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ORCHARD AT THE EDGE OF TOWN
Apple Valley #3
Shirlee McCoy
Releasing July 28th, 2015
Kensington: Zebra
Apricot Sunshine Devereux-Miller needs to stay lost. Her eccentric aunt's home in Apple Valley is the perfect place to forget her cheating ex-fiancé and get her no-longer-perfect life back under control. Plus, it couldn't hurt to fix up the house and turn its neglected orchard into a thriving business. And if Apricot can keep Deputy Sheriff Simon Baylor's two lively young daughters out of mischief, maybe she can ignore that he’s downright irresistible—and everything she never dreamed she'd find ...
Simon isn't looking to have his heart broken again. He already has his hands full raising his girls. And lately he's thinking way too much about Apricot's take-charge energy and unwitting knack for stirring up trouble. He can't see a single way they could ever be right for each other. Unless they can take a crazy chance on trusting their hearts—and risking the courage to finally find their way home.
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EXCERPT
Somewhere a rooster called a
warning, and a bird flew from the tree beside her. She’d spent most of her
childhood walking the woods of Happy Dale. Mostly alone. Lots of times at night
when her overwhelming family had been too loud and boisterous and she’d wanted
nothing more than to escape the little house and all the crazy people in it.
She knew night sounds and nocturnal animals. She knew the difference between a
deer stepping gingerly through a thicket and a man sliding through trees.
Right at that moment, she was sure
she heard footsteps.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Rose’s house jutted up from the yard, light spilling out of the kitchen window
and splashing gold across well-trimmed grass. A shadow moved near the corner of
the house, undulating with the branches of an old pine tree that stood near the
edge of the yard.
“Hello?” she called, moving toward
it.
Something lunged from the shadows,
and she screamed, backed up so fast she fell on her butt. She lay there for a
moment, stunned, staring up at the dusky sky.
Get up, her mind screamed. You’re
about to be attacked, and you’re just lying here like a sack of potatoes!
She was almost on her feet when
something landed on her back. Not a heavy weight. Light and purring.
“Handsome?” She gasped, so relieved
she sat down again, dragging the kitten off her back and into her lap. His purr
sounded like an old-man’s snore, his claws digging into her thighs as he tried
to make himself comfortable.
“Ouch. Cool it!”
“Cool what?” a masculine voice
asked, and she screamed so loudly, Handsome jumped off her lap and ran for
cover.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare the
living daylights out of you.”
She knew the Southern drawl, the
broad shoulders backlit by the kitchen light. Simon.
Relieved, she accepted the hand he
held out, allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
“What are you doing here?” she
asked, his hand still wrapped around hers, all warm and calloused and nice.
“Do you even need to ask?”
“Yes. No,” she blabbered, her heart
beating way faster than it should have been, her cheeks flushed. “The kittens,
right?”
“I heard them crying while I was
helping the girls with their homework. I guess they weren’t happy about being
in a box under Evie’s bed.” He released her hand, and she had to admit she was
just a little sorry about it. Simon was one of those guys her family liked to
laugh at—straitlaced, kind, uncomplicated, drama-free.
Dependable was the word Rose would
have used, and she’d have spit it out like it was dirtier than any four-letter
curse she’d ever uttered.
“They’re all waiting on the front
porch,” he continued, heading around the side of the house. “The girls are
probably ringing the doorbell sixty-five thousand times.”
“Doorbells are fun when you’re eight,” she
replied, her insides all kinds of soft and mushy as she watched him scoop
Handsome out of a bush that pressed up against the house.
“Here’s the other one. I guess the
girls didn’t think he was worthy of stealing.” He sounded disgusted and just a
little tired.
“They weren’t stealing. They were
giving the kittens a home.”
“Let’s not play the semantic card,
okay?” He sighed. “They took things that weren’t theirs, hid them in their
room, and didn’t plan to say a word to me about it.”
“You’re really angry about a
childish mistake.”
“A mistake is when you drop a glass
or knock over a cup of water,” he grumbled, stalking up the porch steps.
The twins were there. One had tears
streaming down her face. The other looked fit to be tied, her eyes flashing
with frustration, her lips pressed together.
“I see my missing kittens have
returned. I was wondering where they’d wandered off to,” Apricot said, hoping
to lighten the mood. There’d been very few rules when she was a kid, so she had
no idea what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a parent’s ire, but she
had a feeling the twins had already found out.
“They didn’t go missing, Apricot,”
the sobbing twin managed to gasp. “We took them, because we love them.”
“And Daddy said we had to
apologize,” the scowling twin added. Had to be Evie. She seemed to be the
feisty one out of the pair. “Even though we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You took someone’s cats, Evangeline,” Simon
said, and he sounded like he was at the last edge of his patience.
“How about we all go inside for a
minute?” Apricot suggested. “We can sort it out there.”
“Into the haunted house?” Rori
breathed. “What if the ghosts get us?”
Shirlee McCoy spent her childhood
making up stories and acting them out with her sister. It wasn’t long before
she discovered Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, her mother’s gothic romances . . .
and became an ardent fan of romantic suspense. She still enjoys losing herself in
a good book. And she still loves making up stories. Shirlee and her husband
live in Washington and have five children.
Readers can visit her website at www.shirleemccoy.com.
Thank you for hosting THE ORCHARD AT THE EDGE OF TOWN
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