by Liz Talley
A mistake that’s meant to be…
All John Beauchamp wants is a simple life. He’s happy running his Louisiana sugar cane plantation and doesn’t want more than that. Then Shelby Mackey breezes in, announcing that she’s pregnant. Their one crazy night of passion has changed everything.
Except Shelby insists John doesn’t have to be involved—she’ll raise the baby herself. But John can’t let her go that easily. Even without the baby, Shelby is a breath of fresh air. Her call-it-as-she-sees-it attitude intrigues and attracts him. So when Shelby agrees to stay temporarily, John’s determined to make that stay permanent—and as sweet as can be.
“Maybe I want to be alone.”
John didn’t say anything else for a moment and averted his eyes from hers. He cleared his throat. “Do you want me to look for a place for you?”
“Not really,” Shelby said.
He opened his mouth as though to say something but instead snapped it closed, nodded and backed out of the room. “Good night, Shelby.”
“Good night, John.” She stood and shut the door.
Turning, she sank against it, fighting against asking John to come back so she wouldn’t be alone, so she wouldn’t be so conflicted about the decision she’d made to chuck her pseudo-life in Seattle and stay in Magnolia Bend.
A knock at the door made her jump.
She opened it to find John looking determined.
“Did you—” she asked, closing her mouth as he stepped toward her. His arms came around her, hauling her up against the hardness of his chest, as his mouth descended upon hers.
Dear Reader,
This book began with a character. Shelby Mackey appeared in The Road to Bayou Bridge (Harlequin Superromance, September 2012) as Darby Dufrene’s girlfriend. The premise of that book involves a secret marriage—one neither Darby nor the heroine, Renny, knows about. In the course of the book, Darby falls back in love with Renny and leaves Shelby holding a bag of dreams.
I really hated that for Shelby…mostly because I liked her.
So the more I thought about her, the more I knew she had a story. Shelby always falls for the wrong guy. And even worse—she always falls for married guys.
In this book I gave her a hero who was also married—to the ghost of his wife. And I gave John and Shelby a reason to move forward and find love. I gave them a surprise pregnancy and the question of What if?
This book concerns grief and second chances, but it also deals with the concept of family and finding where one truly belongs. I hope you enjoy the beginning of a new series set in Magnolia Bend, Louisiana, and the story of two lost souls finding love in difficult circumstances.
As always, I love hearing what you think. You can find me at www.liztalleybooks.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/liztalleybooks.
Cheers!
Liz Talley
LIZ
TALLEY
The Sweetest September
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A 2009 Golden Heart Award finalist in Regency romance, Liz Talley has since found a home writing sassy Southern stories. Her book Vegas Two-Step debuted in June 2010 and was quickly followed by four more books in her Oak Stand, Texas series. In her current books, she’s visiting one of her favorite cities—New Orleans. Liz lives in north Louisiana with her hero, two beautiful boys and a passel of animals. She enjoys laundry, paying bills and creating masterful dinners for her family. She also lies in her biography to make herself look like the perfect housewife. What she really likes is new shoes, lemon-drop martinis and fishing off the pier at her camp. You can visit her at www.liztalleybooks.com to learn more about the lies she tells herself, and about her upcoming books.
Books by Liz Talley
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1639—VEGAS TWO-STEP
1675—THE WAY TO TEXAS
1680—A LITTLE TEXAS
1705—A TASTE OF TEXAS
1738—A TOUCH OF SCARLET
1776—WATERS RUN DEEP*
1788—UNDER THE AUTUMN SKY*
1800—THE ROAD TO BAYOU BRIDGE*
1818—THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS
1854—HIS UPTOWN GIRL
1878—HIS BROWN-EYED GIRL
1902—HIS FOREVER GIRL
*The Boys of Bayou Bridge
Other titles by this author available in ebook format.
For my mother-in-law, Eretta, who has endured too much grief in her life. Finding happiness isn’t easy and takes work, but love is always worth the effort. I love you.
Special thanks to Scotty Comegys and Greg Lott for teaching me about trusts, and Sam Irwin for teaching me about the sugarcane industry. All mistakes are mine.
Contents
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
SHELBY MACKEY HAD experienced a lot of bad sex in her lifetime, but she’d never made a man cry.
Sitting on the sink of a run-down bathroom in some Louisiana hole-in-the-wall grocery store/bait stand/bar, she focused on the man in front of her, who was breathing hard and blinking away honest-to-God tears. The yellow glow of the naked lightbulb over his left shoulder kept bobbing...or maybe it didn’t. After all, she’d had two glasses of wine before moving on to gin and tonics. Shelby couldn’t remember how many of those drinks the tall stranger had bought her, but they likely were responsible for the disgusting bathroom spinning.
He had dark hair—a sort of brownish-red that a poet might describe as a sunset sinking into the horizon. But he’d covered the rusty-brown with a well-worn cowboy hat. That damn cowboy hat had made her lose every inkling of good sense she had.
Or maybe the five—or six—drinks had done that.
Whichever.
Results were the same—she teetered on a chipped sink, her panties nowhere in sight.
A faded country ballad still played in the background, and as she watched the man grapple with what they’d done against the bathroom sink, she noted he had a thin white scar along his chiseled jawline.
The sex hadn’t been bad. But not good, either. Sort of desperate and fast. Shelby hadn’t cared, because for a brief moment she’d felt desired. And being wanted had been way more powerful than even the deadly combination of cowboy hat and booze.
Green eyes looked down at her, swimming with a flurry of emotions—a sort of “oh, hell, look what we just did.” She released the fists she’d knotted in his simple white button-down shirt and slid to the linoleum.
“Wow,” she muttered, which was totally inaccurate. Not wow at all. She tugged her cashmere sweater over the bra he’d not even managed to unhook and gave him an embarrassed smile.
No. This wasn’t awkward.
He didn’t say anything
. Just looked like she’d smacked him in the head with a baseball bat. Mechanically, he turned, dealing with the absurd pink condom she’d handed him minutes earlier. He tossed the wadded napkin in the waste bin and stayed with his back to her.
“Uh, you okay?” she asked, looking for her pesky watermelon-pink panties he’d tossed...somewhere.
Shaking his head, he said, “Oh, God.”
“What? Are you okay?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this.”
Jeez. He apologized like he’d just tossed his cookies on her grandmother’s wedding china. Or like he’d accidentally stepped on a kitten. Or tracked dog shit in the house. Like it was...something bad.
He spun and his eyes reflected anguish.
“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, trying on another smile, pretending like this wasn’t what it was—a guy apologizing for having sex with her. “But if you can help me find my panties?”
If anything, he grew even paler at the suggestion. Wild-eyed, he glanced around. “We’re in a bathroom.”
“Ding. You’re correct,” she said with a decided slur. Gin did that to her. Okay, gin did that to everyone.
She didn’t want to look back at him. Didn’t want to see the despair and guilt in his eyes. He regretted this whole thing. Wished he hadn’t gotten wasted and agreed to help her in the bathroom, which she’d made code word for screwing me against the lavatory. It was almost as if...her gaze flew to his left hand.
“Oh, crap.” She grabbed the tanned hand with the noticeable white stripe on the ring finger. She hadn’t noticed it in the dark bar, but could see very well in the blinding reality of the ladies’ bathroom. “You’re married?”
He glanced at the hand she held in hers and jerked it away, using it to tug up worn jeans that still gaped. The sound of his zipper was deafening. Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and exhaled. “Not anymore.”
He opened those pretty eyes and their gazes met. A sheen of tears remained, but there was more—sadness over the words he’d just uttered. The regret made Shelby feel even worse. Head swimming, gut rolling, she stepped away and spied her panties hanging on the paper towel dispenser over his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
Shelby ignored her panties and instead turned away from him. The water came out of the faucet ice-cold. Why had she turned on the water? No clue. She needed something to do, something to prevent her from telling—oh, cripes, what was his name again? Josh? Joe? Did it even matter?
Shelby stuck her shaking hands under the water and splashed her face, not even caring that it would make her mascara run. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see the utter abhorrence for her and for what they’d drunkenly done.
After the past few days, she felt close to losing it. Close to doing something like...screwing a stranger?
Too late, sister.
The sound of music roared into the bathroom before muted silence fell again.
Well, hell.
He’d left. Just flippin’ walked out after an apology she didn’t even want.
What an ass.
Shelby looked at herself in the speckled mirror and tried hard not to let her tears join the water coursing down her face. Not only had she impulsively gotten drunk and laid, but the guy she’d chosen for such an honor hadn’t even bothered to stick around and buy her a drink for her trouble.
Not that she needed another drink.
The sound of crickets came from somewhere in the bathroom. Her phone. Crap. Where had she left her purse? Shelby swiped her face with a paper towel, grabbed the panties she’d bought last week thinking her now ex-boyfriend Darby might like them and searched for her purse.
She found it on the window ledge next to the only stall, the torn condom package sitting right beside it. At least she hadn’t been too drunk to remember to protect herself. She’d bought a box in Baton Rouge, hoping she and Darby could finally take their relationship to the next level.
But then she’d found out Darby was married. Okay, so the man hadn’t realized he was married to his high school flame when she’d started dating him. The whole thing was a big shocker for everyone involved. But by the time Shelby made it down to Louisiana to try to talk him into coming back to Seattle and the interview with her father’s firm, her perfect prospect had fallen in love with his, uh, wife.
Yeah, another married man in her life. It was becoming a thing with her.
“Shit.” Shelby sighed, picking up the bright red package, her heart aching at the thought of being back at square one. She felt like a blooming fool...even if none of it was her fault. Guess falling in love was like contracting measles. Bam. Just happened despite one’s best efforts. Darby was off the menu. No more visions of her in a wedding dress smiling at the dark-headed Southern boy with the alligator grin.
Stick a fork in her dream of respectability.
Done.
The phone went silent just as the self-loathing took over. This was what her life had come to—driving the memory of heartbreak away with random stranger sex in a backwater crap hole. She’d never sunk so low.
“Perfect, Shelby,” she whispered, leaning onto the stall door. The bathroom still spun a bit but she remained upright. The worst of it was she couldn’t drive in the state she was in, and she was utterly alone on her little venture out to tour Louisiana plantations. She’d either have to sit at the bar and drink water until the drunk wore off...which could be a good five or six hours, or swallow her pride and call Darby and ask him to come get her. Neither one appealed to her, but she guessed that was too damn bad.
She’d come to terms long ago that if she waited on Prince Charming to arrive on a white steed, she’d be worm food before he showed up.
As always, it was up to her to figure out a solution.
She dug her phone out of her purse, noted her missed call was from Delta Airlines and asked Siri about cab service. What good was having a couple of million bucks sitting in a bank if you couldn’t pay an exorbitant cab fare once in a while? But no dice on a cab. Wasn’t even a taxi service out this far.
So she dialed the number to Beau Soleil, Darby’s childhood home. The man owed her a ride back to Bayou Bridge. Time to go back to Seattle.
Goodbye, Louisiana.
So long, life she thought she’d have.
* * *
JOHN BEAUCHAMP CLOAKED himself inside the pickup truck that had seen better days, tossing his beat-up cowboy hat onto the bench seat and leaning his forehead against the steering wheel.
His chest felt like he’d been hit with a wrecking ball, tight and achy, the way it had been the entire day of his wife’s funeral a year ago. He needed to cry. He needed to punch something until his knuckles bled...until the pain went away.
What in the name of Jesus had he been thinking in there?
He hadn’t.
That was the problem.
He’d come to Boots Grocery to drink away the pain and ended up screwing some blonde chick in the bathroom. Like it meant nothing. Like he hadn’t just betrayed the vows he’d made eleven years ago last month. Like that would lessen the hurt.
No. The pain never abated, and trying to extinguish it with some bar bunny had done nothing more than release crushing shame.
John felt in his pocket for his keys, pulled them out and reached toward the ignition, but then remembered—he was drunk as a sailor and couldn’t drive.
Since his younger brother, Jake, was on a fishing trip, he’d have to call his older brother to pick him up.
No. He didn’t want to see the pity in Matt’s eyes, nor the unstated disappointment that would quickly follow. Getting drunk wasn’t something they did in the Beauchamp family. Hell, naw. Praying was what they did in the Beauchamp family.
But that hadn’t
gotten him anywhere, either.
Goddamn it.
Nothing took away the damaged part of himself, nothing healed the open sore, erased the knowledge he hadn’t been there when she died...hadn’t even had a chance to try and save her. How could God let that happen to Rebecca, the sweetest, most wonderful person in all of Magnolia Bend? Hell, in all of St. James Parish. Why her and not someone else?
Why not him?
John tilted his head back and punched the dashboard. “Ow.”
He shook his hand out and sank back onto the worn leather, the world tilting crazily. He needed to buy a new truck. This one reflected who he was—dinted, dinged and worn out. He had the money, but something stopped him every time. Because he didn’t want to change, didn’t want to move forward.
And now he’d not only drunk himself sick on the anniversary of that day, but he’d shamed himself with Shelby.
That had been the bar bunny’s name.
Shelby.
She’d had nice straight teeth, a big laugh and sugar in her smile. He’d thought maybe she could make the dull throb go away. Someone named Shelby ought to bring sunshine, but in the hard light of that bathroom, he’d seen the same emotion reflected back in her eyes—sadness.
“Shit,” he said into the darkness, wiping the moisture from his eyes. He allowed his head to slide from the headrest, and listing sideways, he flopped onto the bench, knocking his old hat to the floorboard. The seat belt jabbed him in his back, but he ignored the discomfort and instead fastened his eyes on the stars twinkling out the window in the deep purple Louisiana sky.
All his life he believed in heaven. In God. When your daddy’s a pastor, it’s pretty much expected. But for the past year, John had stopped believing in anything except the morning sun and the pale moon. Except the rain that fell straight onto the cracked earth and the tender shoots stretching up from the ground. He’d believed in nothing but what he could see.
An empty house.
A made bed.
A lonely man.
And then he didn’t care if the tears came. He only cared that he’d loved Rebecca and she was gone.