Shannon Waverly: Cathryn

“What?”

“Out. I don’t want to stay in tonight. I don’t want to be—” she looked around her living room with the eyes of a hateful stranger “—here.”

“Where are you going?” Tucker expected her to say Lauren’s or Julia’s, but instead she just shrugged.

“Out,” she repeated, heading for the bathroom. She returned a short while later with her makeup repaired. “It’s Saturday night, and I’m tired of playing by the rules. Why should I? No one else has.” Including my ex-husband, she might have said—but didn’t.

Uh-oh. Tucker’s eyes swept over her for about the thirty-seventh time, and a premonition of disaster hit him. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

“Don’t try to stop me, Tuck.”

Tucker knew she was angry and in a hell-raising mood. But then, why shouldn’t she be? She had a right to rage for a night. And actually, a bit of rage might do her some good.

As long as she had someone to watch over her.

He lifted his hands in surrender. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I just want to go with you.”

Dear Reader,

During the writing of Cathryn, several people asked me how I could possibly create a romance novel featuring an overweight, happily married stay-at-home mom whose hobbies include square dancing, sewing and choir. That was the Cathryn McGrath they knew from her brief appearances in Julia and Lauren (published in November 1998 and December 1999 respectively). Each time I was asked, my response was a rather smug “You’ll see,” accompanied by a slightly dirty laugh.

I knew something, or rather someone, they didn’t—Tucker Lang, bad boy extraordinaire, who drops into Cathryn’s life needing to change his ways just when Cathryn needs to change hers. From the very first line of the book, I recognized the potential within such a situation. With that line I also began my most enjoyable writing experience to date. I absolutely loved being with these two buoyant people.

Cathryn concludes CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, my series about a group of people who share the unusual experience of having grown up together on a small fictional island off the coast of Massachusetts. I hope you enjoy it.

My best to you always,

Shannon Waverly

Cathryn

Shannon Waverly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Paula, who took a chance on me fifteen books ago. For your always-judicious editing, lofty standards and human understanding (especially each time I was late with a manuscript), thank you.

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

TUCKER LANG wasn’t the sort of guy good girls cared to be seen with. Not if they valued their reputations. Good girls went out with clean-cut, law-abiding guys, the ones who stayed in school and went to church and had plans for the future.

Being with Tucker Lang was another matter, however—as long as no one found out—and by the time he left Harmony at the age of twenty-one, not many girls remained who hadn’t joined him for a walk on the wild side. Tucker was trouble, all right, and nothing was more alluring than trouble.

Tucker even looked like trouble, from his long black hair to his scuffed biker’s boots, which he wore both winter and summer and even to the beach. He also favored shark-tooth jewelry, black leather jackets, and sleeveless T-shirts, to display his sinewy musculature.

The vehicles he drove, both of which he’d rebuilt himself, looked like trouble, too. The first was a big, loud Harley-Davidson; the other, a Trans-Am with flames painted on the sides. Auto repair was, in fact, his trade while he lived on Harmony, one he’d stumbled into simply because it happened to be the family business. His great-uncle Walter, who’d brought him to the island from the Bronx when he was thirteen, operated the island’s only garage, Lang’s Auto Repair.

To the distress of Walter and his wife, Winnie, trouble ran deeper than just appearances with Tuck, right from the get-go. He set off stink bombs in school, encouraged his classmates to smoke and swear, and pilfered candy and magazines anywhere he found them for sale.

Another reason the Langs turned gray so fast, beyond the fact that they were both sixty when they took Tucker in, was that he seemed perpetually involved in dangerous activities, usually on a dare. One day, for instance, he dived off Little Harbor Bridge—nothing unusual for island kids, except that in Tucker’s case his hands were tied behind his back. He once camped out all night in Morgan’s Hollow, where if the ghosts didn’t get you, the deer ticks would. But the incident that made Tuck an irrevocable Harmony legend was his getting struck by lightning, a gigantic bolt that passed right through him, yet left him totally unharmed.

Tucker was combative, too, a trait that became more prominent as he grew older and began hanging out in bars. He wasn’t the largest or strongest guy on the island, but he was arguably the toughest, and he never backed down from a fight.

In addition to all this, Tucker drank hard, swam nude, danced dirty and spent more than his fair share of nights in jail paying for his sins, the sum of which, alas, only added to his appeal and, in turn, the sullying of even more female reputations.

Not mine, though, thought Cathryn McGrath a bit smugly as she drove across Harmony on a slushy, colorless Valentine’s Day. She was on her way to attend the afternoon visitation at D’Autell’s Funeral Home where Walter Lang was laid out. Cathryn’s virtue had remained intact—although, to be honest, Tucker had never tested it.

For one thing, she’d been off-limits. She’d gone steady with Dylan from the age of fifteen until they were married four years later, and Tucker had respected that. Also, her parents and the Langs were neighbors. They did what good neighbors do—traded news and recipes and tools, and lent each other help whenever it was needed. For some odd reason, that bond seemed to affect Tuck’s attitude toward Cathryn. That, and his being four years older. When he wasn’t ignoring her, which he often did, he unfailingly treated her like a kid sister, someone meant to be endured and occasionally protected, but not seduced.

But even if he had hit on her, she was positive nothing would’ve come of it, because, quite frankly, the appeal of Tucker Lang, bad boy extraordinaire, was lost on her. Although other girls had swooned over his dark eyes and rugged unshaven jaw, Cathryn had much preferred Dylan’s blond and blue-eyed all-American looks. In fact, Tucker’s aggressive demeanor had sometimes scared her, and his behavior had positively turned her off.

She didn’t find Tucker Lang exciting or irresistible, the way other girls did. Cathryn’s idea of irresistible took the form of respect, loyalty, industriousness and being family-oriented, all of which Dylan possessed in spades. Rather, she considered Tucker confused, immature and pitiable, and the girls who allowed him to use them were fools.

Slowing her van for the stop sign at Four Corners, a central marker on the fifteen-square-mile island, Cathryn’s rambling remembrances also came to a stop, and she realized with some annoyance that she’d spent an unwarranted amount of time thinking about Tucker Lang today. She hadn’t seen the man in nearly fifteen years, and before that they hadn’t exactly been bosom buddies. He probably didn’t even remember her. Yet, from the moment she’d heard about his uncle’s death and realized he’d probably be home for the funeral, he’d been drifting through her thoughts like a low-grade obsession. Probably because, despite all his shortcomings, I liked the guy, she thought with a slow smile. We were oil and water, but we always got along.