Jennifer Lohmann - Weekends in Carolina

Wishing the weekend would never end!

Trey Harris wants nothing to do with his late father’s farm. In fact, he can’t get rid of it fast enough so he can enjoy his city life. Then he meets Maxine “Max” Backstrom—the gorgeous woman leasing the land. Between her passion for his family’s farm and her determination to show him its beauty…well, Trey can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to kiss her!

Still, their lives are worlds apart. If he sells, her livelihood vanishes. But his interests aren’t here. And no matter how magical their weekends together are, this can’t lead to anything…can it?

He watched her watch the game...and couldn’t look away

“I don’t think I’ve seen a college basketball game since, well, since college,” Max said, before a forkful of corn pudding disappeared into her mouth.

“Where did you go to college?” Trey asked, suddenly interested in everything about her.

She held up her fork and he waited until she swallowed. “Illinois, so I know a thing or two about college basketball.”

Trey scoffed. “Big Ten basketball is fine, so long as you’re in the Midwest.” He turned on the accent he’d turned off for most of his adult life. “Y’all down South now, ya hear.” When he turned to smile at her, she had an unabashed grin on her face. Her white teeth against her pale lips, her speckled skin, and the wild mass of orange hair were a shining counterpart to the flashes from the oversize television.

He wrenched his face back to watch the game. Right now he controlled her livelihood. Even if he wanted to know just how much of her body was covered in freckles, he was leaving in a week.

Dear Reader,

I grew up in southern Idaho with parents who gardened. And they didn’t just have a small, “square foot” garden; our garden was about an eighth of an acre and included raspberries, strawberries, apples, apricots, pears and plums, along with vegetables. Between tilling in the manure, laying the drip lines, organic pest control, et cetera, this garden was a huge operation for one family. It provided all of our summer produce, along with produce to give away, and to preserve. No one ever had to tell me to “eat my vegetables” because fruits and vegetables made up the bulk of what I ate—although I did have to be told to eat my zucchini.

Now I live on a shaded plot of land and I am a terrible gardener.

Farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture saved me. While agriculture has always been an important part of North Carolina’s economy, I have been blessed to live in Durham at a time when “eating local” really started to gain hold. One of the benefits of writing Weekends in Carolina is that I had an excuse—obligation—to get to know my farmers better. The amount of care, both for the land and for the vegetable, put into a single cucumber humbles me.

If this book inspires you to go to your local farmer’s market and buy a pound of spring carrots, then I also suggest that you visit the bookstore for a copy of World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey and make her stir-fried carrots with ginger and mustard seeds. You won’t regret either purchase and you’ll have the bonus of a delicious side dish.

Enjoy!

Jennifer Lohmann

Weekends in Carolina

Jennifer Lohmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Lohmann is a Rocky Mountain girl at heart, having grown up in southern Idaho and Salt Lake City. When she’s not writing or working as a public librarian, she wrangles two cats and five backyard chickens; the dog is better behaved. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, and has received a weekly box of vegetables from the same farm for eight years.

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.

To Elise from Elysian Fields Farm and all the small farmers selling week after week at farmers’ markets across the country; thank you for growing delicious food for me to cook with and eat.

To all the people who helped me weather a rough year. This space is too small to thank each of you individually, but you know who you are. May life bless you as much as you have blessed 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 NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

TREY WOULD HAVE bet substantial amounts of money that he would never have found a woman shooting tin cans with a .22 attractive. Or, for that matter, any woman standing behind his father’s house. This woman was evidence that he would have lost both wagers.

He couldn’t see her face, but she had a ferocity to her stance, legs set apart and knees slightly bent, elbows sharp and dangerous, and he could describe the pinch in her facial features without her having to turn around. Her mass of curly, carrot-colored hair was barely contained by the knot she’d tied it in, and the baseball cap it was shoved under was doing nothing to help lash the masses together. She must be keeping it out of her eyes by sheer force of will, as the wind blew wisps of curls everywhere but in front of her face.

Trey was surprised there was enough country left in him to find a woman in work boots attractive. Another bet he would have lost.

Whoever she was, her jeans skimmed over her tight butt before disappearing into her boots, and he was enjoying the way her shoulder blades poked through the white cotton of her T-shirt. And the way the surprisingly bright and unseasonably warm sun of a January day in North Carolina bounced off the freckles on her arms. Only a small amount of bare skin was visible, but what he could see was more freckle than not.

She pulled the trigger and the P in one of the Pepsi cans disappeared before the can toppled over. The woman herself barely flinched. Trey had just taken another breath and she shot the next can. Given the pile of fallen cans and the near-empty box of fresh targets, the woman had been out shooting for a while. He was loath to interrupt her to ask where Max was. Not only was he enjoying the view, but she was an angry woman holding a rifle. Trey knew nothing about Max and his competencies, but Trey’s father had certainly been capable of making a woman angry enough to shoot any human with a Y-chromosome, even from beyond the grave. God knows Trey had spent much of his childhood escaping his house to punch trees while his mother had practiced her bland smile.

Clip spent, the woman put the rifle on the seat of a lawn chair and stalked to the line of dead cans.

“Hey,” Trey called out as he walked to the chair. She didn’t turn around or give any other indication that she’d heard him. His mother’s lessons, always at odds with his father’s example, had been to be polite and respectful to women, but he couldn’t yell “pardon me, ma’am” with enough force to get the woman’s attention, so he reconciled himself to a rude “Hey, you!”