A Man of Influence

by Melinda Curtis

  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

  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”).

  Books by Melinda Curtis

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  Dandelion Wishes

  Summer Kisses

  Season of Change

  A Perfect Year

  Time for Love

  A Memory Away

  Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  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

  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

  EXCERPT FROM EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE BY LIZ FLAHERTY

  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 ser
vice? 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 beca
use 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.