Rochelle Alers - A Time To Keep

Re-read bestselling author Rochelle Alers’ amazing novel that illustrates the bonds of family and love.

A change of scenery can often create an unexpected change of heart…

Gwendolen Taylor, fed up with big city life, finds herself inheriting an antebellum estate in Bayou Teche. Little does she know that this legacy may lead to a love beyond her wildest hopes and dreams.

Originally published in 2006.

A Time to Keep

Rochelle Alers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT Re-read bestselling author Rochelle Alers’ amazing novel that illustrates the bonds of family and love. A change of scenery can often create an unexpected change of heart… Gwendolen Taylor, fed up with big city life, finds herself inheriting an antebellum estate in Bayou Teche. Little does she know that this legacy may lead to a love beyond her wildest hopes and dreams. Originally published in 2006.

TITLE PAGE A Time to Keep Rochelle Alers www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

The ring tone from Gwendolyn Taylor’s cell phone playing Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3 in E-flat major pulled her attention away from the panoramic landscape of Cajun country. She’d just passed a road sign that indicated she’d entered the town limits of Franklin, Louisiana.

Looking at the caller ID on her cell, she pushed a button on the hands-free receiver. “Yes, Lauren.”

“Are we there yet?” Laughter followed the childish query.

Shaking her head and sucking her teeth, Gwen said loudly, “Girl, you need a job that takes you out of the house, because you’re beginning to sound like your kids.” Lauren, a literary researcher and her husband, bestselling author, Caleb Samuels, both worked from home.

“Are you there yet?” Lauren repeated.

She glanced at the GPS navigational screen. “Almost.”

“How is Louisiana?”

“It’s different from our neck of the woods.”

Lauren’s soft laughter came through the speaker. “Don’t you mean my neck of the woods?”

Gwen smiled. “My driver’s license still has a Boston address, my car a Massachusetts plate, and when I open my mouth and say pawk everyone will know that I will never be crowned Miss Sweet Tater Pone.”

“You’re right about that,” Lauren agreed. “But you should know you’re much too mature for an insipid beauty contest.”

Gwen’s delicate jaw dropped. “Mature? Speak for yourself, Mrs. Samuels. You’re the one with three children, and a possible fourth on the way.”

“I told you before that Royce is going to be my last baby.”

“You said that after you had Kayla.”

“He just happened, cuz.”

“Getting pregnant doesn’t just happen Lauren Taylor-Samuels. Didn’t you tell me that you wind up pregnant whenever you and Caleb take afternoon naps together?”

“For your information, Miss Know-It-All, Cal and I no longer nap together in the afternoon.”

“Are you saying you guys have given up knockin’ boots?”

Lauren laughed again. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

Gwen took another quick glance at the navigational screen. She was almost there. “You guys should have one more and make it an even four.”

“I’ll have one more if you have one.”

“Can’t, cuz. I don’t have a man.”

“You don’t want a man, Gwen.”

“Correction, Lauren. I don’t need a man.”

“You’re going to need one to make a baby.”

“Not if I go the test tube route.”

“No! You can’t, Gwendolyn.”

Lauren only called her by her full name whenever she was upset with something Gwen said or did. “I can and I will if I’m not married by the time I’m thirty-eight.”

“You better start looking for a man now because you’ll be looking at thirty-eight in less than four years.”

Slowing her late-model sedan, Gwen came to a complete stop at an intersection. Looking both ways she continued in a southwesterly direction. “So will you, Lauren Vernice Taylor-Samuels.” She and Lauren were first cousins, born weeks apart.

“But, I’m the one with the husband and children.”

“You don’t have to rub it in, Lauren.”

“I’m not rubbing it in. You would’ve married years before me if you hadn’t broken off your engagement to Craig Hemming.”

“Craig was wrong for me. He was too old and too possessive. I can’t stand a man who won’t allow me my space.”

“Is that why you’re running away, Gwen? Because you need space?”

“You know I’m not running away.” She didn’t want to argue with Lauren about why she’d sold her condominium and resigned her position as a lifestyle writer at the Boston Gazette to move fifteen hundred miles away and live in a house she’d inherited from a relative she hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.

“I don’t want you to think I’m giving you a hard time,” Lauren continued in a tone she used when correcting her children. “It’s just that I miss you already. You’re more than a cousin. You are my sister.”

“Stop it,” Gwen chided softly, as her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t drive and cry at the same time. I’ll call you tomorrow after I see what Aunt Gwendolyn left me.”

“You promise?”

She smiled, blinking back the tears shimmering in her raven-colored eyes. “I promise. Kiss the children for me, and give Caleb my love.”

“I will,” Lauren said. “Later, cuz.”

Pressing a button, Gwen ended the call, struggling to bring her emotions under control. She was frightened—no, petrified was a better word—to leave all that was familiar to her for something so removed from who or what she was. But she knew her life would not change unless she actively effected that change.

It had taken her four years to become the consummate minimalist; she’d streamlined her lifestyle eliminating what she considered excess as she purged her closet of clothes she hadn’t worn more than twice in a given season, donated books to the local library and nursing homes that were collecting dust on her to-be-read pile, and gave up entertaining men who’d professed their undying love, but were unable to commit to something deeper.

Gwen was still trying to uncover what deeper meant. Did it translate to I love you instead of I like you a lot? Whatever it was, she wanted no part of their superficial games. At thirty-four she was ready to start anew in a different state and with property she’d inherited from her namesake—a reclusive, former actress—her great-aunt.

A smile slowly crept through her expression of uncertainty as she drove down Main Street. A wave of nostalgia swept over her; it was as if she’d stepped back in time. Old-fashioned street lamps lined the street, rolling out beneath an arbor of live oaks.