Liz Flaherty - The Happiness Pact

Title Page The Happiness Pact Liz Flaherty www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author LIZ FLAHERTY retired from the post office and promised to spend at least fifteen minutes a day on housework. Not wanting to overdo things, she’s since pared that down to ten. She spends nonwriting time sewing, quilting and doing whatever else she wants to. She and Duane, her husband of...oh, quite a while...are the parents of three and grandparents of the Magnificent Seven. They live in the old farmhouse in Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really...forty years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening! She’d love to hear from you at lizkflaherty@gmail.com.

Dedication My heartfelt gratitude goes to Danna Bonfiglio, who introduced me to Venus and inspired me to make it Libby’s guardian planet in a way I never could have imagined on my own. Danna’s commitment to the high school students she teaches is an even greater inspiration. Thanks also to author Jim Cangany, whose wholehearted sharing of his knowledge of clinical depression made The Happiness Pact a better book. I couldn’t have written it without his answers to my shamelessly intrusive questions. In nearly every town there is a building full of books, CDs and DVDs, there for the education, enlightenment and pleasure of all who enter. I work in one, have had cards in others and appreciate every one of them, so it is to libraries—and to their tireless librarians, boards and Friends—that this book is dedicated.

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

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LIBBY WORTH TAUGHT the primary class at St. Paul’s when Mrs. Miller wasn’t there, tended bar at Anything Goes Grill when Mollie needed a night off and quilted with friends on Sunday afternoons. She made pastries for Anything Goes and the Silver Moon Café because she loved to bake and because sometimes she needed the money. She owned, operated and loved the Seven Pillars Tearoom and lived in a spacious apartment above it with her Maine coon cat, Elijah.

Her very favorite thing was to stand in her backyard and peer into the eyepiece of her telescope. Her knee-trembling, heart-pounding fear of thunderstorms was no match for her fascination with the light show offered by the sky. Besides, Venus was her guardian planet. Other people had guardian angels, she was fond of saying, but her mother made sure she had a whole planet.

She liked country music, high school football and reading travel brochures. She never went anywhere—she’d only been in the states whose borders kissed Indiana’s—but someday she was going to visit all those places. Someday.

Seventeen and a half years ago, on prom night, she’d been in an automobile accident that killed three people and forever changed the lives of the other nine in the church van they’d used for transport. The losses had caused ripples in the small community of Lake Miniagua that could still be felt all this time later. The wreck had come almost exactly a year after Libby’s mother’s death from cancer, and a year before her father’s suicide.

Everything had changed with that painful string of events, naturally enough, but she’d made a life for herself in its aftermath. Although that life was mostly uneventful, she never lost the feeling that any minute now, the other shoe would drop.

Today was New Year’s Eve. It was also the day she turned thirty-four. Looking into the mirror in the corner of the tearoom kitchen that morning, she’d been pretty sure her jaw was softening and the double chin she’d always had a touch of was generating a third tier.

“Yo, Lib.”

The shout from the front foyer of the big old Victorian on Main Street startled her before she could get good and depressed about the life she had a feeling she’d slept through. She looked up at the schoolhouse clock on the wall and flinched when she saw that it was nearly a quarter past eleven. The tearoom had opened for business ten minutes ago and here she was standing in the kitchen with an unbaked quiche in her hands.

She slipped it into the empty oven. “Be right there!” She stopped in front of the mirror again to tuck her brown hair behind her ears—she’d forgotten to put it in its customary braid that morning—and frowned at her round face with its freckled nose and slate-gray eyes. She pushed her wide mouth into a smile, tucking in the corners with her fingertips the way her mother had when she was a child. The memory made the smile genuine, and she stepped through the door.

Tucker Llewellyn, the best guy friend a girl ever had, was at the antique buffet that she really needed to move. While there was enough space for the swinging door to clear the piece of furniture, there wasn’t enough room to keep her from walking smack into him.

He caught her before they both fell, pulling her clear of both the buffet and the door. He gave her a quick hug and kissed her forehead in the process. “We have to quit meeting like this. You know the lake grapevine. We’ll be having kids by sunset.”

She laughed, shaking her head and pushing away from him. “We’ve had that talk. I don’t want kids. I want excitement. Adventure.”

“Hey, look at my nephew, Charlie. Believe me, that kid’s absolutely an exciting adventure.”

“You’re right about that.” Libby handed Tucker his regular to-go cup of coffee. “You want an early lunch?”

“I do, but I can’t. Jack and I are working this morning to keep the office from being such a crazy place when the plant opens back up after New Year’s. I came by to remind you about the party at Anything Goes. Want me to pick you up?”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “So I can drive us both home?”

“Probably.” His grin was not only infectious, it was gorgeous. As were his cornflower blue eyes, streaky blond hair and the way he tilted his head to one side when you talked to him. It was a pity the man she’d known ever since he was born the New Year’s baby when she was twenty-seven minutes old had absolutely no romantic effect on her. He might be her favorite man in the world—she was closer to him than to her brother—but he was just Tuck.

And he invariably drank too much at their shared birthday party. When it came to liquor, he was a complete lightweight. He probably was about other things, too, but she loved him anyway.

“We’re thirty-four, although you are a day older than I am,” he said, reminding her of what she’d been perfectly content not thinking about. “You’ve been driving me home from birthday parties ever since high school. It’s my turn.”

“At least. The way I figure it, you need to drive me home until we’re in our fifties.” She waved when the front door opened, admitting Marie Williams and her daughter, Kendall. Marie had been in their high school class, and Libby thought resentfully that she still looked seventeen. She could probably still do the splits and be the top tier in a cheerleader pyramid if she was so inclined. “Do you want to take Jack some coffee?”

But Tucker didn’t answer her. His attention had already strayed. He went to greet Marie with a hug, seeming not to be in a hurry anymore. Libby shook her head, ignoring a ribbon of sadness the couple’s seemingly mutual attraction created at the back of her mind. She liked being single, always had, but sometimes it would be nice if someone looked at her the way Tuck was looking at Marie.