“I very much doubt that’s true,” Amelia said, “but given that it is, there are plenty of jobs in Kentucky for a woman of your capability.”
“Not ones that pay enough money to live on. Not for someone starting out. I will not take money from my father. I don’t want his help.”
“I have a friend who is looking for a program manager for her non-profit therapeutic riding facility. Her program manager just left, and they are in the midst of their summer session.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
Amelia shrugged. “What do you care as long as horses are involved? I’ll give my friend a call. I believe there’s an apartment available over the barn where you can stay.”
For the first time in two days, Aimee felt a sprig of hope begin to grow. She hugged Amelia in an impulsive show of gratitude. “Oh, thank you! It will mean so much to me to make it on my own.”
A smile accentuated by Amelia’s pudgy cheeks. “When you get on your feet, I expect you to call that young man and give him another chance. Your father and mother, too. Promise me?”
“I promise.”
* * * *
Four weeks later, Aimee was ready to call home. Her whole attitude had changed, blossoming into a new respect for herself and her abilities. She had landed the job with the therapeutic riding program and was now busy organizing volunteers and planning charity events. She pitched in with the lessons, learning to be a sidewalker first, and sometimes she led a horse if enough volunteers didn’t show up.
She was good with people and loved the kids who gained so much from riding. The volunteers, who made the lessons possible, were generous people, and taught her the importance of giving. Her work made a difference. Even when she helped muck stalls or groomed the ponies and horses, she was making an impact on someone’s life.
Early one morning, Aimee reached her father at his office.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” Her voice was soft, full of emotion.
“Aimee? You’re mother has been so worried about you,” his harsh voice blurted over the phone.
“And you haven’t?” She stood her ground.
“Er, yes. I’ve not been happy about your disappearance.”
“I’m fine, Dad.” And then she told him where she was and what she was doing. “I’m going to take the classes and tests to become a certified therapeutic riding instructor.”
“That’s great, honey.” This time Aimee heard the pride in her father’s voice. “I knew you could be whatever you wanted to be.”
She let out a breath, fighting back old anger and hurt. “Really, Dad?”
“Yes. You must know I didn’t pay Jimmy Burke to hire you. He needed help with his medical bills. I was sending him money for that.”
“But Mom said…”
“You know your mother gets things confused. She only hears what she wants to hear.”
Aimee did know that. Maybe she should have confronted her father instead of running away.
“You’ve got to call Brennan,” her father said using that dictatorial voice again. “We’ve had several long talks recently. The man loves you.”
Her heart thudded. Why was her father talking to Cam? Had the world turned upside down so quickly?
“You need to know he never signed the contract,” her father continued. “I’m buying my equipment from Vince Clayton. Brennan wouldn’t do business with me.”
“What?” Had she heard her father correctly?
“Brennan told me he loved you too much to do business with his future father-in-law.” Her father laughed then. “The man has guts, Aimee. You’d do well to make up with him and get him in the family. I can use a partner like that.”
Her father said much more, but that’s all Aimee heard, her heart doing wild gyrations. Cam had not signed the two million dollar contract.
“You didn’t deserve to be lied to,” Cam had said. He told her the truth because he wanted a relationship with her. When he said he loved her, he wasn’t lying.
* * * *
Cam sat beside the glimmering water of his family swimming pool. It was a late Saturday afternoon. He held a glass of plain lemonade in one hand and an unread spy novel in the other. His body was tanned from many days in the sun. He was sleepy, lethargic, uninterested in the world around him. The pool had become his refuge this summer as he tried to get over the time he and Aimee had spent there together.
He looked up from his stupor to see a mirage walking down the steps from the upper deck. She wore a red and white flowered sundress that swayed as she walked.
He sat up. “Aimee?”
“Hi, Cam.” She came toward him, smiling.
There was something different about her. A new confidence. A glow of something he couldn’t understand.
Slowly he placed his glass down beside his chair. He dropped his book and stood up watching her walk around the pool toward him.
“Aimee?”
She laughed. “I’m not a ghost.”
“What does this mean?” He could barely speak.
“It means your brother let me in. Hank, I think he said his name was.”
Hank let her in? Without saying anything stupid or rude? He couldn’t believe it any more than he could believe he saw her standing there.
He reached out and touched her cheek. She shut her eyes, leaning into his hand. A smile played across her lips.
“Aimee?” he whispered.
She opened her eyes. “My father told me about the contract.”
He blinked, having trouble focusing, unable to speak.
“My father also gave me his blessing.”
“For what?”
“To marry you, of course. That is, if you’re really serious about what you said in June.”
“Serious? On my life I was serious.”
“Do you want to work on a relationship and see where it goes? Do you want to try again?” she asked him.
“I’ve never wanted anything more in my whole life.”
Cam kissed her then and she kissed him back. The sun beat down upon his head as Aimee circled his neck with her arms. She pressed her body against his. Their kiss deepened.
This couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening. Aimee Elliott had come back to him.
And he was damn sure he’d never let her get away again.
Epilogue
The Chicago Tribune Online
Aimee Elliott and Camden Brennan were married on October 24, 2009, at St. Peter Catholic Church in Skokie with a reception following at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The bride is the daughter of Ray and Martha Elliott of Skokie. The groom is the son of Henry and Virginia Brennan of Louisville. The bride, 25, received a BS in animal sciences and is the program director for The Hope Therapeutic Riding Center. The groom, 30, graduated from the University of Kentucky with a MS degree in business. He is president and CEO of Brennan Equipment Company. The couple honeymooned in Ireland, Scotland, London, and Paris and resides in Louisville, Kentucky.
About the Author
Jan Scarbrough lives in Louisville, Kentucky, along with two dogs and four cats. Dreams do come true! On January 2, 2000, she married Bill, her soul mate. When she’s not writing, Jan takes riding lessons every week on her favorite horse, the American Saddlebred. She also volunteers at The Luci Center, a therapeutic riding center.
Jan says, “The process of becoming a published author has been fun. My best friends are fellow writers. Who else will check a point plot for me or understand GMC and POV?”
Jan Scarbrough is a member of Novelists, Inc., Romance Writers of America and the Kentucky Romance Writers, where she served as president, secretary, and newsletter editor. Jan is currently the web mistress of the KYRW chapter’s award-winning web site.
To learn more about Jan Scarbrough, please visit her at www.janscarbrough.com.
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Jan Scarbrough’s Bluegrass Reunions Series
is available at
Resplendence Publishing
They thought the boys they loved were out of their lives. They were wrong.
KENTUCKY COWBOY — She had dumped him in high school because he was a risk-taker.
“Warmhearted and wonderful... Kentucky Cowboy is a keeper.” — Bestselling Author Joanne Rock
*Winner of the 2006 PASIC Book of Your Heart Contest, Contemporary Series Romance
A contender for the world title, professional bull rider Judd Romeo defies death for a living. Now he must deal with the death of his mother by settling her estate. Returning home to Kentucky, he runs smack dab into the arms of his high school sweetheart, a woman he has never forgotten.
Veterinarian Mandy Sullivan learned early on that risk-takers are trouble. Having custody of her sister’s child, she is working hard to be both mother and father to the abandoned girl, and doesn’t count on trouble showing up next door.
Mandy discovers she can’t avoid the famous cowboy she’s never quite put out of her mind. When Mandy’s sister comes back threatening to take away the little girl she loves as her own, will Mandy realize Judd is not the same man he was back then?
KENTUCKY WOMAN — She had loved him when she was a teenager, but they never connected.
*Winner of the 2007 San Diego RWA’s Spring into Romance Contest
*Second Place
in the 2007 PASIC Book of Your Heart Contest, Contemporary Series Romance
Years of hard work and schooling have paid off for single mom and ex-jockey Alexis Marsden. She now has a desk job she loves and she’s paying her bills—barely. But she can’t give her son everything he needs, especially a father. When the big brother of her child’s father asks her to marry him, does Alex give up her hard-won independence and settle for an old-fashioned marriage of convenience?
Workaholic banker Jackson Breckinridge has spent his life meeting the expectations of his parents and protecting his younger brother. When his brother fathers Alex’s child, Jack must protect his parents from the truth and fix his brother’s screw up. Marriage to the childhood playmate he’s loved since his school days is just the right thing to solve his problems. He accepts her terms for a marriage of convenience, but he longs to convert it into a one that’s for real.
KENTUCKY FLAME — She had his baby, but he left not knowing the truth.
Horse trainer Jake Hendricks arrives to take charge of Royalty Farm from his one-time mentor. After the main barn goes up in flames, Jake must do everything he can to save the farm that is already under financial pressure from a greedy local real estate developer.
After gathering the courage to leave an abusive marriage, horse trainer Melody O’Shea returns to Royalty Farm when her father needs her help. Coming home to the famed American Saddlebred farm is bittersweet because it is also the home of her daughter, the secret child she gave up for a private adoption.
Mel doesn’t count on Jake being there. The man left her nine years earlier not knowing she was carrying his baby. Forced to work with Jake to save her daughter’s home and heritage, Mel grapples with the mistakes of her past and her love for a man who once rejected her, but who she never forgot. When danger escalates, Mel’s life is in jeopardy and she must work with Jake to solve the mystery that threatens her safety and the safety of the daughter they both love.
Ladies of Legend: Finding Home by Janet Eaves, Magdalena Scott, Maddie James and Jan Scarbrough
What happens when four writers who love romance get together and create a town, the people who live in it, and the stories of those people’s lives? You get Legend, Tennessee — where four women from different backgrounds find purpose, love and their future in a town intent on preserving its past.
Ladies of Legend: Finding Home is an anthology including four novellas:
Claiming the Legend by Janet Eaves... Lilly Peach is running from something so frightening it finally takes a whole town to cover her back.
Midnight in Legend, TN by Magdalena Scott... Lovely Midnight Shelby finds Legend on the Internet after becoming tired of being one of her now ex-husband’s “beautiful things.”
Bed, Breakfast, and You by Maddie James... Suzie Schul finds home only when the “fling” she had many months earlier shows up with a plan on her B&B doorstep.
The Reunion Game by Jan Scarbrough... Plain Jane Smith reunites with her long lost love by playing a game of “bait and switch” with her famous twin sister.
Also available from Resplendence Publishing
More Tales from Legend, Tennessee
Beauty and the Beast: A Ladies of Legend Novella by Janet Eaves
Special Agent Polly Chapman has multiple identities... She is known to many as a savior. To others she is a killing machine. But all who know her, or think they know her, believe her untouchable.
Until she’s injured.
Now the man sent to piece her back together when “The Agency” considers her broken has only two choices— Catcher Stevens must fix her, or kill her.
Harvest Moon: A Ladies of Legend Novella by Janet Eaves
After her sadistic husband is dead, Winifred Butler believes herself finally free of his horror. But he continues to torment her from the grave as his secrets and lies, treason and terror, bring Agent Tom Green to her door. She is as determined to keep her past a secret as Tom is committed to bringing her secrets to light. Only one of them can win. So both must fight the attraction to the other, knowing they have everything to lose...
Murder on the Mountain: A Ladies of Legend Novel by Maddie James
In the two long years since her Tennessee state trooper husband’s murder, Kate Carpenter thinks she’s coped with his death, although everyone in Legend, Tennessee tells her she hasn’t. She can’t see what the problem is, really. She has her parents, and her best friend Patti Jo, and her students. What else could a twenty-nine year old woman want?
A man, Patti Jo keeps telling her.
Sent to Kate’s classroom on an investigation, ATF Special Agent Mike Lehmann uses his drug prevention training as his cover. His mission? To find out what Kate knows about her husband’s “death.” Recent reports indicate he is alive and that he faked his death because of his involvement in a drug-running operation. Mike’s task is to expose Carpenter, and if she’s involved, Kate.
And he’ll stop at nothing to get the answers he seeks.
The Christmas Gift: A Legendary Christmas Novella by Janet Eaves
Christina Montgomery dreads another Christmas with the questions about her soldier husband, Johnny, hanging over her and her daughter’s heads. She believes he died with his small sniper squadron a little over two years earlier, even though his was the only body unaccounted for. The Marine Corp has indicated they are leaning towards calling Johnny a defector. There are even a few Legend locals who believe it, too. This is something Christina refuses to consider. Until one snowy evening, two weeks before Christmas, a man looking very much like Johnny arrives at her Tennessee farm w
ith no idea of who he is.
Stunned, confused, Christina doesn’t know what to do with him. Is this man’s sudden appearance a Christmas miracle? Or is it Christina’s worst nightmare come true?
Christmas Collision: A Legendary Christmas Novella by Magdalena Scott
Rebecca Mayfield, the divorce lawyer in New York City, doesn’t believe in happily ever after. Why would she? Her beloved husband and law partner died of a heart attack a couple of years ago, and she spends every day of her lucrative work life ending someone’s marriage.
Her friend and former client, Midnight Shelby McClain, invites Rebecca to her new “hometown” of Legend, Tennessee for the holiday. Small town Christmas—probably incredibly hokey. But Legend worked some magic in Midnight’s life. What might be there for Rebecca?
Her rental car slides off the icy road and is stuck in a ditch. She hikes through the dark in the deep snow toward the only light she can see…from a little cabin on the mountain.
Kentucky Bride Page 8