Beth Harbison - Head Over Heels

Head Over Heels

Drive Me Wild

Midnight Cravings

Beth Harbison

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Head Over Heels Drive Me Wild Midnight Cravings Beth Harbison www.mirabooks.co.uk

Drive Me Wild Drive Me Wild Beth Harbison

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

Epilogue

Midnight Cravings

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Copyright

Drive Me Wild

Beth Harbison

Chapter One

“You ever had to eat a locust?”

For a moment, Grace Bowes—standing in the blazing-hot sun looking for a mailbox that should have been on the corner of Main and Sycamore but wasn’t—didn’t think the question was directed at her. But when it was repeated with more vehemence, she looked toward the speaker and saw a bent old man perched on a bench in front of the Blue Moon Bay Pharmacy, staring at her so expectantly she couldn’t help but laugh.

“No, I haven’t.” She’d never been one to believe in omens, but when the seventeen-year locusts returned to her hometown the same month she—after a fifteen-year absence—did, she had to rethink her position. On several things. “But I haven’t ruled it out.”

The man laughed heartily, revealing a mouth full of holes plus one or two brown stubs of teeth. “Smart girl.” He thumped a gnarled finger against his temple.

“Have you?” She noticed he had a battered hat at his feet with a handwritten sign that said Thank You in an uncertain hand, and an old dented and rusted Partridge Family lunch box by his side. She immediately regretted asking. Maybe that lunch box was full of locusts right now.

“Had to, during the war. Would’ve starved otherwise.” He looked her over with a sharp blue eye. “What war are you fighting?”

Divorce. Betrayal. Single motherhood. The modern job market as it related to a woman whose only real job had consisted of working as a secretary for her father, the local judge, ten hours a week one summer. A lot of wars. “I’m just looking for a mailbox. I thought there was one on this corner.” She had to mail a car payment on a car that was the main asset she’d won in the divorce after her husband, Michael, had left her a note on the bathroom counter, saying he was sorry but their life together hadn’t worked out and he’d found someone else.

“Used to be one right there.” The old man gestured, then shook his head as if something very sad had happened. “Not there anymore.”

“No, it’s not.” Grace glanced at her watch. In ten minutes she had an appointment at the Bayside Jobs employment agency. First she had to mail this payment, hoping to avoid at least one early-morning call mispronouncing her name and threatening unspeakable actions if she didn’t get the car payment in on time. Along with winning the car, she’d won the car payment, thanks to Michael’s savvy at hiding his financial assets.

Michael Bowes. He’d been the golden boy of Blue Moon Bay, Maryland, the captain of the football team and homecoming king to Grace’s homecoming queen. He’d gone to college in the north and she’d followed a year later. Four years after that, they were married and Michael, then a commercial real-estate developer, had ridden a ride of prosperity right into a lovely upper-middle-class lifestyle. When the bottom had dropped out of that market, he didn’t bother to mention to Grace that they were living on credit cards and line of credit advances and a host of bad gambles.

By the time he left—no doubt because thugs with stub noses and barrel chests were threatening to break his kneecaps—he’d accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability. He and Grace had had to sell the house and her jewelry and even her clothes. Her yard sales were legendary. And exhausting. When it was all over, she had nothing except bad memories of a man who had once seemed like the Catch of Blue Moon Bay.

She wasn’t sorry the marriage was over. Often she’d felt as if in their life together they’d lacked understanding of each other, and even real interest in each other. Perhaps if Michael hadn’t made the first move, she would have suggested it herself after Jimmy was grown. She’d never know, because Michael had beaten her to the punch.

So she’d packed up their ten-year-old son, Jimmy, and moved back to her hometown to live with her widowed mother in the house she’d grown up in. It was only for a year, she told herself. She’d save enough money to move back north, so Jimmy could be near his friends again, in the town that was his home. And she could be far away from this claustrophobic hamlet.

In the meantime, she’d just get a job here in Blue Moon Bay. Granted, at thirty-three, she should be heading her own household, not lying on the same bed she had as a teenager, counting the same fading roses on the wallpaper, but here she was. She was lucky to have the benefit of her mother’s generosity.

With any luck it would keep her from having to eat locusts.

“You have something to mail?” the old man asked, holding out a shaking hand.

Grace automatically pulled her purse in closer to her body. Too many years in the city. “No, thanks. I was just trying to orient myself.”

“Used to be a mailbox there.” He dissolved into a long, sputtering cough. “Gone now.”

She tried to smile and took out one of the only two dollars she had in her purse. “Thanks so much for your help,” she said, dropping the bill into the hat. She noticed there were only three pennies and a nickel in there and, with a pang of pity for the old man, dropped her other dollar in too. “I really appreciate it.”

“God bless you,” he called as Grace walked away and rounded the corner. “And God bless your family too.”

“I hope so,” she whispered.

She looked at her watch again and quickened her pace, hurrying down the shaded street that ran parallel to the old boardwalk a block up. In fifteen years, almost nothing had changed. The salty smell of the ocean still hung in the air and mingled with sweet taffy and caramel corn, though whether the smell was actually there or just a memory, Grace couldn’t say, since it was early May and most of the shops hadn’t opened for the season yet. The pavement was littered here and there with the familiar old Hasher’s French Fries bags, malt vinegar stains dotting the same logo they’d had for at least three decades. It was one of the only landmarks left, now that the once-charming holiday town had fallen in favor of the more exciting Ocean City forty-five minutes away.

Still, a few dings and whistles of arcade games echoed through narrow alleyways full of shops that only opened during the summer when the tourists came to the beach. Grace fought a feeling of melancholy. Around every kite shop, T-shirt shop, and junk-food joint were ghostly memories of bike spills, melting ice cream on muggy summer nights and first kisses in the shadows of doorways and brightly striped awnings.