by Janet Eaves
LOVE in a Small Town
Ladies of Legend Boxed Set
by
Janet Eaves
Magdalena Scott
Jan Scarbrough
Maddie James
Copyright © 2013, Janet Eaves, Magdalena Scott, Jan Scarbrough, and Maddie James
Media > Books > Fiction > Romance Novels
Category/Tags: Contemporary Romance, romance series, small town romance, Tennessee, collection, boxed set, Ladies of Legend
Digital ISBN: 978-1-62237-208-9
Digital release: October, 2013
Editing by TMPress
Cover Design by Calliope Designs
Photos by thinkstockphotos.com, istockphotos.com, dreamstime.com
All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden. This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental. This edition is published by agreement with Turquoise Morning Press, a division of Turquoise Morning, LLC, PO Box 43958, Louisville, KY 40253-0958.
Welcome to Legend, Tennessee–
Where romance lives next door.
Nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the city of Legend boasts of small town pride and southern elegance. Porches are still for sitting and troubles for one family affect the entire community.
Authors Jan Scarbrough, Magdalena Scott, Janet Eaves and Maddie James masterfully weave tales of women from different backgrounds who find home, and their hearts, in this small mountain town.
Come on in! The sweet tea is on the porch. Enjoy the follow stories.
Claiming the Legend, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Janet Eaves
Midnight In Legend, TN, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Magdalena Scott
Bed, Breakfast & You, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Maddie James
The Reunion Game, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Jan Scarbrough
Where Her Heart Is, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Magdalena Scott
Crescent Moon, A Legend After Dark Novella
Janet Eaves
Building A Dream, A Ladies of Legend Novella
Magdalena Scott
Harvest Moon, A Legend After Dark Novella
Janet Eaves
Murder On The Mountain, A Ladies of Legend Romantic Suspense Novel
Maddie James
ABOUT JANET EAVES
ABOUT MAGDALENA SCOTT
ABOUT JAN SCARBROUGH
ABOUT MADDIE JAMES
TURQUOISE MORNING PRESS
CLAIMING THE LEGEND
A Ladies of Legend Novella
By Janet Eaves
For Lilly Peach staying alive means keeping a low profile, blending in, not being noticed. When she fears having been found by those contracted to kill her, Lilly is sent to a new “safe house” in Legend, Tennessee.
The pristine old fashioned streets and genteel southern hospitality of the town’s folks eventually lull Lilly into believing, maybe, just maybe, she can settle in and make a safe and quiet life for herself. But when Legend’s nationally famous high school football coach decides to make her his lady, Lilly is thrown into the spotlight as well, giving those seeking to find and destroy her, another chance to fulfill their contract.
Chapter One
Jill Post stopped abruptly, pivoted backwards around a sharp corner into the apartment building’s shadows, slamming against hard brick wall. Heart palpitating fear choked her, had her glued to the structure’s rough exterior, scraping tender skin from shoulders to elbows. The route she always took home after work had served its purpose. A purpose she had hoped unnecessary, overly-cautious. But instinct had saved her time and again. As now.
Had they heard her?
Seen her?
Each struggling breath hurt, each knocking heartbeat reverberated from chest to temple. Images, one after another, whirled like a kaleidoscope of horror to clash and collide with other older images. Images thought to be long-buried. Now past and present blended in a motion-picture of terror.
She closed her eyes, nauseated by those images, those memories.
Will alone couldn’t push her, couldn’t force her feet to move, to retreat further from the massacre going on just around the corner. Any movement, any stray sound might alert the two men who were creaming names and curses at the homeless man they were beating to death.
Did they say my name? Did they think he knew her? Had she told him her name when she’d dropped him a twenty here and there over the past months?
No! She was imagining it. She had to separate the old from the new. They couldn’t have found her. Not after all this time. Not after she had been so careful.
She tried, but failed miserably to close off sounds she remembered too well: the whack of a hard object meeting flesh, screams for mercy turned to moans, the gurgle of choking, and finally, horribly, the thud of an unconscious body hitting asphalt. She clamped teeth onto her bottom lip to lock in an answering scream.
Run.
She glanced left, then right, searching frantically for a way to escape, but the icy fingers of fear held her frozen in the darkened alleyway. Canyon-carving rivers of blood reverberated through her ears: rolling, crashing, gaining volume with each heartbeat, obliterating all other sound until she could no longer locate the source of danger.
Blouse and flesh ripped as she slid down the wall. Her head spun as she clasped her bent legs for support, settling her bottom on the cold wet ground. She rocked back and forth with jerky movements, fighting the fear. Waiting.
Waiting.
Time meant nothing.
Seconds? Minutes? An hour? How long had she sat there emotionally lost, clutching her legs, waiting to be found?
She’d witnessed torture. Murder. Was that to be her fate, too? Ice cold sweat poured from her body, drenching clothes, chilling her skin. She barely registered the taste of iron hitting her tongue but released the tooth-imprinting grip of her now bloodied lip.
She stayed frozen against the brick wall until the voices and scenes from the past faded completely. Until heartbeats and breathing calmed. Until fear receded enough for logic to kick-in.
Light replaced darkness as dawn broke. A baby cried from several stories above. A woman’s soothing song responded seconds later. Then silence.
Sirens from afar.
The steady beep of a garbage truck in the distance, then moving slowly closer, then moving away until near-silence, then there was nothing but the sounds of an occasional vehicle passing close by.
Move! Pinpricks shot through both legs and feet as she elbowed her way up the wall, forcing her to remain immobile for a minute more. One tentative step, then two, away from the assault site felt like a major accomplishment. The need to run hovered like a monster at her back but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, make a sound. Who knew where those men had gone? Who knew if the man they had killed was their only intended victim or if they would kill anyone in their path? Especially someone who might identify them.
Unless she had been their intended victim all along?
That thought stopped her cold. Then another hit with enough force to make her take a step back. What if the man wasn’t dead, only severely injured? What if this was her fault and he was paying the price?
How could she leave him?
How could she not?
Indecision held her immobile for only seconds before she slumped in defeat. There was only one thing to do. The decent thing.
She had to go back; had to look around the corner of the building to see if the thugs were gone. There was no choice left but check to see if their victim still lived. She hoped with every ounce of her waning strength that the danger had passed. She wasn’t so sure how she felt about the state of the victim.
If he had died she could just leave. Anonymously call 911 then disappear from this nightmare altogether. Just carry on with the life she had so carefully constructed. Or run if that was the only option. If he still lived she would have to become involved. Emergency services would be needed. The police would want to question her, but worse, it could make the press and the men who had done this could hear about it and pursue her.
But no, she couldn’t think that way. There was no choice but to go back, to help if there was still a need. To participate. Anything less would make her as bad as those who’d attacked him.
Damn, how she hated to participate.
Participation would de-construct the life she had spent the last four years building. She would have to start over.
Again.
A new identity.
A new profession.
A new town.
God help me!
****
Lilly Peach.
An odd choice for a new identity, she mused, but one she was determined to claim. The name, like the new town, had an innocent ring to it.
Legend.
Legend, Tennessee. A little corner of Mayberry RFD tucked in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains if the Chamber of Commerce pamphlet was accurate. Of course no town was innocent, just as no person over the age of twelve was innocent anymore.
She had learned that the hard way.
But the drive was just plain spectacular.
Bright, bold colors. Orange and rust, scarlet and plum, pink and yellow from time to time, and the sun shone on and through all those brilliantly dancing leaves sending beams of pure sunshine over the lush green grass. She wanted to concentrate on that, wallow in the sheer beauty of it, not the losses she had experienced or the horrors she had witnessed. Not anything about a past she was resolved to leave behind forever.
Of course she had thought that before back in Grayfield, Michigan, and before that, in Coconut Springs, Idaho. But this time she was going to stay on the down-low, keep to herself as much as possible, avoiding all hints of danger. She would open a small store in one of the many vacant downtown shops the realtor had suggested, being polite but not overly friendly.
She grinned to herself in the visor’s vanity mirror, still somewhat startled by her new reflection, amazed something as small as a nose-job could completely alter one’s appearance. It was a good look, one that eased the extremes of her ethnic heritage and should help her to fit in better in the country setting of middle-America. At least she hoped so.
More than anything she just wanted to blend in. Like the realtor, a Mr. Martin McClain. Though she hadn’t seen him yet, she could clearly picture him. With his musical country twang of a voice, he probably looked like Bo Duke or Luke Duke from the original Dukes of Hazzard TV show she’d watched on CD while waiting for clearance to move. Of course he could look like one of the lesser characters from that show, but that was okay too. He would blend in with his setting, and so would she.
And he’d been incredibly nice, something that was entirely different from the figuratively cold shoulder attitude of many in the big city. But of course he would be nice. He wanted to rent and sell her things. The shop. A house. He’d even mentioned land where she could own horses if she was of a mind. Of a mind. She’d loved that expression!
She had taken him up on the shop, one of many that fronted the bricked Main Street. There had been several available, he’d explained, as Legend was in the middle of a downtown revitalization project. She’d picked one from the town map he’d sent using eeny-meeny-miny-moe.
The store would be her excuse for moving to Legend, should anyone bother to ask. Besides, she had to make a living. The agency only gave her so much to get started on, though she’d been smarter this time. Having learned from past experience she emptied her savings before telling them she might have been compromised.
So she would have things to sell, or would have once she decided what it was she wanted to offer. She’d already used her degree to be a CPA, and a factory supervisor. Crunching numbers was supposed to have kept her hidden. It hadn’t. Working the drudgery of ten-hour shifts in the factory—a job she’d hated—might have, but after being caught up in the limelight of the battered man’s story, her handler, Polly Chapman, had assured her that Legend, Tennessee, was her best hope.
Polly came from Legend. Born and bred as she’d put it. She made Legend sound like paradise. Crimeless short of teenagers drag-racing on Saturday nights, caught and sent home to their parents by a sheriff that knew or was related to each one personally. The officer didn’t even need to carry a gun most of the time. More importantly, Polly assured her there was no safer place on earth for her, and then smiled a funny smile that left her wondering just what was so funny. She hadn’t asked. Just as she’d never asked anything more of the agency than to keep her alive.
Lilly exhaled heavily. She was tired of looking over her shoulder. Tired of running away from the past and toward the forever-unknown. Tired of being afraid that they would find her again and she would have to run again. Or worse, they would finally catch her and make her pay.
“No!”
Lilly closed her eyes for a second, and repeated the word, determined to believe she would somehow find freedom, safety. She didn’t have the ability to live in anger and fear all the time and she had no desire to learn. She would get to this oasis in the belly of the south and she would live, just as she had attempted twice before. Only this time she would succeed.
She just had to.
****
Relief and a sense of awe had Lilly cruising down Main Street five miles below the twenty-five mile an hour speed limit. The Chamber’s pamphlet hadn’t done the town justice. Not even close. She tried to take in everything at once, but there was just so much.
Apparently the town’s restoration had been underway for quite some time as only a couple of the shops had scaffolding. Gleaming plate glass windows and doors broke the continuous line of bricked buildings on either side of the wide Main Street. Along the white-sand concrete sidewalks sat large barrels of flowers in every imaginable color and pattern combination dancing happily in the late-afternoon breeze. Evenly spaced, like soldiers on guard, stood newly planted young trees, their tiny leaves changing for the season, their young trunks anchored with clear plastic coated steel cords against whatever Mother Nature sent their way.
Some of the storefronts had awnings. Probably the ones already occupied, Lilly decided, since the others seemed empty, though it was hard to be sure since the reflection of her car nearly eliminated the possibility of seeing inside.
People, young and old, walked alone, in couples, in family groups, from one shop to the next. Progress it seemed wasn’t a goal, as time after time they stopped to talk to one another or to others they encountered along the way.
It was like nothing she’d ever seen. Like something out of a storybook. Like something she had always dreamed existed, but had never really believed could be real.
And now it was hers.
She would make it hers.
Lilly reached the southern end of Main Street and turned east on First. She passed the feed store and lumber yard, a very large Baptist Church, and then Legend High School where a giant banner across the southern wall declared: Legend Dragons, Four Time State Champions. Duly impressed she pressed on, past highly wooded subdivisions, until she finally came to Lake Road. She glanced at the map she had all but memorized in the weeks waiting for clearance to leave the safe house. She
was to turn left onto Lake Road, a two lane road that completely encircled Legend Lake, meeting the toes of the Appalachian Mountains on the opposite shore.
A huge yawn took her by surprise. She covered her mouth and drove slowly, trying to see the lake between the trees and lakefront houses as the quickly vanishing daylight threw more shadow than light. Determined to check it out in the morning, she focused on her immediate destination, Legend’s Landing Bed & Breakfast. Quickly enough the pristine white picket fence Polly had told her to look for came into view.
She drove on until she came to the appropriately numbered mailbox, then driveway, where double gates stood open. Cautiously she made her way down the long forested lane, struck anew when the yellow clapboard Victorian cottage came into view.
The house radiated welcome with its warm yellow lights burning behind sheer covered windows. The extensively tended gardens and neatly manicured lawn were breathtaking. She shook her head in wonder. It was like something in a Best of Homes and Gardens magazine.
Did the wonders of this place never cease?
Hoping not, she parked and pulled the two suitcases she would need for the next few days out of the back seat. Soon she would have to buy things. A lot of things, for both herself and her business. But for now, for her first night as Legend’s newest resident, she would make do with the little she had been able to bring.
As she made her way to the front door, she glanced back out of habit. Then furious she was still looking for danger in shadows, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scents offered by the array of flowers she’d seen.
The buzz of busy insects, the distant sound of Irish flutes, and the slight chill to the evening breeze, along with slow and measured breaths soothed and relaxed her. That life would not touch her here. She was determined to make a new start. A permanent start.
Fear had no place here. Caution, yes, but not fear. Not the expectation of danger. Not here. Not in this place. Not in her life ever again.
“Hello?”
She was proud she didn’t jump in reaction to the unexpected voice as she opened her eyes to find an attractive woman smiling at her. The woman wasn’t just attractive; she had a glow about her. Neither thin nor heavy, but well proportioned, she had a casual sense of style that Lilly knew she could never pull off. The long billowing skirt and peasant blouse, the large chunky jewelry and bare feet, and the long flowing strawberry blond hair suited her perfectly.