Half Moon Hill (45 page)

Cathy’s eyes lit with delight and Anna could almost see the older woman reliving certain treasured memories. It still made her sad to think of all Cathy had lost, but she was thankful she’d taken her advice, and also pleased that she could bring a little more happiness into Cathy’s life through their burgeoning friendship and now by having her over as her first official guest.

Next week, the Half Moon Bed & Breakfast would open for business. She’d taken out an ad in the
Destiny Gazette
, and her parents would be visiting from Florida, having insisted on being her first paying customers. Duke had suggested they throw a big picnic while her mom and dad were here, and he’d surprised her with beautiful new lawn furniture for the backyard—which he’d built himself in the garage!

Now Amy and Logan, as well as Jenny and Mick, had put in orders for lawn sets of their own. And Rachel had asked him if he could make a crib. And Amy had commissioned a hand-painted sign for the door of the bookshop. And though Duke had told Anna he’d like to start a business rehabbing old homes, after he’d hung up the phone with Mick yesterday, he’d turned to her and said, “But guess I’m a furniture-and-sign maker for now.”

Anna loved seeing Duke eager to put his talents to use and couldn’t believe he’d kept them hidden for so long. And though when he’d first decided to stay she’d thought he might want to look into buying back Gravediggers, or maybe open a new bar closer to home, he said, “Nah, Daisy—turns out a quieter life suits me just fine.”

Anna and Duke no longer felt like outcasts in Destiny—but Anna knew the fact that they both once
had
been outsiders had played a big role in bringing them together, helping them to trust one another, even if Duke’s trust in love had been a little slower in coming. “Men,” she murmured to herself, smiling.

But ultimately, they’d both learned to be brave and had taken steps to move on from the past. And they’d learned that sometimes you had to take chances and just . . . believe.

And Anna couldn’t think of a nicer place for both her and Duke to have landed than the little town of Destiny—a place so welcoming that even two outcasts from opposite ends of the spectrum could find a home here at the very same time they were busy finding each other.

Just then, Erik meowed. And Anna looked down at him. “Don’t worry, just because I’m not fawning over you every second, I still know you’re there.” Erik had just wanted to belong somewhere, too. He just hadn’t been as cautious about expressing it as she and Duke had.

Duke had led Cathy over to the swing now, and Anna had to giggle to herself over how outgoing he’d become lately. They’d head inside eventually, she supposed, but for now, she was content to just bask in the splendor of the moment.

Walking down into the yard, the kitty still curled in her arms, leaves of orange and gold swirling about her feet, Anna stood back and looked at the grand old house that had brought her and Duke together, and thought about how the house was a lot like
them
: It had been in a sad state of disrepair but now had been made into something new.

Then, glancing around, it hit her. She peered down at the cat and said, “I don’t quite know how it happened, Erik, but I have it all. An amazing home, a new business, dear friends, a loving family—and a hot, sexy man who adores me.”

In response, the black cat meowed as if he were protesting, making her laugh.

“Yes,” she told him. “I know. And I have a sweet and wonderful kitty who I love very much, too.”

Anna’s Blackberry Cobbler*

½ cup (1 stick) butter

2 cups self-rising flour

2 cups white sugar

2 cups milk

4–5 cups blackberries (enough to fill pan to brim)

Preheat oven to 350˚F.  Once oven temperature is reached, melt butter in a 9”x13” pan.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, and milk (2% milk is best). The batter will be slightly lumpy. Pour mixture on top of melted butter in baking pan. Do not mix butter and batter together.

Drop blackberries into batter (if more crust is desired, add less blackberries). (Yes, the batter goes in first, then the berries. Don’t worry, when you take the cobbler out of the oven, the berries will be on the bottom and the batter will have formed a crust on the top.)

Bake in preheated oven for one hour or until golden brown.

*Thank you to Amanda Beverly of Joseph-Beth Bookseller in Lexington, Kentucky, for allowing me to use her recipe.

Did you fall in love with Toni Blake’s
Half Moon Hill
?

Then you won’t want to miss out on the rest of her new series set in a beautiful small town with a lot of heart—and unforgettable people.

Keep reading and fall in love all over again.

Welcome to Destiny . . .

One Reckless Summer

Jenny Tolliver’s been the good girl all her life, and now that her marriage has been busted up by her cheating ex, she’s decided it’s time to figure out what life holds in store for her next. She never dreamed the answer would be Mick Brody, Destiny’s number one hell-raiser. He’s exactly the kind of guy Jenny’s always kept her distance from . . . but soon the good girl and the bad boy are caught in a raw heat that’s out of control.

F
or God’s sake—he’d really just had sex with her. With Jenny Tolliver.

He’d known her name
then,
and he knew it now, too. He wasn’t sure why, either time, he’d acted like it was such a mystery. He just hadn’t wanted her to know, he guessed, that he’d even realized she existed. That he’d seen her, when they were teenagers, cheering at high school basketball games in that little red-and-white skirt.
Go Bulldogs—ruff
,
ruff
,
ruff!
That he’d seen her back then hanging out at the Whippy Dip, with guys who were much cleaner-cut than him but who were still probably talking her out of her panties on hot summer nights.

He blinked, still shocked to remember that
he’d
just talked her out of her panties. Well, not talked—no, not that at all. But the result was the same, and something he would never forget. The police chief’s daughter, who had provided him with more than a few teenage fantasies, who he’d been certain would never look twice at him, had just done it with him in the woods.

The wonder of that—and the horror of it—made him drop to his knees on the forest floor and close his eyes. He ran his hands back through his hair, frustrated.

She couldn’t possibly understand what was at stake here, why what he’d just done could possibly be the biggest mistake of his life—and he’d already made more than his fair share. And—realistically—she probably couldn’t be trusted not to tell people she’d seen him, not to tell her father. Mick emitted a huge groan of defeat at the very thought.

Then again, maybe she
wouldn’t
tell her dad. To tell him the whole story would mean admitting to having sex with Mick without having hardly exchanged a word. And why that had happened—why she had let it—he’d never know.

He’d never consciously made the decision to start kissing her, touching her—it had just happened when she’d tried to get past him. It hadn’t resulted from thought—but mere instinct.

He truly hadn’t recognized her at first, but once he’d figured out who she was, something about her had brought out the animal inside him. And there’d been moments when he’d been sure she’d stop him, and other moments when he’d been much more sure she wouldn’t—but he still couldn’t believe the latter had turned out to be true.

Although even if she didn’t tell her dad, she’d surely tell
someone.
She just didn’t have any reason not to.

And then word would get around. And
then
her father would find out. And then everything Mick was trying to do here would fall apart. And he might go to prison, for all he knew—something he should have thought about before he’d agreed to this, but he hadn’t. He might go to prison, and that was only
one
lousy aspect of being found here.

I shouldn’t have let myself be talked into this. I should be at home in Cincinnati
,
having a beer at Skully’s on the corner
,
or watching a little TV before bed.

But it was too late for the shoulda-coulda-woulda thing.

He supposed he should get back to the house. He’d only intended to take a short walk, get some air, clear his head from the troubles between those walls. And then he’d seen someone on the property and his body had gone on red alert—he’d closed the short distance between them without even thinking about consequences, his only thought that whoever it was couldn’t be here. And the truth was, he hadn’t been overreacting. The last thing he needed was a woman trotting around the woods with a telescope that could just as easily be pointed in a window as at the sky.

Which was when he realized the big clear plastic bag she’d been carrying lay right next to him on the ground—she’d been so pissed at him that she’d walked off without it.

And that gave him an idea.

Since he didn’t think Jenny Tolliver could be trusted to keep his presence a secret . . . well, it might be wise to pay her a visit, remind her that he was deadly serious about the promise she’d made.

And in the meantime, maybe he’d sleep worse than usual in that hot little house tonight, because he had brand new problems to worry about.

Or . . . maybe he’d sleep better, because he’d be taking even hotter memories back inside with him.

Sugar Creek

Rachel Farris returned to her childhood home with one mission in mind: get Mike Romo, the local police officer, out of her family’s apple orchard business and out of their lives. However, neither the hunky cop nor the sexy prodigal hometown girl can anticipate the electricity that heats things up whenever they’re together.

R
achel sighed audibly. He was back to being his jerky self, that fast. “No, as a matter of fact, I’m
not
happy. I’m freaking
miserable
, actually.”

“Well, it’s your own damn fault,” he complained.

And that was
it
. She stared boldly up into those dark brown eyes of his, thoroughly disgusted. She’d had it with his rude behavior. She’d had it with . . . everything. “Look, I didn’t want to come here tonight. I did it as a favor for a friend. I don’t even want to be in this stupid town, but here I am, trying to help out my grandma. And now I’ve got
you
, giving me ridiculously expensive tickets and acting like I’m a terrible person every time I see you. Well, I’m not that terrible, Romo. So why don’t you just take your attitude and your blame and your self-righteousness and shove it up your—”

“Stop!” he said then, reaching up, closing his hands tight on her upper arms. “Be quiet! Be quiet.”

At first, she thought maybe he’d heard something outside and wanted to listen. But that’s when she realized he was staring at her lips. And that somewhere during her diatribe his eyes had drifted half shut, while his mouth now fell slightly open. He still had that light, stubbly beard going, and being right next to him like this, she could smell that musky scent again—in fact, it was permeating her senses. He stood so close, just a few inches away. How had she not noticed that until now?

As she’d spoken, her adrenaline had risen, and peering up at him, she heard herself breathing—and
he
suddenly seemed to be breathing pretty heavily, too.

“Maybe we should just do this, get it over with, get it out of our systems,” he said.

She blinked up at him. “Do what?”

And then he kissed her—hard.

His mouth sank over hers with such power that she had to lean into him just to keep from collapsing.

“Oh. That,” she breathed when the kiss ended.

Then she instinctively kissed him again, pressing her hands to his chest. She was a little shocked—by his actions, by hers—but mostly just . . . pleasured.

“Yeah. That,” he said, voice ragged with passion.

After which their mouths came back together, kissing feverishly, and Rachel followed the urge to ease back against his sturdy body, now feeling his kiss . . . everywhere.

Whisper Falls

After a failed big-city career, Tessa Sheridan has returned to Destiny to pick up the pieces. The last thing she expected was to fall for the biker next door! They say that former teen rebel Lucky Romo has a dark, secret past—that he’s trouble with a capital T. But when Lucky invites her into his world, she can’t ignore the sparks igniting between them.

H
oly crap.

She’d been right. This was Lucky Romo! In the flesh! It was a miracle!

Because his family hadn’t heard from him in so long they’d actually feared he was dead. Which was because—uh-oh, she just remembered—they’d also gotten word at some point that he’d joined an outlaw biker gang out west.

Oh boy. Bikers were one thing—
outlaw
bikers were another. Did she have some vile and dangerous criminal helping her look for Amy’s cat? Should she just forget Mr. Knightley and run? Maybe the sense of danger that hung around her neighbor was what had kept her from giving him her name. And if she
didn’t
run, should she tell him she knew who he was?

Before she could think further, the door on the white house opened and Lucky Romo came walking back out—carrying a small bowl of milk in one large hand. Huh.