“You once said that if I ever needed a favor, I simply had to ask,”
Luke told Callie.
“Well, you have some nerve, Luke Parker. Calling me in on a long-ago favor!”
“My father is set on me taking over the family business.”
Callie didn’t need to hear the steel in his tone to know his take on that. Years ago, something bad must have happened between father and son, something that left Luke vehemently determined to do nothing to increase his father’s fortune.
“Just how do you expect me to help you?” She wanted to sound aloof and uncaring, but she was curious.
“Way I see it,” Luke said carefully, “I need to make myself so undesirable, he’d never let me run the business. And that, darlin’, is where you come in.”
“Forget it, Luke. I’ve got better things to do than playing your girlfriend again so you can annoy your father.”
“I’m not asking you to play my girlfriend,” he said. “No, Callie, I’m asking you to be my wife.”
Dear Reader,
When Patricia Kay was a child, she could be found hiding somewhere…reading. “Ever since I was old enough to realize someone wrote books and they didn’t just magically appear, I dreamed of writing,” she says. And this month Special Edition is proud to publish Patricia’s twenty-second novel, The Millionaire and the Mom, the next of the STOCKWELLS OF TEXAS series. She admits it isn’t always easy keeping her ideas and her writing fresh. What helps, she says, is “nonwriting” activities, such as singing in her church choir, swimming, taking long walks, going to the movies and traveling. “Staying well-rounded keeps me excited about writing,” she says.
We have plenty of other fresh stories to offer this month. After finding herself in the midst of an armed robbery with a gun to her back in Christie Ridgway’s From This Day Forward, Annie Smith vows to chase her dreams…. In the next of A RANCHING FAMILY series by Victoria Pade, Kate McDermot returns from Vegas unexpectedly married and with a Cowboy’s Baby in her belly! And Sally Tyler Hayes’s Magic in a Jelly Jar is what young Luke Morgan hopes for by saving his teeth in a jelly jar…because he thinks that his dentist is the tooth fairy and can grant him one wish: a mother! Also, don’t miss the surprising twists in Her Mysterious Houseguest by Jane Toombs, and an exciting forbidden love story with Barbara Benedict’s Solution: Marriage.
At Special Edition, fresh, innovative books are our passion. We hope you enjoy them all.
Best,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
Solution: Marriage
Barbara Benedict
For my dad,
who showed me and everyone around him
what love truly means.
We’ll all miss you.
BARBARA BENEDICT
Weaving a story has always been part of Barbara Benedict’s life, from the days when her grandfather would gather the kids around his banjo, to the nights of bedtime tales with her own children. To Barbara, starting a story should be like saying, “Come, enter a special new world with me.”
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 One
Lucky Parker was back in town.
The news ripped through Mamie’s Main Street Styling Salon like a midsummer tornado—Tuesdays always drawing the biggest crowd for the cut-and-curl special—but Callianne Magruder didn’t need the buzz of small-town gossips to alert her to that man’s appearance. Long before the ladies of Latour, Louisiana, began their clucking, she’d felt he was coming.
Thing was, she’d always had this sixth sense when it came to Lucky Parker. Or maybe she might better call it no sense, since it invariably led her to trouble.
Trying to appear calm, if not altogether indifferent, she kept working at Mrs. Pendergast’s thinning gray hair, but her gaze had this way of sliding back to the window where she could watch Lucky swing his long legs out of his fancy BMW sedan. Locking the vehicle—no doubt a habit from his many years away in New York City—he pocketed his keys and turned in the direction of the salon.
Callie’s heart skipped a beat. Given their past, he’d have no reason to come anywhere near her, she told herself, but her sixth sense insisted where else? She wanted to look away, needed to actually be indifferent, but she continued to follow his progress with an almost morbid fascination. At half past three on a July afternoon, Main Street shimmered with pavement-buckling waves of heat, but Lucky sauntered with the same cool arrogance he’d displayed when turning his back to it a good ten years ago. Blond hair still slightly long and glinting in the sun, his tall, athletic body honed by years on the football field, he remained Latour’s Golden Boy, the conquering hero returning home.
Looking at him, Callie felt that old familiar stab, piercing her heart.
She turned her back, fixing her focus on pulling the curlers from Mrs. Pendergast’s hair. She might better use her time earning a good tip from her wealthiest customer. As Gramps used to chant, thinking about that boy would only bring heartache.
And how could it ever be otherwise with the bad blood between their families?
Way back when, Gramps had eloped with the woman Ben Parker wanted to marry, setting off a feud lasting nearly forty years. In a town like Latour, the line separating the haves from have-nots was a distinct one and no Magruder could mess with a Parker and hope to emerge unscathed. Callie had learned the hard way that only a fool tempted fate by spinning dreams about Ben’s sole remaining heir. She might have made the mistake once, but she darned well wasn’t about to repeat it.
Yet her traitorous gaze kept returning to the long plate-glass window with a full view of Main Street. She should know heaps better by now, but she couldn’t stop staring at the ghost from her past, half dreading yet half hoping his destination was indeed Mamie’s salon.
And, oh, wouldn’t the tongues start wagging at that.
Acid churned in her stomach as she thought of what she could say to silence the gossips. Or more important, what she’d say to him. Latour being such a small place, she should have known this moment would come eventually—and heck, she’d had ten long years to practice—yet with each step Lucky took closer, she grew more aware of how ill prepared she was to face him. Where was her anger, her righteous indignation? Why, in the name of all justice, must the mere sight of that man turn her resolve to mush?
Not