Please Be My Valentine

by Jennifer Wenn

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Jennifer Wenn

  Please Be My Valentine

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  “What?” Leonore squeaked,

  losing her normally soft-spoken, stiff, prim persona for a moment. “Is the storm coming now? I thought you said it wouldn’t be here until tonight!” She glared at Ben, feeling he somehow had misled her, and to her surprise his ears turned a deeper shade of red.

  “You knew the storm was coming earlier?”

  He nodded, again looking like that damn, irresistible puppy. “Sorry.”

  Leonore took a deep breath, not wanting to lash out in front of his big-eyed daughter, who was interestedly following their conversation. “Drive me home. Now.”

  “I can’t. Too much snow already. Sorry.”

  He didn’t look like he was very sorry. Instead he looked almost too pleased with himself, as if his well-laid plan had worked. Now he had her here, he could put her in the dungeon with his other women prisoners.

  He didn’t wait for her to answer his apology. “Kelly, this is Miss Brody, Mrs. Brody’s granddaughter I’ve been talking about.”

  Kelly mumbled something inaudible, which Leonore interpreted as some sort of greeting.

  “Nice to meet you, Kelly,” she offered stiffly, with chattering teeth.

  “You are freezing,” Ben said, compassionately. “Let’s go inside.”

  With an arm around his daughter, he walked out into the increasing snowfall, heading toward the house. With an anguished groan, Leonore slammed the truck door shut before following them, unable to tell if her uneasiness came from being unwillingly trapped here at the Emerson farm or the fact that she felt reluctantly exhilarated about it.

  Praise for Jennifer Wenn

  Jennifer Wenn’s AN HEIRESS IN DISGUISE

  tied for first place in the 2017 IDA Contest

  in the Historical Novel category.

  ~

  “Jennifer Wenn weaves a wonderful story…”

  ~Pauline Michael, Night Owl Romance (3.5 Stars)

  ~*~

  “Very well-written…. The characters are so vivid. They seem about to walk right off the page.”

  ~Maura, Coffee Time Romance and More (4 Cups)

  ~*~

  “The plot, the characters, the love, loss, pain, and just everything about life that we know is out there is blended into the pages almost seamlessly as though they were born there.”

  ~Valkyrie Fatality, Rockin’ & Reviewing (5 Stars)

  ~*~

  “I would definitely re-read it.”

  ~Victoria Lane, The Romance Reviews

  ~*~

  Available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  and written by Jennifer Wenn

  The Royal Family Series:

  A FAMILY AFFAIR

  NEVER HAD A DREAM COME TRUE

  THE BEAUTY OF YOU

  AN HEIRESS IN DISGUISE

  The Barnesville Collection:

  A FATHER FOR DAISY

  ALWAYS YOU

  PLEASE BE MY VALENTINE

  Please

  Be My Valentine

  by

  Jennifer Wenn

  A Barnesville Novella

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Please Be My Valentine

  COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Jenny Wennergrund

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

  Cover Art by Cover Artist

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2018

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1849-3

  A Barnesville Novella

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Stefan — Forever my Valentine

  Chapter One

  “I need a book.”

  Ripping her gaze and mind from the column of numbers she was trying to sum up, Leonore Brody bit back a deep sigh as she recognized the man standing on the other side of the library counter.

  “Ben.”

  He nodded slightly in greeting, his large hands twisting his filthy cap, which caused dirt to fall onto the newly polished wooden counter top. She knew some must have landed on the floor as well. Irritated, she closed the heavy ledger with a snap, ignoring the confused look she got from him and the irritated ones from the disturbed readers throughout the room. She knew she was overreacting—no one had ever died of a little dirt—but lately she seemed unable to stop herself from lashing out. Usually she was the most serene and even person. Or as Paul, her now former fiancé, had called her the other day as he ended their eleven-year-long relationship—boringly frigid.

  “Sorry,” Ben said softly as he followed the direction of her sour stare and noticed the dirt on the surface between them. “I didn’t mean to make a mess.”

  Of course he didn’t mean to. Benjamin Emerson never meant any harm—never had, never would. He was a simple, kind man, living for the farm his family had owned for generations. He was a few years older than she was, but because of the farm work constantly coming between him and his education, they had been classmates her senior year in high school.

  The old Leonore wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but this new, snarky Leonore grabbed a tissue and carefully collected the dirt from the counter before marching over to the broom behind her, the sound of her heels echoing in the large, high-ceilinged room. She clutched the innocent tool angrily and without mercy started to brush the dirt aside.

  “Would you mind?” she snarled as the broom hit his heavy boots, and he took a step back, leaving more dirt on the floor. “One could think that you should have changed clothes before coming here. This library is a delicate environment, you know.”

  “Sorry,” he repeated, just as softly.

  Embarrassment over her own bad behavior made her feel warm and uncomfortable. Granny would have turned in her grave if she’d heard her only grandchild act this impolitely toward anyone, and especially to a genuinely nice person like Ben. Hesitating slightly, she looked up over the edge of her glasses, offering him an apologetic half-smile, which hurt her strained sour-faced muscles as she leaned the broom against the wall, and was immediately rewarded with one of his open, radiant ones.

  It wasn’t Ben’s fault that Paul more or less had left her on the way to the altar, when he suddenly had found himself in need of “more.” He had not been able to tell her exactly what this “more” was, only that she wasn’t enough. Again, an overwhelming wave of anger filled her, her chest hurting with humiliated pain, and with great effort she pushed Paul and his patronizing words aside and concentrated on Ben instead. “So you need a book?”

  “Yup.”

  “About?”

  To her surprise, Ben’s ears turned red, and he seemed unable to look
her in the eyes as he mumbled something almost inaudible. She did catch his daughter’s name, though, and considering how embarrassed he was, there could be only one conclusion.

  “How old is Kelly now, twelve?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yup.”

  “Practically a young woman.”

  His cheeks started to turn red too. “Yup.”

  It couldn’t be easy being a single parent, and Leonore guessed it must be especially hard for a humble, quiet man like Ben. She remembered him from school, how awkwardly he had talked about all things which weren’t connected to his work at the Emerson farm. How he ever had managed to get a popular girl like Mindy Jeffries to fall for him was still a mystery. The beautiful, delicate Mindy could have had anyone she wanted, but to everyone’s surprise she had ended up impregnated by the uncharismatic Ben during their senior year.

  Leonore had left for college before the birth of the baby, but Granny had later told her all about how Mindy had died during childbirth because of a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Alone, with only his father and his younger brother Jonathan helping him, the twenty-one-year-old Ben had taken care of the little infant by himself.

  Mindy’s parents had not proven helpful at all. Strangely, considering they’d just lost their only child and the small baby was their only connection to her, they had packed all their belongings and left for Florida as soon as the funeral took place. Mrs. Jeffries needed the sun, they said.

  She should have needed her granddaughter more, in Leonore’s opinion, but then, she had a heart. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries clearly didn’t. Granny had said they’d seemed almost happy to be rid of the one obstacle that had stopped their longed-for move to the Sunny State—Mindy.

  But Ben had, according to Granny, done a wonderful job raising his little girl, and now, twelve years later, as Kelly stood on the verge of womanhood, he had come to the library to help his daughter on the way.

  It was actually quite sweet.

  Pushing her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose, Leonore walked up to the shiny new computer, which had taken her a month of nagging to get funds for and of which she was immensely proud. “Let me see. I know we have one book about puberty that I think would be an excellent source of information for Kelly.”

  “Ah, that would be so great,” Ben breathed, relieved, as he leaned heavily over the counter. “I really don’t know what to do. She’s been acting weird all week, refusing to leave her room, and it wasn’t until Pa said something about her behaving just as upside down as a dog in heat that it occurred to me that she might be having…female…problems…”

  “A dog in heat?”

  Ben nodded, agitated, not noticing Leonore’s openmouthed astonishment over the comparison. “But when I tried to talk to her about it, she threw me out of her room, and I just didn’t know what to do. I wish Ma still was alive; she would have known how to handle this.”

  “I guess it would be easier for a woman to explain everything.”

  “Guess so.”

  He sounded so forlorn Leonore’s heart ached for him. Without thinking, she put her slender, well-manicured hand on top of his large, warm, yet slightly dirty one, where it rested on the counter. “I’m so sorry about Mindy, Ben. Granny told me you lost her while she gave birth to Kelly.”

  He looked down on their hands without answering, and she guessed it still hurt too much for him to talk about it, even after all these years, and with one last compassionate squeeze of his hand, she let go and continued her search on the computer instead.

  “Oh, no,” she breathed, disappointed. “Someone borrowed it yesterday. I’m so sorry. There is one in the public library of Poughkeepsie, though, if you don’t mind driving the extra hour?”

  “I can’t…” He sounded as if he were in pain. “I have to get back to the farm. Pa is leaving for the dairy convention in Hartford in an hour, and Jon is, as you know, away at college. Someone has to be there for Kelly and the critters. Maybe…” His voice trailed off, and he gave her a look worthy of a puppy. “Maybe you could do it?”

  Leonore pushed up her glasses again. “You want me to drive to Poughkeepsie for the book?”

  Ben laughed heartily. “No, of course not. That would be beyond the line of duty. What I meant was, maybe you could talk to Kelly? You are a woman, after all, aren’t you?”

  Last time she’d checked she had been one. A woman who according to Paul wasn’t woman enough to satisfy him. But yet still a woman. “We could request the book…” she started, but Ben interrupted her by leaning closer toward her over the counter, until their noses almost touched, and she fought an overwhelming urge to move backward, away from him.

  “That would take a couple of days at least, and I don’t have that time. Please, Leonore, help me. I-I just don’t know what to do. Kelly might be hurting, and I don’t know how to help her.”

  He had golden spots in his deep blue eyes. How strange that she never had noticed that before. But then again, she had never looked at him twice before. He was Ben. A natural part of the Barnesville environment, sort of like a piece of furniture she hardly used but which completed the interior of the room it was placed in.

  “I-I…” she stuttered, unable to come up with an excuse valid enough. It was as if Paul had kept her capability to think clearly when he left her. Before, she had never stumbled on words. Not once had she stood dumbfounded, not knowing what to say.

  But then again, this was different.

  The whole situation was different.

  This was a man whose life had been thrown upside down, and now he was trying to find his way back. He was asking her for nothing but a moment of her time, without any secret agenda. His heart was as big as all Connecticut, and his first instinct was to help, to stand by ready to do whatever was needed, and he deserved nothing less back.

  He had never mentioned it, but she knew he had visited Granny once a week after Leonore left for college, helping the old lady with things she couldn’t do by herself. It was he who had found Granny when she’d had her heart attack four months ago and lay dying in the garden she’d been pruning. It was he who had held Granny’s hand as her life ended and then stood beside Leonore at the funeral, not hiding the tears streaming down his face as the casket was lowered down into the ground.

  Paul had not come with her to Barnesville to say goodbye to the sweet woman who had meant the world to his fiancée. Instead he had grabbed the opportunity and changed the locks on the door to their apartment in Boston.

  “I will make it worth your while.”

  From out of nowhere, an image of the two of them, naked on a fur in front of a roaring fire, popped into her head, and her heart started to beat faster. “I can’t leave the library at this hour,” she almost squeaked, mentally erasing the unexpected and astonishingly alluring picture. “And besides, I’ve heard there is a storm coming, so I don’t think I’ll be able to come out to the farm after work, either.”

  “Oh.” No one could look as childishly disappointed as Ben Emerson and get away with it. “But the storm isn’t coming until tonight, so you have plenty of time to get back before it hits us.”

  “I…I…” Leonore stuttered, not finding another excuse to say no.

  “Go, Leonore,” a voice said behind her. “I can take care of the library for the rest of the day.”

  “Mrs. Colfax, hello.” Ben flashed his radiant smile. “You are a lifesaver!”

  What? Leonore looked at the older woman, who beamed with almost as much pleasure as Ben did. “No…no, I can’t…”

  “Of course you can.” Mrs. Colfax waved a dismissive hand. “I can manage the library quite handily by myself, thank you very much. Before you started to work here three months ago, I was the only librarian, remember? But if you don’t trust me…”

  “Of course I do.” Leonore sighed. “It’s myself I don’t trust.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Looking up at the two staring at her inquiringly, she realized she had spoken her t
hought aloud, and this time it was she who must be turning red. “I’ll go and get my coat and purse,” she mumbled before rushing away, hiding her embarrassment in her office.

  What was happening to her?

  She had never reacted like this toward any man, not even Paul, and most definitely not toward Ben. But suddenly she could hardly stay in the same room with him without thinking about sex. About nakedness. About roaring fires.

  Her hands shook as she put on her thick cloak and the ugly but warm fur-lined cap which she knew she looked ridiculous in. But she couldn’t go outside without anything covering her head. It was February, the day before Valentine’s, and cold as the North Pole outside. So either she had to give in to her self-esteem and freeze or succumb to the fact that she had to make herself look ugly to keep warm.

  In the end it wasn’t such a hard choice.

  After putting on her thick boots, she grabbed her gloves and her purse and went out to the couple waiting for her. Ben’s eyes glistened as he took in her well-clad person, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he opened the door, with a small wave of his hand urging her to go out first.

  It was a very old-fashioned thing to do, but she liked it.

  Paul had never held any doors for her. He always barged ahead, especially if she was the one opening the door. She didn’t know how many times he had pushed her into a wall in his hurry to get in, but she’d had enough bruises to show as evidence.

  But then again, she bruised easily.

  She started to walk toward her car, intending to drive behind him out to the farm, but she stopped as Ben called her name. “You’d better go with me,” he said, pointing toward his big monster of a truck. “If there is snow coming, you won’t be able to drive home in that tiny car.”

  She looked at her small, lean Italian cabriolet, comparing it to Ben’s practical truck, which looked high enough to fit her car beneath it.

  “All right.” She gave in, knowing he was right. She could hardly drive her impractical car on a dry summer road if there was a bump in it, much less on a winter road, even a well-plowed one. If they got ten inches, as the forecast had warned, she wouldn’t get far. Probably not even out of the parking lot. “But really,” she stressed, as always uncomfortable when she had to depend on others, “it shouldn’t be a problem. You said the storm isn’t coming until tonight, didn’t you? It’s still just ten a.m.”