THE STARLIGHT HILL COMPLETE COLLECTION: 1-8

by Bell, Heatherly

  He kissed her, then lingered near her neck, making her shiver.

  “Are we going to have a big wedding?” he asked.

  She wanted a huge wedding in a church with around one thousand people or so. Maybe even the whole town. Mama would be thrilled. “The biggest. Also, two hundred kids.”

  “Ah. That’s a lot. But we’ll have to get in line for the wedding. We’re number three. Plenty of time for planning,” Wallace said.

  Oh yes. They had plenty of time. The rest of their lives.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed Wallace and Genevieve’s romance. There are 8 books in this series and two other collections.

  You may also be interested in Country Gold and She’s Country Strong in my Wilder Sisters series, both small town romances. All books are connected but stand alone.

  Join my newsletter list and receive a free ebook! Be the first to hear about upcoming releases, cover reveals, pre-orders and exclusive excerpts.

  I love hearing from readers! Contact me at heatherly@heatherlybell.com. If you’re on Facebook and a fan of my books, feel free to join my reader group, Heatherly’s Belles. We have a lot of fun and I often name characters after my readers, with their permission, of course!

  Genevieve’s “I Love You” Birthday Cake

  2 ¾ cups sifted cake flour (unbleached)

  4 tsps. baking powder

  ¾ tsp. salt

  4 egg whites (organic)

  1 ½ cups white sugar

  ¾ cup butter (do NOT substitute)

  1 cup milk (organic)

  1 tsp. PURE vanilla extract

  1 tsp. almond extract

  Measure sifted cake flour, baking powder, and salt; sift together three times.

  In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add ½ cup of sugar gradually, and continue beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks.

  In a separate bowl, beat butter until smooth. Gradually add remaining 1 cup of sugar, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with milk a small amount at a time, beating each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings. Add meringue, and mix thoroughly into batter. Spread batter in a 15x10x1 inch pan which has been lined on the bottom with parchment paper.

  Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. You can also bake this cake in two 9 inch round pans for 30 to 35 minutes, or in three 8 inch round pans for 25 to 30 minutes.

  This is the right cake, when words are not enough …

  Anywhere with You

  A Starlight Hill novella

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Published by Heatherly Bell Books

  Copyright © 2015 by Maria Buscher

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Edited by Lesley McDaniel

  Cover by The Killion Group

  I must thank author (and pilot) Julie Buscher for helping me with the opening scene of this book. Any mistakes are all my own, as I have never crashed a plane, nor do I ever intend to. But as Julie says and I quote, “Every landing is nothing but a controlled crash.”

  Join my newsletter list and receive a free book. Be the first to hear about upcoming release, cover reveals and excerpts. I love hearing from readers! Contact me at heatherly@heatherlybell.com.

  Created with Vellum

  FOR

  DANIELLE

  1

  Joe Hannigan loved flying planes. Crash landing them, not so much. Even though he regularly piloted a plane of skydivers over Napa Valley, he rarely jumped. No self-respecting pilot would ever jump out of a perfectly operational plane.

  Operational being key.

  On his return flight from the Sacramento Valley two thousand feet over Napa Valley, his Cessna began running roughly. Not good, especially at this low altitude. Joe quickly adjusted the fuel mixture controls back and forth. Nothing.

  “C’mon, baby, don’t do this to me.”

  As Joe fought with the vibrating controls, he couldn’t fight facts: his plane was rapidly sinking, quickly losing altitude. One thousand five hundred feet, one thousand feet, nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred feet. Great. He’d lost engine power at a dangerously low altitude. Shit. Time to configure for a forced landing.

  Joe couldn’t believe the one word that came to mind as he immediately assessed and interpreted facts as quickly as his well-trained aeronautical brain would process them: Kailey. Not the word he would have chosen had he not been calmly interpreting anything other than his own impending death. To be fair, a close second was fuck.

  The same word had been heavy on his mind, in a far different capacity, the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Kailey Robbins. They’d been bed buddies since shortly after they’d met on the job. Joe, the private pilot for a celebrity juvenile-delinquent pop singer with an unpronounceable name, and Kailey the kid’s stylist. Their relationship was supposed to be temporary, like the job, but both of them were surprised when neither one wanted to end it. He’d talked Kailey into coming home with him to Starlight Hill, where she’d stayed for about two minutes.

  Then she’d been off to some other job in another big city. She had to follow the work, she explained. There were no celebrities needing a stylist in Starlight Hill unless you counted Billy Turlock, and the guy was too pretty to need a stylist.

  She didn’t fool him. Kailey had run as fast as she could out of his little town. She’d had a difficult life, growing up as a foster kid with no real roots. She didn’t understand home and family, and Joe scared her. What they had together scared her.

  It might have scared him too, except he didn’t scare easily.

  Like now.

  Screw this. No one is dying here today. Not him, anyway, and not without a fight. He’d been trained for this eventuality, and even if nothing on this plane seemed to want to cooperate at the moment it didn’t mean it was time to give up. Thankful he was alone and not responsible for another human life, he used what little engine power he had left to turn and head towards open land.

  He pulled back, white-knuckling the column and coming in for a landing. The noise as he hit the ground was a roar and crash of metal and glass reminiscent of a roadside bomb. But he’d landed the plane right side up. Yes! Now to slow the beast down. It kept moving despite his best efforts, following all laws of physics. Joe didn’t know how long because he lost track of time as he pictured his family. Mom. Gen. Thought about internal injuries. Those would be the most serious of injuries. A broken leg or arm he could handle but if he couldn’t slow down this plane soon it might ground loop and flip over on its back.

  Then everything went black.

  Joe woke up to the sound of sirens. Man, those guys are fast. He had to give it to the first responders of the Starlight Hill Fire Department. He should have gone to work for them instead of flying planes. Always knew these damn things would be the death of him. Rather than wait for help, he crawled out of the wreckage on his belly. Everything hurt and it was hard to tell where he was injured. He looked around at his surroundings, recognizing the ugly red barn immediately. Yep, he’d landed right on Ike Henderson’s land, the lone farmer in Starlight Hill to grow mushrooms.

  Joe had landed in a pile of shit. No big surprise there. He’d been doing that for most of his life.

  Ike was yelling and waving his arms. Something about ‘watch where you’re going.’ Okay, thanks, buddy.

  The first responders drove right out to the field and headed in his direction. “Don’t move!” Ty Gillham yelled.

  “Not a problem.” Joe gritted his teeth and stopped trying to move. He could take this pain. It was fine. Good. Pain did something most people didn’t realize. It made a person feel alive. Right now he was about as alive as he’d ever been in his entire sorry life.

&nbs
p; Ty, Scott Turlock and the others reached him, and one by one they went to work.

  “What a landing!” Scott said.

  Joe rubbed at his eye and his hand came away bloody. Now several feet away from his plane, he took one long and hard look at the wreckage. Parts were scattered about in different directions. The right wing was destroyed, nearly flattened into the ground. “Fuck!”

  “What is it?” Ty asked.

  “I think I need a new plane.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Joe was deposited in the ambulance for a ride to the emergency room of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Even though he’d told the guys over and over he was fine and only needed a ride back to his truck, no one would listen to him.

  “Go get checked out. You’ll need stitches for the cut above your eye, if nothing else,” Scott ordered.

  “You’re a pain in my ass, you know?” Joe said to Scott.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Scott said and shut the ambulance doors.

  “Are you refusing medical care?” The fresh-faced EMT applied pressure above Joe’s eyebrow.

  “No, dammit.” Joe spit out. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Joe found himself on an ambulance ride. Seemed unnecessary but then again plane crashes had a way of shaking people up. The whole thing was unnatural, metal falling out of the sky. He definitely agreed. But he’d executed a difficult landing and managed to walk away in one piece, even if Ike had wanted to make sure he’d be back later to clean up his mess.

  “What the hell happened up there?” The EMT asked.

  “Engine failure.” As simple and complicated as that. In ten plus years of flying, he’d never had to crash land. Not even in the desert. Now he’d lived through it. Hell yeah, he’d survived.

  But what if his sister heard about the plane crash before someone could tell her he’d survived? Gen overreacted about everything. She’d get on the phone to their Mom and then all hell would break loose.

  “I should make some calls.” He tried to get up, but a large hand reached out to shove him back down. Joe felt a knot on his forehead, possibly from banging against part of the cockpit.

  “Sure, sure buddy.” The EMT patted his shoulder. “You can make your calls. I’ll get you to the hospital first, if you don’t mind.”

  A few hours later, Joe still hadn’t made his calls. Instead they’d taken him to the fifth floor and checked him in for the night. He’d been treated to a brain scan to check for a concussion, had some stitches sewn above his eye, and an IV inserted for fluids and pain meds. All of the tests they put him through took roughly a millennium to have any results. He resented the hell out of all these people at the hospital making a fuss over him. He wasn’t used to it. Ever since his dad had died in Afghanistan, Joe had been taking care of Mom and Gen. When he went to Iraq, he’d made sure Wallace looked in on them. And in the desert, Joe had been another type of caretaker all together.

  Eventually he stopped thinking about making phone calls. The pain meds they’d given him were doing a bang-up job of making him forget anything unpleasant. They were making him unwind, unpucker and unclench.

  They were making him think of Kailey again.

  The first time he’d met her, during their temporary job with the punk kid singer, she’d been sick with the flu about a week into the job and Joe had stayed with her.

  Even when the punk couldn’t accept his stylist was out of commission.

  “I can do it,” Kailey said, trying to wrench her feverish body out of bed.

  “No.” Joe gently pushed her back down. “The kid can do his own hair for once.”

  But the punk didn’t seem to agree, and could be heard pounding on Kailey’s door. “Kailey! It’s an emergency. I hired you for my cowlick. What am I gonna do now? I got a press junket in five minutes, dude.”

  Joe opened the door to Kailey’s hotel room. “Sorry. She’s sick.”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “What are you doing here? You guys are together?”

  “Right.”

  The punk grabbed a handful of his ridiculous hair. “Take a look at this! I need some help. All I need is a few minutes of her magic touch.”

  “She’s too sick.”

  “But it will just take a minute,” the kid whined.

  God forbid the whole world not stop on its axis because he needed something. Joe shut the door, grabbed a can of the goop he’d seen Kailey use before, opened the door and shoved it in the kid’s hands.

  “Here’s the magic shit. Go to town with it.”

  He’d then shut the door again, only to find Kailey right behind him. Cheeks red, eyes bleary.

  “Go back to bed,” he ordered.

  But she’d pushed past him to the bathroom where she’d been sick all over again. He’d washed her up and carried her back to bed where he lay with her in his arms.

  “I don’t want to get you sick,” Kailey coughed. “Or fired.”

  “I don’t care,” Joe said. “Someone needs to take care of you, and it’s going to be me.”

  Probably out of sheer stubbornness, he’d managed to avoid getting the flu. But even if he’d been sick, he would have taken care of himself. He always did. A fact of life these nurses and doctors didn’t quite understand.

  “Oh, Joe!” He heard a voice from the hallway. Genevieve.

  “Oh, shit.” Joe steeled himself.

  “Where is he? Where’s my brother?” Genevieve entered the room, took one look at him and burst into tears.

  “Aw Gen, don’t cry. Nurse, dammit. Would you tell her I’m fine?”

  “He’s fine, honey.” The nurse patted Gen’s shaking shoulders. “Even ornery. A good sign.”

  At those words, Genevieve seemed to rally quickly. “What are you doing crashing your plane? How dare you scare us all to death?”

  “Excuse me, Gen, there was a little thing called engine failure.”

  “It was an amazing landing, my husband says,” the nurse added. “It could have been a lot worse. You did good, young man.”

  “Thanks.” It hadn’t been easy. He’d used valuable resources to execute a turn away from houses.

  Within minutes, Wallace had arrived and before long Joe’s room was filled with friends and co-workers from the regional airport. Scott, Billy, Brooke, Sophia, Giancarlo and Eileen. Luke, the manager of the airport, promised to take care of the business side of things for Joe while he recuperated.

  “I hate to tell you this, bud,” Scott Turlock said, “But there are some local reporters in the lobby waiting and hoping for an interview.”

  “They’re not getting one.”

  “It might be better if you prepare a statement and have someone else give it to them,” Wallace said. “Then they might leave you alone.”

  “Exactly,” Billy added. “Throw them a bone.”

  “Fine.” Joe would make it brief and to the point. Engine failure. Steered away from civilians. Prepared for crash landing. Crawled out of it. The end.

  Finally everyone had gone except for Gen and Wallace. When Gen left the room briefly, Wallace’s mouth opened and shut a few times but nothing came out. Joe understood. Their friendship had been strained for the past few months. But now, lying here, it all seemed too stupid for words.

  “Have you thought about calling Kailey?” Wallace finally asked.

  He’d been thinking of her on and off since he’d first contemplated dying, and hell yeah he’d thought of calling her. At least a dozen times. But what would be the point? She’d already said how she felt. He’d been stupid enough to believe love conquered all and she’d proved to him it didn’t.

  When Joe didn’t answer, Wallace pressed on. “Because maybe at least someone should tell her you’re not dead.”

  Crap. If this made the local news, Kailey might see it. Would they get all the facts straight or would they sensationalize it? Despite the fact he didn’t owe her a thing, he couldn’t help but feel protective of her. She’d been through enough rough times in her life, and if she had a
ny feelings at all left for him the news could devastate her.

  Not to mention the last thing he wanted was her pity. He didn’t want her coming to see him out of some sense of guilt or obligation.

  “Tell you what. Have Gen call her.”

  * * *

  Kailey Robbins loved her job, and she did get paid well to dye, clip and style at the upper end Blue Heaven Day Spa in Los Gatos, but she wasn’t a miracle worker. Yet every time Mrs. Earby came in, she brought in a photo of a movie star and asked Kailey to “Make me look like this.” Today it was Sophia Vergara.

  No problem if she were a magician.

  Anyway, she wouldn’t be here much longer since next month she’d accepted a job as a stylist on the new season of the Housewives reality show. The drama and chaos of the show ought to keep her busy enough to stop thinking about Joe Hannigan once and for all.

  Not much else had worked, so it was worth a try.

  Joe. Joe of the slight southern accent, the hard body and the sometimes edgy blue eyes. Those eyes were deep and they gazed at her like they could read all her secrets.

  “You scare me,” she’d told him in a rare moment of honesty.

  “Who, me? I’m a kitty cat.”

  Yeah, sure. Some kitten. Maybe one with the strength of a lion who when he had her pinned under him wouldn’t let her move a muscle. Not like she wanted to go anywhere when she was under Joe, which was part of the problem.

  One thing she didn’t like about the day spa was the TV, but the customers had requested it in the hair cutting area. It was regularly tuned in to all the afternoon shows like Ellen. Kailey would have preferred music, maybe Jake Owen or Sam Hunt, who reminded her of Joe. There he was again. In her head.

  A month ago she’d told him their friends-with-benefits relationship was over. Done. Kaput. She hadn’t been able to keep her heart out of it anymore, and while Joe wanted more she knew it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t built for permanent. Because she was crazy about Joe, she’d tried living with him once but she wasn’t interested in small towns. And Joe was all about small towns. All about family.