Melinda Curtis - Marrying The Single Dad

Title Page Marrying the Single Dad Melinda Curtis www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author Award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author MELINDA CURTIS is an empty nester. Now instead of carpools and sports leagues, her days go something like this: visit the gym with her husband at 5:30 a.m., walk the dogs, enjoy a little social media, write-write-write, consider cooking dinner (possibly reject cooking dinner in favour of takeout), watch sports or DIY shows with her husband, read and collapse in bed. Sometimes the collapse part happens before any TV or reading takes place. Melinda enjoys putting humor into her stories because that’s how she approaches life. She writes sweet contemporary romances as Melinda Curtis (Brenda Novak says of Season of Change, “found a place on my keeper shelf”), and fun, steamy reads as Mel Curtis (Jayne Ann Krentz says of Cora Rules, “wonderfully entertaining”).

Dedication This book is dedicated to those who—like my heroine—dare to dream. Sometimes it just takes one person to have faith to make you believe in yourself.

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

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT DO YOU think you’re doing?” a deep masculine voice bellowed across the overgrown, wreck-strewn field in Harmony Valley.

Brittany Lambridge jumped and thunked the back of her head on the hood of the ancient BMW sedan. Add headache to her list of injuries this morning.

“I told you we’d get caught,” Regina whispered. Brit’s sister was the queen of I told you sos.

Brit stepped back from the decaying car, rubbing her head beneath her baseball cap. The nip of early morning bit into her scraped knuckles while dewy knee-high grass hid her feet. She peered to the left, then the right, but the rusting, abandoned cars were still rusty and abandoned. No one else was in the flat patch of land with them. No one driving past on the two-lane highway bordering the field. No one stood near the thick blackberry bushes along the river. And she’d been told the car repair shop and nearby house had been empty for at least a decade. Had she imagined the voice? Or... Brit stopped rubbing her head and faced her sister.

“Don’t look at me.” Regina rolled her artfully made-up brown eyes and said with disdain, “I’m not a ventriloquist.”

“No, but you hate helping me with my art.”

“I love helping you and your hobby,” Reggie corrected. “I just worry about getting bitten by angry, territorial spiders or snakes, or—” she glanced around nervously “—angry, territorial property owners.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” An angry, territorial-looking man appeared from behind a dented gray minivan. “I said, what are you doing here?”

Guilt, disappointment and a feeling she couldn’t name froze Brit more completely than a complicated updo with too much hair spray.

The man strode forward. Broad shoulders, muscular arms, rumpled black hair and... Brit stopped cataloging his parts because that hair glinted almost blue in the sunlight and made Brit’s fingers twitch for her hair-cutting scissors.

“Oh, my,” her twin murmured wistfully, having already forgotten her fear of getting bitten.

A thin boy appeared next, wearing light blue, grease-splotched coveralls like Brit’s and a preteen’s poor attempt at a sneer. He slouched against the minivan’s rear fender, thrusting his hands in his pockets. His dark brown hair stuck out from beneath a faded green baseball cap.

Brit’s fingers twitched again even as Shaggy Man drew closer. As a licensed beautician, bad hair drove Brit crazy. As did the feeling she could now name: artistic appreciation. Shaggy Man was like a Pollock painting—a riot of energy that was perfect chaos. She couldn’t look away.

The man stopped ten feet from her, propping hands on hips. His black T-shirt and blue jeans had seen better days, while those bladed cheekbones and ice-blue eyes had probably appealed to a fair share of women. Everything about him said he was the kind of man her mother had warned her and Reggie about while they were growing up—tempting, dangerous, a man more concerned with who warmed his sheets at night than who made his coffee in the morning.

“That car is mine.” Those cool blue eyes of his skated across the landscape with chilly calculation. “Leave.”

Reggie glanced at Brit.

Who reminded herself about big-girl panties. She unwound guilt, brushed out disappointment and gripped her defenses as firmly as the socket wrench she’d been using to remove the BMW’s grille. “I was told this was Harmony Valley’s vehicle graveyard.” That the deserted cars and trucks were fair game for picking.

“The garage over there, this land and everything on it used to belong to my father.” His stance remained as rigid as his words, at odds with that distracting, rule-breaking hair.

“But...” Used to belong to? Shoot and darn. “It’s yours? The garage and the land?”

His glacial gaze found hers, so cold it crackled between them like icicles on eaves before they plunged to the pavement. “Papers went through yesterday.”

A day late. That should have been the title of her life story.

“Let me handle this,” Reggie said, half under her breath. She waded through the tall grass toward trouble. In her tight jeans and off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, she looked like she was walking across a catwalk, not the junkyard. “I’m Regina. I manage the B and B in town.” An overstatement. Their grandmother owned the modest B and B that Reggie hoped to buy. “And this is my twin, Brittany. She uses junk for her arts and crafts projects.”

Arts and crafts?

Brit bristled. How was she ever going to be taken seriously in the art world if her own family dismissed her efforts? “Upcycle artist,” she muttered, although based on the iceman’s smirk, the damage was already done.

“I’m Joe Messina. That’s Sam.” Joe didn’t come forward to meet Reggie. He didn’t even remove his hands from his hips. He held his frown and his ground, not being the type to shake hands with trespassers or fawn over beautiful women.

Couldn’t Reggie see that?

Apparently not. Reggie cast a confused look over her shoulder. Being the twin who’d gotten all the good bone structure, Reggie wasn’t used to being overlooked, trespassing or not.

A breeze blew the wild grass and Joe’s unruly hair. The wind swirled and tugged and then, when neither Joe nor the grass bent, it died out.

Brit’s hopes of free materials for the gate ornament she’d been commissioned to create nearly died along with the breeze. Nearly. “This grille is doing nothing for you. It’s just sitting here.”

“I’m not parting the car out.” Joe stepped around Reggie to better glare at Brit.

“Here it comes,” the boy said quietly, rubbing at the unruly hair at his neck.

“I’m going to get that car running and sell it.” The determination in Joe’s words would have had Brit believing him if it hadn’t been for the age of Joe’s clothing and the dismissive tone of the boy’s comment.

She turned to the forty-year-old BMW. The faded paint and oxidized patina were nearly a work of art in themselves. But the tires had sunk into the soft dirt so deeply the sedan sat on its axles; the wheel wells were rusted nearly clear through; and the interior looked as if something furry had taken up residence. “Have you gotten a good look at this car? You’ll need several years and several miracles to restore it.” Brit swallowed her pride and lifted her voice. “I’ll give you fifty bucks for the front grille.”