Rose perched on a black leather wingback chair nearby, unhappiness radiating from them both, like sulky children banished to the basement.

“There’s a travel writer in town.” Agnes shared the antique pink velvet loveseat across the room with Leona. What she didn’t share was Leona’s sour attitude. “You know how important getting the word out about Harmony Valley is.” If they didn’t attract young people to town, Harmony Valley would die with its aging citizens.

“It’s important to some.” Snooty. Leona was snooty. If they’d been in a car race together back in the day, Mildred would have given her a bump and sent her into the wall. “As soon as my granddaughters make me an acceptable formal offer and turn this into a bed & breakfast, I’m retiring to the city.”

Good riddance.

“The thing is, Leona...” Once again, Agnes’ calm voice filled the room. “We need a bed & breakfast for this man now. Today.”

“Until after the Harvest Festival,” Rose clarified, sounding glum.

“You expect me to take in a strange man?”

Mildred nodded. She couldn’t tell if anyone else did.

“You expect me to cook breakfast and clean up after a man who isn’t my husband?” Leona sounded horrified.

Mildred nodded again, trying hard not to smile. Was it wrong to hope the travel writer was a serial killer? A grin escaped, because she knew it was wrong and highly unlikely. Mildred revised her hopes from serial killer to him being someone who talked loudly all the time on his cell phone. She hated that.

“We also expect you to charge him for his stay,” Agnes pointed out.

“Nine nights, I figure,” Rose said gloomily.

It was the first time Mildred could remember Leona being speechless.

* * *

THINGS HAD SETTLED down since the baby test.

Jessica had taken Gregory into the kitchen alcove for his mid-morning feeding. Eunice was sewing in the window seat. The checkers match was still going on. And Chad was busy tapping away on his phone, no longer interested in Tracy’s existence.

Tracy condensed inventory in the bakery case, content with the silence and the lack of male attention. She was becoming good at being invisible.

The mayor and Phil returned.

Phil looked pale and more unsteady on his feet than usual. “You didn’t wait for me, Felix?” He pulled up a chair to the checkers match.

“Checkers wait for no man,” Felix said, absently brushing cat hair off his black T-shirt. He rescued cats and never showed up anywhere without a sprinkling of hair on his shirt.

Mayor Larry claimed a seat at Chad’s table and introduced himself again. “Who do you write for, Chad?”

“I’m launching my own online travel magazine.” There was a hard note to Chad’s voice that contradicted his easy smile. “Until recently, I was editor-in-chief for a national magazine and sometimes I wrote for a couple of national papers.”

Several heads swiveled in Chad’s direction. If Felix’s sage nodding was any indication, the mention of a couple of national newspapers had earned Chad some of the points he’d lost by not picking up Gregory.

Meanwhile, Tracy’s stomach did a barrel roll. Chad was handsome. He was successful. He had a shiny red sports car parked out front. She bet he’d never been phased out of a job. She bet everything he’d ever wanted had been within his reach. She bet that’s what she used to look like to the world—attractive, successful, on top of the corporate food chain. And now...

She gripped the hem of her canvas apron. She’d been back home since spring and had only made halfhearted attempts to land jobs in her field, most of which had ended with stilted telephone screening interviews and form rejection letters. Was she ready to get back out there and be rejected?

No. The bakery case glass needed cleaning.

Soon “out there” might be here in Harmony Valley, which would be fantastic for the town and her brother, Will, who’d risked a lot of money investing in the winery.

Mayor Larry straightened his tie-dyed T-shirt, nearly beside himself with the excitement of a national newspaper contributor in their midst. “Once you get settled, we’ll take you on a long tour of the town and the surrounding sights, and give you some local history.” He embellished the upcoming experience. There wasn’t enough to see or hear about Harmony Valley for it to be a long tour. “We’ll also arrange for some time at the winery and a private wine tasting.”

Tracy tugged her cell phone out of her back pocket and searched for Chad Healy. Results came up right away—not as Chad Healy, but as Chad Healy Bostwick, the Happy Bachelor On the Road. He’d authored a long list of columns. He’d worked his way up the ranks at the spoof magazine his father had started to become editor-in-chief and acting CEO, parting ways after his father’s death.

She skimmed some of his articles. His posts were well-crafted. Chad had a gift for a clever turn of phrase. A theme emerged. Sarcasm, satire, ridicule. Not surprising, given the title of his column and that he’d written for the Bostwick Lampoon. No place seemed safe from Chad’s scathing commentary. Harmony Valley was a sitting duck.

Chad. Handsome, witty, nationally syndicated newspaper–worthy Chad. He hadn’t come to rescue them. He could incinerate the town’s revitalization efforts with a few strokes on his keyboard, ruining Will’s winery in the process.

Who could she tell? Will was on his honeymoon.

“Larry?” Tracy forced a smile. “Can I talk to you?” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Alone?” Before you invite Benedict Arnold into our midst?

“Not now, Tracy.” The mayor waved her off, and then thought better of it. “Tracy, can you call the winery and make arrangements for Chad to have a private tasting?” Mayor Larry used his politician’s voice—equal parts self-importance and condescendence. “Tracy’s brother owns Harmony Valley Vineyards.”

“Part-owner.” Along with his friends Flynn and Slade. But Tracy wasn’t calling anyone until she sent out the SOS to the mayor. She tried again, adding a hand wave. “Larry...”

“I’ll have another coffee, Tracy,” Larry said firmly. “Bring Chad another...latte, was it?”

Chad nodded.

Tracy shouldn’t care that Mayor Larry was digging a hole for himself. She shouldn’t care that Chad would take whatever the innocent folk in Harmony Valley said and twist it around to make him look clever. She shouldn’t care that he’d make fun of her hometown traditions, like pumpkin bowling for the harvest queen crown. They were silly traditions.

But she did care.

Harmony Valley may be off the beaten trail, old-school and homey, but it was Tracy’s trail. Her old-school. Her home.

She planted her sneakers firmly behind the counter and glared at the enemy as she made his latte, because she knew Mayor Larry wouldn’t listen to her. Not when convincing required quick, smoothly spoken words.

A coffee and a latte later, Agnes, Rose and Mildred entered the bakery.

“Good news.” Agnes was all smiles. “We’ve secured our visitor a room at the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast. Welcome to Harmony Valley.”

Who said Harmony Valley wasn’t progressive? Just this morning there’d been no B&B in town.

Wait a minute. Lambridge? Tracy glanced at Phil. That meant...

Eunice’s penciled-in eyebrows rose, as if she was just catching on, too. “But—”

“Leona Lambridge is the proprietor,” Agnes cut Eunice off, looking as calm as if she lied through her teeth every day of the week.

Leona Lambridge was also the town killjoy. She’d never bowled for the pumpkin queen crown. She didn’t even hand out candy on Halloween!

Maybe not such a good idea to book Mr. Sarcastic there. “Hey...uh... Agnes...”

Agnes paid no heed to Tracy either. “She’s expecting you,” Agnes said to Chad. She proceeded to introduce Chad to everyone in the bakery.

“Are there other hotel choices in town?” That tone of voice. It said Chad was suspicious. It said he’d love for something hinkie to be going on.

Was it wrong to think Chad’s intelligence was hot when he was the villain here? Probably about as wrong as Tracy thinking she might actually help save the town.

Save it? Who was she kidding? The only people the older town residents listened to were their doctors, and that was only half the time.

To her credit, Agnes’ smile never wavered as she answered Chad. “At the moment, the Lambridge B&B is our only offering.”

Rose was doing a slow grapevine in front of the pastry case, eyeing the scones that she’d passed on earlier. “You’ll find a great many painted ladies in town, not just the Lambridge place.”

Phil made a hacking noise, as if he was coughing up a hairball.

Mildred had planted her walker seat by Phil’s table and seemed lost in thought as she stared at the back of Phil’s head, perhaps pondering the need for a slap to dislodge that hairball of Phil’s.

Rose held a pose at the end of the bakery case, an aging ballerina poised to leap in cargo pants and hiking boots. “You’ll be here ten days, correct?”

Ten days? They were doomed.

The mayor jumped back in the fray. “Plenty of time to experience everything that makes Harmony Valley special.”

True that. Special and weird and wonderful.

However, chances were slim the villainous Chad would recognize wonderful if it sashayed up to him and kissed his cheek.

The reputation-ruiner cast a glance Tracy’s way. Could Chad tell Tracy knew who he was?

Would it matter if he did?

CHAPTER THREE

SOMETHING DIDN’T SMELL RIGHT.

And it wasn’t the Poop Monster.

Everyone was suddenly too nice. Too kind. Too helpful.

Had someone researched who he was? The only one he’d seen using a cell phone was Tracy, and no one was paying attention to her. She had a tendency to talk slowly and hesitate over her words. Was that why the mayor had snubbed her? Was that why she lived in such a far-flung location?

The need to defend Tracy rose like smoke from a struggling flame. With a puff of exhaled air, he ignored it.

“Mayor Larry will drive with you to the B&B,” the short, spritely old woman was saying. Her name was Aggie or Agnes or something.

“No need to trouble the mayor. Tracy can show me.” Had Chad just said that? He glanced at the coffee barista. He had indeed.

Tracy sported a horrified look. She skimmed her hand over a bakery case. “I’m working.”

“I’ll cover for you.” Eunice leapt to her feet without so much as a quiver of her purplish-gray curls.

“But...” Tracy glanced at each resident in turn.

“You forgot my lumbago, Agnes.” Larry reached for his back. “It’s why I walk nearly everywhere.”

“Sorry, Tracy. We’ve got a game going on.” Felix jumped a checker. “King me.”

“No license,” Phil grumbled. “No car. No ride for the playboy.”

A chorus of “Phils” echoed through Martin’s Bakery.

“Doctor’s appointment.” Mildred sighed, although how she could see the road through those thick glasses was beyond Chad.

“Driving her,” Agnes/Aggie said, explaining everything.

“Riding shotgun.” At least Rose had the courtesy to look apologetic as she twirled slowly in the corner.

Everyone else looked as if they were happy to shirk tour guide duty.

And inexplicably, Chad was okay with that. He smiled at Tracy. “I did shower today and use deodorant. Scout’s honor.”

Tracy studied him as if he was an overpriced used car, one with high mileage and no warranty.

He studied her in return. That tousled hair. That determined jut of her chin. It was weird. Just looking at her made him want to smile. That was the point of his new life, wasn’t it? He smiled.

“Fine,” Tracy grumbled. “But I’m driving.”

“What?” Chad’s gaze bee-lined to his beloved sports car.

“It’s settled.” Agnes/Aggie clapped her hands.

A few minutes later, he and Tracy stepped out on the brick sidewalk. Harmony Valley could have served as a backdrop for a Norman Rockwell painting. Old fashioned lamps lined Main Street. The buildings had brick fronts and canvas awnings. The wind blew brown and orange leaves down the road listlessly, as if even the elements knew the pace here was slow. Tracy zipped up her tan jacket against the autumn chill, and then extended her palm. “The keys.”

“To my car?” He glanced at his cherry red convertible and gripped the key in his hand. He’d ordered it custom from the factory. No one had driven it but him since he’d bought it. It required nimbleness to get in and out of. Neither a walker nor a wheelchair could fit in its trunk. “How about you sit in the passenger seat and I drive?”

“Nope.” She made the gimme motion with her hand and spoke slowly. “I had an accident...” Each word she spoke was labored. “I was in the...side seat.” She scowled, clearly not pleased with her word choice. “I don’t know you. Or how you drive. Or if I can—”

“You can trust me.” He gave her the grin he’d used to charm his mother’s friends when they’d come over to play Bunko. “I’m a good driver.”

“Don’t. Finish. My sentences.” She glowered at him. As glowers went, it was cute.

Chad’s father had been the King of Glowers. Until the last six months of his life when he hadn’t glowered at anyone. Dad’s soul, his personality, his very being had slipped away, leaving Chad to wait until his body gave up, as well.

“Give me the keys.” There was a pleading note hidden between the demanding words and the glower.

Chad stared at her, then at the gray-haired audience inside, and finally at his car. “It’s a stick shift.” A lost art form.

“Perfect.” She breezed past him and slid into the tan leather driver’s seat, leaving Chad no choice but to ride shotgun. She held out her hand for the key fob as soon as his butt hit the stiff leather.

He inserted the key in the ignition. “On cold mornings, she’s a bit touchy going into third gear.” He hoped Tracy wouldn’t grind the clutch. He hoped the B&B wasn’t far away. He hoped he wouldn’t regret coming to Harmony Valley.

“I knew it.” She patted the dashboard and grinned. “Midlife crisis.”

“I’m thirty-five. Too young for a midlife crisis,” Chad grumbled.

“Huh. Makes me wonder...” Tracy swallowed, her grin fading as she forced out the words. “What you’ll drive...when the real crisis hits.” She shoved in the clutch and started the engine with a roar. The grin came back. She backed out competently and sent the car forward without so much as a neck jerk or a grinding gear.

Chad’s apprehension eased. “Why do I get the feeling no one wanted to come with me?”

“Leona is... She’s... You’ll see.” Tracy forced the words out like stale dough through a noodle press.

“Are there a lot of young singles in town?” The place didn’t look like it had much nightlife.

She laughed and came to a stop at the intersection of the large, deserted town square. It had a broad expanse of grass and a huge oak tree with a single, wrought-iron bench beneath it. Tracy glanced at him with those clear blue eyes that seemed to see so much. “Agnes is single. Rose is single. Mildred is single. Eunice, too.” She smiled at her listing of old ladies. “Need I go on?”

“Please don’t.” He fought off the thought that he’d slipped back into his parents’ world. No nightlife. No metropolitan eclectic energy. A pace slower than frozen molasses. All these old people. They’d get sick. They’d drift mentally. They’d die. They’d leave behind friends and family with holes in their chests that nothing seemed to fill.

Suddenly, Chad didn’t want to be here. He gripped the seatbelt strap across his chest.

Oblivious to his need to flee, Tracy turned right and continued to drive his car as if it was her own—a bit fast, banking into the turns. It was oddly relaxing—the ride, her youth, the way her hair dipped and tumbled in the breeze. His grip on the strap eased.

“Where’d you learn to drive a stick?” Few people had the skill anymore. His dad had taught him to drive a manual transmission on his 1967 Ford Mustang.

“First, a farm tractor. Then Mildred’s Volkswagen Beetle.” Tracy made another right and slowed down through a residential district.

Single-story ranches and Craftsman-style homes. Dirty windows and peeling paint. Empty driveways and neglected yards. Many seemed abandoned.

The neighborhood was an afterthought relative to the puzzling woman next to him. “Have you always struggled to get the words out?”

Tracy slammed on the brakes, sending the tires squealing, even though they hadn’t been going faster than twenty miles an hour. She gripped the steering wheel and turned to glare at him. “I had an accident.” And then she lifted her gossamer blond hair, revealing a ropey scar on her skull. “I have...expressive aphasia. I’m trying to be normal.”

Chad was beginning to think Tracy wasn’t normal. She was extraordinary.

An aluminum screen door screeched on protesting hinges. An elderly woman stepped out on her front porch in a pink chenille bathrobe and white tennis shoes. Her short gray hair stuck into the air as if she’d rubbed her head against a balloon. “Everything okay, Tracy?”

“Yes, Mrs. Beam.” Tracy glared at Chad, but her voice was sweet as sugar, and didn’t sound forced.

“I could call the sheriff for you,” the old woman said.

“We’re fine, Mrs. Beam.”

“Okay, dearie.” Mrs. Beam went back inside. Her screen door groaned as if it belonged in a haunted house, and then banged shut.

Tracy put Chad’s car in gear and continued slowly down the street.

It was time for a change of subject. “So your brother owns the winery. Do they make good wine?”

“Is your car fast?”

That was a good sign. “Do wine lovers come from miles around to taste their wine?”

“No. They only...soft launched.” She turned to the left and parked in front of a forest green Victorian with white trim and an expansive lawn.

Chad was used to seeing narrow painted ladies in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow district, but this house was easily three times the width of one of those classics. “Impressive.” Why hadn’t the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast turned up on his internet search? It had a great location. It couldn’t have been more than a ten minute walk from downtown. He hoped it was as nice inside as it was out.

Chad made to open his door.

Tracy put her hand on his arm, stopping him. Her touch was soft, personal when Chad had lived an impersonal life for years. “Don’t hurt them.”

“Who?”

“The people here.” She gestured back the way they’d come and then she fixed him with a warning stare. “You’re the Happy Bachelor. Well... Your columns aren’t happy. They’re...they’re...mean.” She made a frustrated noise, slapped her palms against the steering wheel as if unhappy with her words, and then added, “Malicious.”

Chad fell back against the seat. The September sunlight fought its way through the brown and curling elm leaves, but didn’t warm him.

She’d seen his columns. People usually responded in one of two ways to his travel reviews in the Lampoon—love ’em or hate ’em. Put Tracy in the hate column.

Chad’s instinct was to laugh Tracy off, or to tell her to mind her own business, but something about her scar, the way she spoke and perhaps even the way she defended the elderly made him take a different approach. “I don’t attack anyone personally. I write things the way I see them using the irony of truth.”

“They won’t understand.” There was an entreaty in her voice, if not in her eyes, which still promised retribution if he hurt the people in town.

Chad didn’t care if the locals understood or not. Having been raised by parents the age of his peers’ grandparents, he was tired of making concessions for the elderly. This was his time. He’d live life and write columns his way and enjoy doing it. And yet, he didn’t snap at Tracy. “You don’t sugarcoat anything, do you?”

“I can’t.” She opened her door with jerky movements. “Not anymore.” She popped the trunk for him, peering inside at his laptop bag, his travel bag and the box from the office, flaps folded and sealed.

Taking his suitcase and his laptop bag, Chad followed Tracy up the grand walk. Huge trees, lush shrubbery and not a weed in sight. The windows gleamed and reflected the late morning sun.

The front door was open, but the proprietor seemed as closed off as the pilot’s lounge at an airport. Salt and pepper beehive hair. A blue dress that hung awkwardly off her bony frame. And an air about her that said, “Thou shalt not hug. Ever.”

Chad couldn’t blame the others at the bakery for not wanting to come here. The place and the proprietor were intimidating. Why on earth was this woman running a bed & breakfast?

The proprietress opened the door wider to let him in. The hinges didn’t creak, didn’t groan, didn’t even whisper. It just seemed as if they should have. “Welcome to Harmony Valley. I’m Leona Lambridge.”

Queen of all she surveyed.

She surveyed Chad and, with a turn of her nose, found him wanting. “And welcome to the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast. I’ll show you to your room.” She held a stop-sign hand toward Tracy. “You may wait outside.”

Chad wondered if Tracy’s request to go easy on folks in town extended to Queen Leona.

He doubted it.

“I’ll walk back.” Tracy handed Chad his car keys and then shoved her hands in her tan jacket pockets and headed to the street. The town’s young protector may look waifish on the outside, but Chad suspected she had a core of steel. That scar...

“Mr. Healy.” A royal summons.

Chad turned, and crossed the threshold. The bed & breakfast had been decorated in period style. Antiques. Gilded mirrors. Ceiling medallions. It was spectacular. It smelled cleaner than a hospital room.

“I’m trying a new check-in procedure.” For a moment, the ice queen’s demeanor cracked. “I must find you tolerable and you must agree to pay me with cash or check at the end of your stay.” She gave him a nightly rate he deemed acceptable.

“I’ve got cash.”

“You’ll do.” Her expression turned icily regal once more. She led him to the grand staircase, her back as rigid as a British royal guard.

The floors creaked, but everything was clean. The stairs groaned, but the wood was so shiny Chad could almost see himself in the reflection. When they reached the second-floor landing, the house rattled as softly as a whisper and settled with a sigh, as if it’d been empty too long. It was the most welcome Chad had felt since arriving.

Leona made a noise that seemed disapproving and opened the first door. “This is your bathroom.”

The horror. Chad had to share a bathroom with other guests. The normal traveler would view this as a mark against the place. Chad looked forward to the stories sharing a bathroom with fellow guests would bring. Of course, the stories would have been better if the bathroom wasn’t first-rate. White on white, from the claw-foot tub to the pedestal sink to the penny floor tile and grout. Not a crack or a chip or a stain anywhere.

Leona walked farther down the hall, opening the second door. “And this is your room.”

Chad set his suitcase in the corner. He could tango in that room, even with a king-size four-poster bed and a simple cherry desk and matching chair. The southern-facing window let in generous amounts of sunlight. “This is nice.”

“Nice?” Leona drew back as if she’d smelled the Poop Monster. “Two presidential candidates have slept in this room.” Said with pride and a bit of prickle, as in, “And you, young man, are no presidential candidate.”

As hotel proprietors went, Leona was among the most unwelcome. But that didn’t mean the experience of staying here wouldn’t be first-rate. There was that decadent hotel in Cancun run by a guy who didn’t like anyone. And that luxury hotel in the Rockies. The manager there had carried a shotgun everywhere, safety off. A little bristle in hotel staff added character. Maybe Harmony Valley was worth the trip after all.

“Do I need a password for the internet?” Assuming there was internet.

“The entire town has the interweb. No password required.” Leona may have been shorter than he was, but she still managed to look down her nose at him. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to post something on the Facebook.”

Her comment explained why there was no website for the bed & breakfast. Chad kept his expression carefully neutral. “I suppose.”

“Breakfast is between eight and eight-thirty.” Leona walked toward the door, her steps as crisp and sharp as her words. “Eight and eight-thirty only.”

So rigid. He’d rather eat breakfast at Martin’s Bakery. “I’ll need a key.”

“To your room?” She paused in the open doorway, not even bothering to turn around.

“Yes. And the front door.”

“No.” She closed him in. Her heels echoed in the hallway.

“Not to either?” he called after her, receiving no answer. That’s when he noticed there wasn’t a lock on his door handle.

Chad smiled, got out his tablet and began making notes.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHAT ARE YOU doing here, Sunshine?” Standing in the barn doorway, Tracy’s dad tugged off his work gloves.

“I need to paint.” Every nerve ending in Tracy’s body crackled with tension. Above her, farm tools hung—shovels, hoes, scythes, pitchforks. She indulged a quick fantasy where she chased handsome, villainous Chad out of town with a pitchfork. But fantasies couldn’t calm the need to do something, to change something, to make her mark.

She dug through some cans from the stack that was butted up against the wood wall, trying to decide what colors to use. Since the accident, Tracy painted when she was frustrated. She’d painted the small bedroom she’d grown up in—black walls and ceiling were a backdrop to a colorful, fanciful garden. She’d painted the outside walls of the barn—tomato red with rows of crops along the bottom. Who knew what she’d paint today. Or where.

“Everything okay?” As he came closer, the worry in her father’s voice was palpable. It echoed in the large wooden barn and plucked the guilt chord inside Tracy.

She hated that she made him worry. “I need to paint.” She faced her father, holding her hand out in the same way Leona had to her earlier. Her frustrations rattled unspoken words in her head—helpless, powerless, weak. But she didn’t try to give them voice, because to try to get the words out would just make her feel more incompetent.

If only she could conquer her speech challenges, everything would be all right. The town council wouldn’t dismiss her attempt at saving them. People like Chad wouldn’t ask what was wrong with her. She’d have employers knocking down her door.

“What’s the matter?” Ben Jackson stood as sturdy as ever in a brown corduroy jacket, dirty blue jeans and mud-caked work boots. His blond hair was thinning and faded with gray. Hurt filled his blue eyes. “Do you want to call Will or Emma?”

She shook her head. Her brother, Will, had married her best friend, Emma, last weekend. They were on a three-week honeymoon in Europe. “I. Need. To. Paint.” Oh, the pain of sounding like a slow, broken record. The leaves blowing across the driveway outside moved faster than her sentences.

“Didn’t that last speech therapist say you needed to use your words, not hold them in by painting?” Her father disregarded Tracy’s attempt at boundary setting and drew her into his arms. He smelled of corn husks and dirt. The comforting smells of her childhood.

Tracy squeezed her eyes shut and clung to him, fighting the frustration of Leona’s rejection and the nebulous threat that was Chad. She wanted to be the town motormouth. She wanted to shout streams of words with barely a breath in between.

Dad patted her back. “Let it out, Sunshine.”

In her father’s arms, she was safe. He was her magical rabbit’s foot. The words spilled forth easier than if she stood alone. “I want to be able to argue again.”

“With Will?”

“No.” She rested her cheek on Dad’s shoulder and stared at her great-grandfather’s tractor. Life would be so much easier if she didn’t want anything, if she didn’t long for more. “I want to argue with everyone.”

Her father chuckled. “So like your mother.” He kissed the top of her head. “Impatient. Railing at the world.”

She admired so many things about her dad—his work ethic, his ability to keep Mom relevant, his refusal to hold Tracy during a phone interview she’d had last month. She’d wanted his arms around her so she could talk smoothly. He’d argued, “They have to want you for who you are, warts and all.”

Tracy sighed. “I’d love to rail at the mayor and the town council and Leona and Chad.” Why couldn’t she say a sentence like that when she stood alone?

“Chad who? I don’t know any Chad.” Oh, how overly protective Dad got when it came to Tracy and men.

“A travel writer who came to the bakery today.” She batted his shoulder playfully, willing herself to lighten up, too. “He makes fun of people for a living. No one would listen when I tried to warn them.”

“A bully.” Dad’s tone mellowed. “You never had much patience for bullies. And if people don’t listen, it’s their fault.” He put his hands on her shoulders and set her away from him. “You weren’t meant to be a coffee barista, Tracy. You weren’t meant to hold on to your dad to be able to get words out. You need to knuckle down and figure this thing out.”

“Dad.” Were all parents the voice of one’s conscience? Tracy knew he was right. She needed to take charge of her life, but she was tired of failing, tired of the grand series of experiments to help her regain verbal normalcy. So she said sullenly, “The doctor recommended I slow down.” Like it was the doctor’s orders that she return to Harmony Valley and keep her mouth shut? She did a mental eye roll. It wasn’t as if she’d pulled a muscle and it needed rest.

“The last doctor you saw told you to slow down and find a job you love. That was months ago.” Dad checked his watch and glanced outside. The days were getting shorter and he always had a lot to do around the farm. “Don’t use me as a crutch. Use that fancy phone of yours to find work that’ll make you happy.”

She’d be happy to land a job that didn’t require a verbal interview. Was that too much to ask?

* * *

THERE WERE NO other guests at the B&B. No cars in the driveway or out back. The big house was silent. No murmur of voices. No scuffle of feet.

If Chad had been a nervous man—the kind that watched too many horror films—he’d have been...well...nervous. Nice quiet town. Welcoming residents. Prickly bed & breakfast owner. No lock on the door. It was a perfect setup for a clichéd slasher film, right down to the pretty girl leaving him at the front door.

But Chad wasn’t nervous. He was driven to overcome the humiliation and betrayal of his father and the Lampoon’s board.

In order to launch his travel review site successfully, he needed interesting places and interesting characters. And he needed them the day after the Harvest Festival, when the advertisers he’d lined up expected his website to go live. So far, Harmony Valley had interesting characters in spades. Inspired, he went in search of his hostess, poking his head in every sterile room downstairs until he found her in the vegetable garden tucked into a corner of the back yard.

Leona wore a broad-rimmed straw hat and had changed from her dress into shapeless blue jeans and a long-sleeve blue chambray shirt. She looked healthy. She hadn’t lost any of her mobility, or—it seemed—her intellect. His mother had been like this when he was in college—stubborn, independent, set in her routine.

Chad hated routine.

“You’ve got quite the green thumb.” Chad sat on a wood bench in the shade of a towering pine tree near the back fence. The wind rustled through the needles above him. He snapped a picture of the house with his phone.

Leona didn’t acknowledge him in the slightest. Hale and hearty, she dug her trowel in the rich brown soil and popped out a weed, root and all. Her garden was ripe for the harvest—red tomatoes, green bell peppers, green onions and several white gourds.

He decided to test how long and sharp her thorns were. “I hope tomorrow’s breakfast includes a vegetable omelet.”

“You’ll get a meal between eight and eight-thirty, Mr. Healy.” She was as brambly as the blackberry vine in the corner. She continued weeding.

Chad tried again. “There’s no television in my room.”

She dug at a clump of crab grass. “There’s no television in the house.”

Leona was a gift from heaven. His readers were going to love her. Already, Chad could see guys booking the Lambridge B&B months in advance. They’d line up to spar with Leona.

“Do you need something, Mr. Healy?” Down on all fours, Leona glanced at him with a balance of cool rejection and regal regard.

That look said it all. He took a picture of her.

Leona got to her feet quicker than a fighter after an unexpected knock-down. “Did you just take my picture?”

“Yes, I—”

“Perverts and pornographers are not tolerated in this establishment.” She gathered her garden tools with jerky movements. “I’ll expect you off the premises immediately.”

“But...I...” He wasn’t sure how he’d offended her with a photo. Was Leona in the witness protection program? Did she believe pictures captured her soul? “I’m a travel writer. I include pictures of hotel clerks and bed & breakfast owners in my columns.”

She waved aside his statement. “Your profession guarantees me nothing. You can’t snap a picture of me bent over...” Her face reddened. “I will not have my...my...derriere—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down.” He brought Leona’s image to his screen and hurried to her side. “Look. I took a picture of your face.” The queen from another century looking down her nose on her progressive subjects.

She scrutinized the photo and then said somewhat meekly—because she could never truly be meek. “Oh.”

“I would never disrespect you in such a way.” And then he added, hiding a grin, “Ma’am.”

She sniffed. “Best you remember that or you’ll find yourself out on the street.”

Harmony Valley was turning out to be gold. Chad couldn’t wait to uncover more gems. He left Leona and headed toward the town square to do some treasure hunting.

* * *

THERE WAS LITTLE more demoralizing than applying for a job you had little chance of getting.

Tracy had a job search app on her phone. She used it to find two new postings for advertising copywriters in Northern California. A few clicks later and her résumé was submitted.

“Two,” she called to her father, who was tinkering under the hood of his old white farm truck.

He wiped oil from a wrench with a blue cloth. “Are you happy? I won’t be happy until you’re happy.”

“I’d rather be painting,” she grumbled, heading up the drive.

Dad slammed the hood shut. “You know I love you just the way you are.”

Of course he did. But lately, he was like her brother, Will—pushing, trying to set goals for Tracy, wanting her to reach higher. Her family didn’t want her to settle for silence.

Truth be told, Tracy didn’t either. If only getting back on track wasn’t so hard.

She reached the end of the driveway and turned toward the Harmony River bridge and town, pausing to pluck a dandelion from the side of the road. She’d been making wishes on dandelions since she was a girl.

A few minutes later, Tracy leaned on the railing of the bridge and watched the water drift past. That shallow river was like her life. At an all time low and moving slow.

How was she supposed to get a job when she couldn’t string a fluent sentence together out loud?

A faded green Buick pulled up next to her. Mildred rolled down the passenger window in front, her thick glasses nearly resting on her plump pink cheeks. Rose slid across the seat in back and cranked down the other window. Her snow white ballerina chignon had not one hair out of place.

“We’re off to the doctor’s office,” Mildred announced. “Agnes wants to know if you need anything in town.”

Agnes leaned over the center console and waved. “Isn’t Chad wonderful?”

“And he’s not wearing a ring,” Rose sing-songed.

They were trying to fix her up with the wolf in sheep’s clothing? “Not interested. Have you read...his column?”

It was their turn to lack interest.

“A hardworking, good-looking man,” Agnes said. “Who needs to read his column?”

“Don’t set the bar too high,” Mildred advised with a kindly squint in Tracy’s direction. “We don’t get many bachelors your age up here.”

“Better snatch him up quickly.” Rose nodded sagely. “You don’t want to be an old maid.”

“I’m twenty-six.” Hardly over the hill. And certainly not stupid enough to fall for a man who made his living writing a bachelor column.

“We could give you dating pointers.” Agnes chuckled, perhaps realizing how ridiculous Tracy might find that statement. Perhaps not.

The three town council ladies drove away.

If Tracy controlled her aphasia, she’d clue everyone in to Chad’s intentions. If Tracy controlled her aphasia, she’d get out of town. And she needed to get out of town or she’d be an old maid. So she needed to control her aphasia.

She’d been twirling the dandelion. She blew its seeds into the wind and began singing softly. And then louder, forcing the words out, which only made her stumble more.

CHAPTER FIVE

SOMEONE WAS SINGING the alphabet song. Someone who wasn’t five. Someone who hesitated over the letters.

Recognizing that voice, Chad smiled, quickening his pace as he approached a curve in the road.

She’s not the story.

He ignored the voice that usually guided him to the good stuff.

“Now I know my...ABCs.” There was a pause and then a strangled, “Next time. Won’t you. Sing with me.” Tracy made a frustrated sound and shouted, “Nuts!”

Chad rounded the bend. Tracy was leaning over a rail on a bridge. She had her back to him and gripped the railing as if considering launching herself over it.

“Don’t jump,” he shouted, grinning because he didn’t believe she planned to leap to her doom.

“There is no place...” she hung her head “...private in this town.”

“You could try working on your speech therapy at home.”

“I live above the bakery.” Her cheeks bloomed with color and she shuffled her sneakered feet. She looked as if she wanted to teleport to another dimension. “The walls have ears.”

The bridge was a narrow two-laner with a silver metal railing. It spanned forty feet. Both banks were thick with foliage and trees that created a shady oasis. But in the center of the bridge it was sunny and Tracy’s hair was almost as yellow as the T-shirt beneath her tan jacket.

Again, he recognized this wasn’t the story he needed. Again, he walked toward Tracy, stepping onto the bridge.

She eyed him expectantly, waiting for him to say something.

“You have a nice singing voice.” He should have kept silent. Silence had served him well at the Lampoon. Silence created spaces others rushed to fill. But silence lacked the smiles and laughter and jokes he’d missed. “It’s the truth.” May as well fill the hole he was digging with her with something.

“Truth?” Tracy fixed him with a look that said she recognized what he was filling that hole with. “You introduced yourself as Chad Healy. Not Chad Healy Bostwick.”

“Healy is my legal name. My mom was angry with my dad the day I was born. She left his name off the birth certificate.” And she’d been angry with Dad the day she’d died, furious that he’d never given up cigars and had developed cancer. After reading his father’s last wishes concerning the Lampoon, Chad could understand how she felt.

With a wave of her hand, Tracy let the issue of his name drop. “What are you doing out here? Did Leona kick you out?” She didn’t mince words, but she also didn’t seem to realize her speech had smoothed since her acapella performance.

“No.” He leaned on the railing next to her. “I’m searching for the angle I want to take on my story.” Were there more crotchety people like Leona in town? Did it have more to offer than good coffee and reputedly good wine?

“You? Searching?” So much passion. It radiated from the disbelief in her blue eyes to her expressive hands. He never would’ve guessed all that emotion had been hiding behind the black bakery apron. “Your columns slant one way—one way!” She jabbed her finger at him, stopping just short of poking his shoulder. “You put people down. Is that why you were fired?”

The F-word hit him below the belt and shook his ego at knee level. Nowhere had it been reported he’d been let go. The terms of his leaving were part of his termination contract. Sure, some in the press had speculated he needed time to grieve. But no one had guessed the truth until Tracy. “I still own nearly half the company.” He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

His anger didn’t stop her from punching back, saying baldly, “Ownership didn’t stop them from firing you.”

There was a truth for him. “Apparently, my dad wanted to take the Lampoon in a different direction. My services no longer fit what they were looking for.” He hadn’t said it out loud before. The words—though spoken quietly—seemed to ricochet between them like a flat rock bouncing across a smooth river.

“Ahh.” Tracy glanced downstream. “You were phased out.”

“I’m guessing from your tone you’ve experienced this.”

Her sharp nod confirmed it.

“But I bet you weren’t downsized by your father from the grave.” If he’d known what Dad had up his hospital gown, he would’ve walked away six months ago when the old man had gone completely on life support.

No. The thought sickened him. That was hurt talking. Chad had loved his father.

Despite that love being wasted on a man with no heart, he wouldn’t have changed anything he’d done for him in the last year. But he would’ve been better prepared for betrayal. “It’s why I’m starting my own magazine. And Harmony Valley is the perfect launch vehicle.” He hoped.

She’d retreated metaphorically when he’d told her about dear old dad phasing him out, but at the mention of the town she bounced back for another round. “Harmony Valley isn’t what you write about. No nightclub. No spa. No chichi hangouts.”

“So far, I love that it’s different.” Charm, checkers, a cast of personalities. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced there was more than enough to work with here. He might write more than one column.

Tracy frowned at him and half glanced over her shoulder toward downtown, as if thinking about making a break for it.

He didn’t want her to go. “You want to protect the town from me? Convince me it doesn’t deserve a send-up.”

She frowned the way she did everything else—wholeheartedly. Her shoulders rolled toward him, her hands fluttered, her eyes narrowed. He realized why he liked watching her. Every expression was a full-body experience, as if to make up for her brevity of speech.

“I’m not helping you. Ask Mayor Larry or Agnes.”

He shook his head, not calling her out on what he suspected was the real reason she didn’t want to convince him—she’d have to talk—because that was his ace in the hole. With her speech challenges, she’d never win a verbal argument with him. And if that line of thinking wasn’t worthy of an entrepreneur trying to claw his way to the top, Chad didn’t know what was. “The mayor wants to give me the dog and pony show.”

“What makes you think...” Her gaze collided with his, simultaneously suspicious and self-conscious. “I won’t?”

Earlier in their conversation, she’d been more focused on the battle and less on her vocabulary. Now she was very much aware of this war of words and she was back to stumbling.

“Tracy.” He captured one of her hands the way his father used to capture his mother’s hand when he wanted her complete attention. “You’re the only one in town who read my columns. You and I are from the same generation.” And he’d much rather be with her than the mayor. “We’re in the same place in our lives. You know what singles want.”

“We’re not the same.” She tugged her hand free. “You’re having a midlife crisis.”

“We can debate that while you give me a tour.” He grinned. Sparring with Tracy and Leona made him happier than he’d been in a long time. At the Lampoon and at home, arguments had been more heated and with higher stakes.

Tracy wasn’t giving in that easily. She put the back of her hand on her forehead. “So young. It’s tragic. Early midlife crisis. It skews your perspective.”

His perspective was fine. But his job would be easier with an inside track. And she was perfect. There was one angle he hadn’t tried with her yet. “The more I know this place—more than a dog and pony show can tell me—the better chance I have of bringing people to visit your brother’s winery. You want to protect his interests, don’t you?”

Her blue eyes widened. “Dirty pool.” She shook the rail, gripping it with fingers that might have wanted to grip his neck. It didn’t take her long to make a decision. “Okay, I’ll sell my soul to the devil and show you around. But only if I can read your column before you publish it.”

He’d bet she didn’t realize her speech had smoothed out again. Regardless, advanced reads weren’t on the negotiating table. She was just like some of Bostwick Lampoon’s sponsors. At least the advertisers he’d lined up for The Happy Bachelor Takes a Different Path weren’t that controlling. For the first time in over a decade, he had creative freedom. He shook his head.

“Then the deal’s off.” Tracy crossed her arms and settled her hip against the rail for a third round of drawing lines in the sand.

She made him smile and that wasn’t inconsequential in these negotiations. He gave her a once over. Everything about her looked soft—faded blue jeans, yellow cotton T-shirt, a tan jacket with a suede collar. But she wasn’t soft or pliant. She was strong and gutsy. “What are you doing working in a bakery?” She was parked in the middle of a retirement town miles from anywhere.

She bumped her hip against the rail repeatedly as if she was hitting her head against a wall. “Not many ad agencies...hire the speech impaired.”

“Oh, woe is you. That’s no excuse.” He looked her up and down once more. “You’re not disabled. It’d be unfair to pit you against someone with a real speech impediment.”

Her arms waved about. Her feet shifted. Her mouth opened and closed and opened again, but nothing came out.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Chad said evenly. “You’ve been talking to me on this bridge more fluently than I heard you speak this morning.” He reached over and tapped her temple near her hidden scar. “You think too much and about the wrong things, except when you don’t think and then the words tumble out.”

She tried to walk past him toward downtown.

“Hold on. We’re still negotiating.”

She stopped.

And then he realized why. He’d caught her arm and pulled her close.

* * *

CHAD HAD INCREDIBLY expressive brown eyes.

In them, Tracy noted a surprised earnestness.

He stared at his hand on her arm as if he couldn’t quite believe he’d taken hold of it.

She couldn’t quite believe it either. Or the earnestness. He didn’t care about Tracy or Harmony Valley. And he was wrong about her not being disabled, wrong about her speaking easier with him. She’d been struggling the entire time he stood nearby. And now they stood face-to-face, inches away from being kissably close.

Tracy licked her lips and inadvertently stared at his, over-thinking, just as he’d accused her.

Luckily, her cell phone rang and Chad released her. She drew a deep breath, filling her lungs with much needed air.

“Ms. Jackson, this is Sue Gaines from Three Filmers Productions.” The woman spoke with a smoothly modulated voice Tracy envied. “You sent in an application a few weeks ago for a producer job?”

“Yes.” Tracy braced herself for the worst. It was rare for her to get good news about a job application.

“Congratulations. You’ve made the short list of candidates we’re considering for the position.”

“What?” Tracy reached for the railing to steady herself. “No.”

Chad didn’t pretend to hide his curiosity. He tilted his head and contemplated her expression with all the seriousness of a doctor she’d once met at a speech research facility.

“Yes.” Sue chuckled. “For this next round, we’re asking all applicants to create a three minute video segment that tells us who you are. You may feature people and things that are important to you or that shaped who you are. But you must be on screen for at least two of the three minutes.”

On screen? Tracy did a quick visual inventory of her body parts and surroundings, because she felt as cold as if she’d fallen in the river. This was an exercise she couldn’t do. She’d have to turn them down. Responses formed in her head—so grateful, have to decline, chickening out.

Meanwhile, Sue was barreling on quite happily. “You’ll present your video in two weeks to the interview panel in our offices. I’ll send everything you need to know in a confirmation email. Good luck!”

“What’s wrong?” Chad asked when Tracy disconnected the call. “You look like you lost everything in the stock market.”

Tracy shook her head, still feeling cold. “I got a call-back interview. At a film production company.”

“Don’t you want the job?”

“Yes.” Tracy longed for the mental challenge and sense of purpose the job offered. “But...” Be on screen? “They want me to...make a video. About what makes me...me.” That was going to be one quiet film.

Chad shrugged off her fears. “Everybody makes video résumés nowadays. Besides, didn’t you say you used to work at an ad agency? This should be right up your alley.”

“They want me. To be in the film.” Tracy tilted her head back and stared at the sky. It was a clear blue, happy sky. A sky that promised smooth sailing. Not trusting it, Tracy dropped her gaze to her sneakers. “Me. In the film. Talking.” A sense of foreboding crept up her calves like delicate, determined spider legs, threatening her equilibrium. “I’m going to decline.” As soon as Sue sent the confirmation email. Because Tracy had been unable to spit out the words on the phone.

Words spit about her head now: Coward. Fraidy-cat. Spineless jellyfish. Loser.

She hated those descriptors.

Chad bent his knees to peer into her eyes. “You’re quitting?”

Quitter. Yep, that was appropriate, too.

Tracy clenched her fists, hating that label, as well. “At least, I’ll have my dignity...if I bail on the interview. You, Chad the Blackmailer, don’t...have dignity or respect. Certainly not mine.” She dodged around him and his penetrating gaze, heading toward the bakery as she tossed over her shoulder, “Besides...technically, I can’t quit if I’m not hired.” That smoothly uttered sentence was a fluke, just like that job offer. She’d learned not to get her hopes up over flukes. There’d been the copywriting job last month the recruiter said she was perfect for. Tracy had sat across from her prospective boss unable to do more than nod her head and offer monosyllabic answers.

“And here I thought you were brave.” Chad matched her escape pace perfectly, his tone just as hard on Tracy as she was on herself.

“And I thought you were honorable,” Tracy flung back at him. It was easier to argue with him than to deal with the doubts churning in her stomach.

“I have a code. I’ll take that over honor any day.” He hurried ahead, as if he couldn’t wait to get back to the town proper and find that story. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but do you really want to make coffee the rest of your life?”

She didn’t, of course. And that was what was killing her inside.

And then she saw what had him walking so fast. Roxie Knight had parked her old red truck on the corner. The truck bed was filled with small cages. Each one had a chicken in it.

Tracy told herself not to worry. Chickens might be trendy and Chad might be sneaky, but chickens didn’t fly with the bachelor crowd.

CHAPTER SIX

AN ELDERLY WOMAN with short, wiry blue hair in stained blue coveralls and driving around with a truckload of chickens.

This would be fun.

Chad’s inner voice had him veering away from Tracy and the disappointment he felt over her fear of a challenge. He didn’t want to think about Tracy or why he cared what happened to her. He called out a greeting to the old woman, ignoring Tracy’s parting shot of, “Be nice!” and introducing himself.

“I’m Roxie.” The old woman adjusted the hang of her coveralls, wheezing as if she’d just run a race. “You must be that reporter people are talking about.” She tightened a strap that held her cages down with hands that seemed plumper than fit her thin, petite frame.

Interest in a story was elbowed aside by the alarm flashing in his head, the one experienced during years spent raised by elderly parents. Roxie’s shortness of breath. Her poor circulation. Was her skin pale because she didn’t get outdoors? That was the argument his mother had made when Chad had asked her to see a doctor. Too late, it turned out.

“You don’t talk much.” Roxie hit him with a sideways glance. “Are you a friend of Tracy’s? From one of those clinics she goes to?”

“No.” Chad drew back. She thought he had speech difficulties? “I was distracted by all your chickens.” He hoped to be distracted by whatever reason she had a truckload of fowl, distracted enough to ignore what he saw as warning signs in her health.

“I’m taking them to the farmers market. Getting dotty in my old age.” She gasped for breath. “Let too many roosters in the hen house and ended up with too many chickens. Or so my daughter says. She made me promise—” Wheeze. “—to get rid of them all last time she visited.” Panting, Roxie climbed unsteadily onto the rear bumper and untied a small cage with a small blue-gray speckled hen. “The load unbalanced when I came around the corner. I’ve just got one cage too many. Poor Henrietta.” She slumped over the tailgate, balancing the cage on the fender. “Whew. You’d think we were at a high elevation. I can’t seem to catch my breath.”

“Let me help.” He placed a steadying touch at the small of her back. “Give me Henrietta.” Once the hen was on the ground, Chad took Roxie’s hand and helped her down.

Roxie’s was cold. Her grip weak. Up close, her skin had an unhealthy tinge to it.

Mom, you don’t look so well. Let’s go to the doctor.

Tension pinched between his shoulder blades. “You shouldn’t be doing this trip alone.” Roxie shouldn’t be doing it at all. She should be seeking medical attention.

It’s none of your business. That’s what his mother had said. I may be slowing down, but everyone slows down at my age.

He was looking at Roxie, but that didn’t stop an image of his mother’s face from coming to mind and replacing hers.

I could be wrong. I’m not a doctor.

It didn’t feel wrong. And he would have appreciated anyone who could’ve made his mother see a doctor. Maybe then she’d still be alive. Maybe then he wouldn’t be alone and empty.

“I’m glad you offered to come.” Roxie smiled up at him mid-wheeze. “Won’t take more than an hour. My friend Marty says he’ll sell them for me, so it’s just a drop-off.”

“But...”

“Get a move on.” Roxie pressed her keys into his hands, picked up Henrietta’s cage and walked around the truck to the passenger side, huffing and puffing like a six-pack-a-day smoker.

Chad was dumbfounded. This was just like earlier when Eunice and Tracy left him—a stranger—with a baby. What was it about Harmony Valley that inspired such trust in their fellow man? Didn’t they realize the world was a dangerous place?

And yet... His reporter instincts stood on end—this is the story. Chad stood still, rejecting the idea. He didn’t write smarmy, feel-good pieces. He didn’t do good deeds, like pointing out to someone they might be sick. Or driving them to the doctor. There must be someone in town who’d drive Roxie.

Although no one in the bakery had been willing to drive him a few blocks. The only volunteer driver, the petite woman—Aggie/Agnes—was probably still busy taking Mildred to her doctor’s appointment.

Roxie got in with a mighty door slam and a raspy gasp.

The chickens in the back startled, clucked and stared at Chad as if to say, “Get a move on!”

The surreal moment continued to fuzz Chad’s brain and make him slow to react.

Roxie’s plump fingers flapped toward the open driver’s window. “Daylight’s burning.”

Chad climbed in the front seat and inserted the key in the ignition. And then he hesitated, the good Samaritan debating with the good reporter on a deadline. “Before we go, I have a few questions.”

“Shoot.” Roxie rested her arms across Henrietta’s cage and looked at him with faded gray eyes that matched her wiry gray hair and nearly matched the gray tint to her skin.

Her gray skin looked so much like his mother’s the last time he’d seen her alive, Chad felt pressure in his chest, pressure that forced words out in a rush. “Do you live alone, Roxie?”

“Are you asking me for a date?” She snorted and then gasped for breath, pressing a swollen hand over her sternum.

Biting back a few curses, Chad started the engine. It gave a mighty cough that sounded like a shotgun blast, one that shot down the cold-hearted bachelor columnist who wanted to leave Roxie to her fate. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m divorced.” She frowned. “My daughter lives in Cloverdale where the farmers market is.”

“Can you call her?”

Roxie’s eyes narrowed and her pale lips pinched. “If you’re thinking of kidnapping me.” Gasp and wheeze. “You may as well take my chickens. My family has nothing of value to ransom me with.”

Leave it, the reporter in him said.

He couldn’t. Each belabored breath Roxie took seemed as if it would be her last. “I think you need to see a doctor. Shortness of breath, swollen extremities.” He handed her his cell phone, trying to appear confident and commanding, because that was when his elderly parents had been least likely to challenge his decisions. “I’m going to take you to the emergency room. Call your daughter and have her meet us there.”

Roxie gripped his phone. “Is this a joke?”

“No, ma’am.” He turned the truck around, being careful of the chickens in the back. “I wish it was. You share some of the symptoms my mom had.” He spared her a glance. “Before she died.”

“I have indigestion, that’s all.” Roxie moved sausage-like fingers to cover her mouth.

She knew nothing of the warning signs of heart disease. “Maybe. The doctor will know for sure.”

“Has anyone ever told you...you’re the strangest man?”

“I’ve been called worse.” Tracy came to mind—her stubborn chin and disagree-with-you gaze.

“But...I can’t go to the hospital. My chickens...” And there it was. The denial of the need for a doctor. She was just like his parents. She’d probably put off seeing a doctor until her heart felt like it was stopping.

Well, he wasn’t letting another person die on his watch. He’d risk being called wrong and foolish and a meddler. Worst case? He’d pay for her emergency room visit. “I’ll drop off your chickens,” Chad said through gritted teeth. “Call your daughter.”

Surprisingly, Roxie did as instructed. And then she called Agnes to spread the word about the nice young reporter.

Chad may not like small towns much, but he knew how they worked. It wouldn’t take long for this to get around.

Leona wouldn’t bat an eye. Eunice would reassess her opinion of him once more. And Tracy?

Tracy wouldn’t believe it.

That was the only thing that lifted Chad’s spirits through the next few hours.

* * *

TRACY SLIPPED IN the back door to the bakery’s kitchen.

Maybe slunk was a better way to describe her entrance. That’s what deadbeats did, right? They slunk around, avoided notice and didn’t live up to their potential.

Tracy’s potential had been totaled along with Emma’s car in that accident.

She wanted the production job, but she didn’t want to appear on film.

She wanted to prove to Chad she was brave, but she didn’t want to appear on film.

She wanted to feel good about herself, but...shoot and darn. She wanted to veer right, up the L-shaped staircase to her mid-century modern studio apartment, which was way cooler than saying she had simple kitchen cabinetry from the 1950s, pink stucco walls and a pink toilet and tub, accented with pink subway tile. But there was Eunice and her purple curls in the alcove to her left, rocking Gregory between the crib and the shelves with baby toys, books and diaper supplies. And there was Jessica in the large kitchen with its four wall ovens, butcher block counters and a huge island in the middle. The paneling was dark, but windows above the staircase flooded the room with light, leaving Tracy no shadow to slink into.

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