What we do for family...and love
Third-generation firefighter Captain Ben Libby is sworn to keep Harmony Valley safe. But a recent series of fires points to arson. Not that Ben really suspects Mandy Zapien, who’s back in town to reopen the defunct post office—a potential fire hazard.
Turns out Ben and Mandy—she of the incredible smile—have a lot in common. They’re both trying to rebuild their lives. Mandy’s raising her teenage sister, just as Ben’s devoted to his godchild. Though lately, he’s started to suspect she’s his biological daughter. Amid secrets and family dramas, do Ben and Mandy have what it takes to go the distance together?
“You’re always smiling,” Ben said. “How do you keep it up?”
“I...” It was easy talking to him in the darkness, easy to overshare. But he’d half thought she was the cause of all his trouble. Mandy gave him a generic answer. “It takes as much effort to smile as it does to frown.”
“And you’re incredibly honest.”
“I’m not. I just... I have very little to hide.” Only her feelings and her debt and the fact that she’d lied to her sister about their inheritance and the reason their mother stayed away.
“I doubt that. Everyone has layers.” His head bent toward hers, almost as if he was going to kiss her. And then he pulled back, tilting his head to the side.
The kiss impression was totally the moon’s fault.
Stupid moon.
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. Now the influx of a younger generation is making life in Harmony Valley more fun for its gray-haired residents than afternoon television.
Fire captain Ben Libby wants to investigate fires rather than fight them, but before he takes the next step in his career he needs to help his father reopen the Harmony Valley Fire Department. Ben expects the assignment to be easy, but suddenly there’s a rash of fires in town and they coincide with the return of Mandy Zapien. All Mandy wants is a fresh start for her and her teenage sister. She’s not an arsonist. But proving that to Ben turns out to be a challenge.
I hope you enjoy Mandy and Ben’s journey to a happily-ever-after, as well as the other romances in the Harmony Valley series. I love to hear from readers. Visit my website at www.melindacurtis.com to learn more about upcoming books, sign up for email book announcements (and I’ll send you a free sweet romance read) or chat with me on Facebook (MelindaCurtisAuthor) to hear about my latest giveaways.
Melinda
Love, Special Delivery
USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Melinda Curtis
Award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author Melinda Curtis is an empty nester. Now instead of car pools and sports leagues, her days go something like this: visit the gym with her husband at 5:30 a.m., walk the dogs, enjoy a little social media, write-write-write, consider cooking dinner (possibly reject cooking dinner in favor of takeout), watch sports or DIY shows with her husband, read and collapse in bed. Sometimes the collapse part happens before any TV or reading takes place.
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 Season of Change “found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, steamy reads as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz describes Cora Rules as “wonderfully entertaining”).
Books by Melinda Curtis
Harlequin Heartwarming
Dandelion Wishes
Summer Kisses
Season of Change
One Perfect Year
Time for Love
A Memory Away
Marrying the Single Dad
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This book is dedicated to my dad and
my mother-in-law, both of whom supported
me on my writing journey. It wasn’t easy losing
them both just months apart. I thought of them
and their last wishes a lot during the writing
of this story.
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
EXCERPT FROM HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO BY PAMELA TRACY
CHAPTER ONE
“TELL ME THIS isn’t where we’re going to live. It’s too...too...icky.”
“What’s wrong?” Mandy Zapien’s heart had been clinging to a position in her throat for the last hour of the drive to Harmony Valley. It clawed a degree higher as she pushed past her teenage sister to get a good look inside the house they’d left seven years earlier.
Same dark chocolate shag. Same tan-and-navy plaid couch under the front picture window. Same oak side table with Grandma’s sewing basket next to it and the fake ficus in a plastic planter Mandy had Bedazzled when she was ten. Nothing was new or out of place.
Mandy’s heart slid back into her stress-strapped chest.
Icky? It was home and it was vacant. The choke hold on her emotions loosened. “It’s perfect.” Just the way Grandpa, Mandy and Olivia had left it after Grandma died. A testament to the life Grandma and Grandpa had built together before lost jobs had forced them to move. Just the way Grandpa had wanted it to be when he returned after retirement.
“Seriously?” Olivia darted around Mandy, holding her cell phone and panning around the room, videotaping. “I opened the door and there was a nuclear explosion of dust.” Her yellow flip-flops snapped as she made her way into the kitchen. Her pale bare legs looked long because her jean shorts were too short.
Mandy had considered asking Olivia to change this morning and throw away the shorts, or at the very least roll down the thin cuffs, but as the guardian of a seventeen-year-old, she had to pick her battles and not break eggs. Today, moving day, was not the time to upset her little sister.
Mandy moved to the fireplace, pressing her hand against the solid red brick. It was as sturdy as their grandparents had once been. Would they approve of what she was doing? “I have good memories of this place.”
“Really? I don’t remember much about Harmony Valley.” Olivia’s voice bounced off bare walls.
The dust. The emptiness. The relief.
Mandy breathed deeply. Their grandparents may be dead, but they were going to be all right. It didn’t matter if her sister didn’t remember life here. Olivia claimed not to recall the tinsel-covered Christmas tree their grandparents put in the corner every year. Or the photos they’d staged of the girls on the hearth on Christmas morning wearing the annual holiday sweaters Grandma had knitted.
“Hey, the fridge is running.”
“I
s it...” Mandy’s heart crept back into her throat. “Is it empty?” Mandy hurried into the kitchen in time to see Olivia pry the sticky refrigerator door open.
“Ew. That’s disgusting.” Olivia stopped filming and covered her nose.
Mandy peeked in. What once might have been a small basket of strawberries (based on the fermented smell) was now a glob of mold. That hadn’t happened overnight. Mandy shut the door, more convinced than ever that no one had lived here recently. More hopeful that no one would visit while they stayed a few weeks.
Olivia and her flip-flops snapped their way down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Hey, I recognize our room.” She disappeared inside. “Why did we leave the bunk beds?”
“Why?” Mandy leaned against the door frame. There were more good memories in this room than bad. “Because I’d slept on top for ten years, and at twenty-five I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And don’t get any ideas.” At thirty-two she was too old to be sleeping on a bunk. “These are out. We’re bringing in your bed and you’re sleeping in here alone.” She’d take her grandparents’ room. “No arguments.”
“It’s freaky how you can read my mind.” But Olivia looked happy, which was a welcome change since they’d had to leave her friends and support group behind.
“Do you remember this?” Mandy closed the door, shutting them inside. They had time for a little reminiscing before the day’s summer heat made it too hot to unload their truck. “This is where Grandma tracked our height.” On the white frame of a tall slim mirror on the back of the door.
The two crowded into the reflection. Mandy, the tallest of the pair, looking too thin and too young with her slight smile and thick dark hair in messy ponytails. Her red tank was as baggy as the circles under her eyes. She’d been worried about her new job, about the move, about the bills, the house, Olivia, about...well...everything.
Olivia’s frame was deceptively solid, as if she’d put on extra adolescent weight preparing for a growth spurt. Her soft brown hair was only an inch long, making her brown eyes and wide mouth seem more prominent.
“Was I ever that short?” Olivia leaned closer to the door, peering at a mark about three feet off the floor.
“You were a petite thing.” Mandy nudged her aside and opened the door, leading the way to the master bedroom. “You should feel lucky you didn’t get my height or my shoe size.”
Neither one of them opened the second bedroom door.
Grandma’s wide bureau sat in the master bedroom in front of a wall with maroon-striped velvet wallpaper. The solid cherry dresser had a white marble top and a large framed mirror attached to the back.
“Grandpa and I couldn’t lift this, so we left it when we moved.” Mandy opened a top drawer. It was filled with her grandmother’s colorful polyester scarves. “He left most of her things.” And then she said with forced casualness, “Do you remember Grandma’s wedding ring?”
“Only because you told me it was made of brass.” Olivia opened the closet. “Her clothes are still here. They smell of lavender.” While Mandy fingered her grandmother’s scarves, Olivia moved clothes across the rod, scraping wire hangers over wood. “There aren’t very many clothes in here.”
Dismay made a special delivery to Mandy’s gut with a one-two punch. “That can’t be.” Grandma had never walked out of a clothing store without a purchase. She’d believed in retail therapy. When they’d moved after her death, Grandma’s closet had been jammed full of pants, blouses and dresses, many with the tags still on.
But the clothes with price tags were gone. Mandy rummaged through the mostly empty bureau. Only the scarf drawer seemed untouched.
An old memory lurched from her past, like a zombie coming to life after a long restless sleep.
Grandma’s voice, pitched low. “If you need money, Teri, ask. Don’t go searching through my drawers.”
“I was just admiring your scarves.” Mandy’s mother slid the drawer closed, looking like a model in a short, clingy black cocktail dress and black heels more appropriate for a hotel bar than Harmony Valley. “They’re so pretty.”
Neither one of them acknowledged eight-year-old Mandy lingering in the hallway, eavesdropping as she held on to the hope that Mom wasn’t going to leave again.
“Save that tone for your father. You hate those scarves.” Her grandmother’s voice wasn’t sweet. It didn’t comfort, not the way it did when she talked to Mandy. “Those scarves remind you of my cancer. They taunt you because I didn’t die.”
Mandy had stumbled back in the hallway and then ran into her room. It wasn’t until the door was closed and she’d burrowed under the covers that she’d realized her mother was laughing.
“Do you think...?” Olivia came to stand near Mandy, unable to complete her question.
It didn’t matter. Mandy knew what her sister had been thinking. They both stared at the closed door across the hall. Grandpa had left the house to their mother, a woman who didn’t value roots or generosity or family. “If Mom stayed here, it was a long time ago.” The dust. The strawberries in the fridge. The drawer full of untouched scarves. “You know how Mom is. She comes for a very brief time and then goes away for a lot longer.”
Still, neither one of them moved toward their mother’s room. Neither one seemed to want to know how long it’d been since Teri Zapien had been here.
“I want to see her.” Olivia’s words sounded like they came from a young girl lost on a once-familiar playground.
“She might show up.” Mandy hoped not.
Their mother was no good at keeping secrets, especially ones that would hurt Olivia.
* * *
“KITTENS?” CAPTAIN BEN LIBBY drove Harmony Valley’s fire truck around the corner toward the crowded town square. “We’re taking the engine out for the first time for kittens?”
“It’s not just kittens.” From the passenger seat, his father, Fire Chief Keith Libby, pointed to the large, sweeping oak tree in the middle of the square and the gathering crowd. “There’s a boy up there, too.”
Sure enough. There was a flash of red hair and knobby knees between the branches.
Dad’s eyesight was still sharp even if the rest of his body wasn’t in its prime.
“Kids seldom need rescuing from trees.” Ben’s godchild came to mind. Seven-year-old stoic Hannah would never find herself in such a predicament.
Dad scoffed. “Need I remind you of a boy who fell out of a tree and broke both wrists?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Ten-year-old Ben had been pretending to battle a blazing high-rise. That’s what third-generation firefighters in the making did—pretend to battle blazes. Unfortunately, his feet had tangled in the garden hose and ladder rungs, sending him tumbling to the ground. He’d had a healthy dislike of ladders ever since.
“Give Harmony Valley a chance, son.” Dad laid his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t grow up here like I did, but I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
“No. That request came from Mom.”
Decades of sleep-depriving forty-eight-hour shifts and the inhalation of too much toxic smoke in the busy Oakland, California, fire department had taken their toll on his father. Dad’s weakened heart and lungs made the fifty-five-year-old move like the octogenarians who made up the majority of Harmony Valley’s population. Breathing had become a daily struggle. He’d be deadweight on a fire crew in a busy fire station, a danger to himself, those under his command and those in need of rescue. Ben had put his firefighting career on hold to help his father reopen the rural fire department for the ten months his old man had left until retirement. Reaching full retirement meant a 25 percent bigger stipend each month.
No. Dad hadn’t asked. Vanessa Libby had. And despite his father missing out on much of Ben’s childhood to pursue a career in fire, Ben couldn’t live with himself if he wasn’t here to wat
ch over him. So he’d quit his job in the Oakland Fire Department, too, purposefully putting his career on hold.
“Let’s finish this quick and move on to fire inspections,” Ben said. There hadn’t been any fires in Harmony Valley in more than five years, and Ben wanted to keep it that way. He pulled to the curb and put the truck in Park. The engine shook, shuddered and shot out a gasping blast of black smoke. Not exactly the community entrance Ben had hoped for. “I guess we need one more tune-up.”
“Deploy the ladder,” Ben’s dad said in his best I’m-in-charge voice.
“Deploy the...” This was the fire truck’s maiden voyage after fifteen years in storage. They’d barely gotten the engine running and hadn’t had a chance to check the truck’s hydraulics before receiving this call. “Are you going in the bucket?”
“I will. If you don’t have the stomach for it.” A challenge if there ever was one.
“Stay right here.” Ben had a take-charge voice of his own. There was no chance he was allowing Dad to test the ladder. What if he couldn’t catch his breath? What if he got light-headed and tumbled to the ground? What if the town realized Keith’s health wasn’t 100 percent and that Ben was covering for him?
This last was almost as imperative as keeping Dad safe. If Ben’s complicity was exposed, he’d never work as a firefighter again.
Ben hopped out of the truck and headed toward the oak tree. He’d heard there was a farmers market today, but the farm part was hard to see for all the other offerings—quilts, afghans, paintings, metal sculpture. He crossed onto the grass, working his way through a maze of folding tables and elderly residents. Sprinkled through the crowd were a few babies, small children and people who looked to be about his age—early thirties.
More than a decade ago, the grain mill—once the largest employer in town—had exploded and most people in the workforce had moved away, leaving the town more like a retirement community. But now there was a new employer in Harmony Valley, a winery. And people of working age were returning to town, hence the two job openings for full-time firemen.
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