Inglath Cooper - A Woman Like Annie

As she’d looked that afternoon on the drive back, smiling, a little flushed from the craziness of the day.

He could not remember the last time he’d enjoyed a woman’s company as much as he’d enjoyed Annie’s today. There was something about being with her that felt natural and easy. It seemed as if they had known one another for years.

But then, everything about his attraction to Annie was different.

The admission tripped him a little, and he felt the unbalancing of the convictions he’d held on to for so long. He wondered if he had met the woman who could make him believe once and for all that real love was not a fairy tale.

Dear Reader,

I’ve loved books for as long as I can remember, might actually have read every title in my elementary school library. I was one of those kids who never went anywhere without one in my hand or tucked inside my bag.

I now have three precious daughters who love them, too. One of them promises to be just like me. She’s a toddler, and she likes all books. Sits and looks at the pages, even when there are no pictures, just words. She’s fascinated and comforted by them. That pretty much sums up how I feel about stories that let me, the reader, step into other lives for a while, meet someone I think about long after I’ve finished the book.

If I can do that for someone else, I will consider that my greatest accomplishment as a writer.

I love to hear from readers. Please visit my Web site at www.inglathcooper.com. Or write to me at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.

All best,

Inglath

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Kavvi, Tatti and Nadia…sweet, sweet daughters.

My life’s blessing.

And for Monica Caltabiano. Truest friend.

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

EPILOGUE

MAYOR ANNIE MCCABE WAS LATE.

Her meeting with Jack Corbin was not the kind of meeting a person was late for. It had taken three weeks of unreturned phone calls to get it. And in less than thirty minutes, she would be sitting across a table from the one man who had the power to prevent the town of Macon’s Point from drying up and blowing right off the Virginia state map.

The population sign standing guard at the Langor County line read 3032. Anyone passing through would likely label the town nothing special. True, there was no hubbub of cultural activity at its center, no opera or art museum. Only a farmer’s market and a once-monthly Friday night bluegrass jamboree. But Macon’s Point had become home to Annie in the past three years.

And to her that meant something.

In the year since her divorce, Annie had found peace in this town, a certainty that she would be perfectly content to spend the rest of her life here. It was that kind of place.

The only problem?

If Jack Corbin auctioned off Corbin Manufacturing, half the town would have to move elsewhere. Somehow, tonight, she had to find the words to make him look for another solution to the company’s problems.

Meanwhile, her hair was still wet, and her blouse was missing its middle button.

“Mama?”

“What, honey?” Annie wrestled a comb through her tangled hair, glancing up with a distracted smile at her six-year-old son’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes it shocked her how much he looked like J.D. His hair was a shade of blond women tried to emulate in the priciest salons. His blue eyes had lashes thick enough to generate the same kind of envy. The one concession to cuteness over outright beauty was the dimple in each cheek.

In the father, those dimples had once made her knees go weak. In the son, she was similarly unable to frown on even the most mischievous of deeds when he turned them on her.

“Cyrus sure does like chocolate cake,” Tommy said.

“Did he tell you that?” Annie gave up on the comb and grabbed the hair dryer from the second drawer of her vanity. Tommy was always telling her something Cyrus had said. She sometimes thought the two of them had a language of their own.

“No, but he ate it real fast. Wasn’t it s’posed to be my birthday cake?”

Tommy’s birthday was on Friday. Annie had made the cake early to freeze in an effort to be a step ahead of herself. She dropped the blow-dryer on the sink counter, grabbed her son’s hand and bolted down the stairs. “Cyyyyrus!”

With Tommy still attached to her hand, she skidded to a stop in the kitchen doorway, a run popping up in the right heel of her stockings. Too late. In the middle of the floor sat Cyrus, all one-hundred-plus pounds of him, his nose looking as if it had been dipped in chocolate, the plastic plate on which the cake had been sitting as clean as if it had gone through the dishwasher’s pot-scrubber cycle.

“Oh, Cyrus.”

“See, Mama. I told you he liked it.”

“Bad, Cyrus. At least you look guilty,” Annie said, picking up the plate. Chocolate. The cake had been chocolate. Wasn’t chocolate bad for dogs? She struggled to remember what she’d heard about it, but only came up with the vague recollection that it could damage their nervous systems.

Annie’s own nervous system was well on its way to meltdown.

Cyrus hung his head and plopped down on the floor with a whine. Whether it was guilt or the beginnings of the stomachache that was his destiny, Annie didn’t know.

“Is Cyrus sick, Mommy?”

Worry lines knitted her son’s forehead. Six-year-old boys shouldn’t have worry lines. But more often than not, Tommy did.

“I don’t know, honey. He’ll probably have a bellyache.”

“He’s not gonna die, is he?” The lines on Tommy’s forehead deepened.

Alarm jangled along Annie’s spine. Cyrus was Tommy’s best friend. As much as she had been against getting the dog, she had to admit he had been good for her son at a time when he’d desperately needed a diversion. But then if J.D. hadn’t run off with his all but jail-bait girlfriend, Tommy would have no need for a diversion.

Giving a five-year-old boy a St. Bernard puppy was just the kind of thing J.D. was famous for. At least in the context of their marriage. Tommy had seen one in a dog-food commercial and asked his father if he could have a puppy like that. J.D. had gone right out and bought him one. Of course, doing so had made him a king in Tommy’s eyes. And when Annie had said he couldn’t keep it, she’d been tossed the mantle of Cruella DeVil.

Considering that Tommy had only recently begun to show signs of the carefree child he had once been, she did not want to risk a setback brought on by Cyrus’s sudden demise. And on top of that, Annie now loved him, too. Even if he had been a present from J.D.

“No, honey,” she reassured him. “But we’ll run him over to Doc Angle’s. They’ll know what to do.”

The cordless phone on the kitchen counter rang, rattling Annie’s already rattled nerves. She glared at it, then yanked it up and barked a hello stern enough to deter even the most hardened of the telemarketers who always seemed to call around dinnertime.

“Hey, babe.”

Annie dropped her forehead onto a palm and rubbed the heel of her hand against a budding migraine. She really did have to get caller ID. “I do not have time to talk to you, J.D.”

Tommy glanced up, his eyes widening in happiness just before a mask of indifference slipped up to conceal it. It had been months since he’d asked to speak to his daddy on the rare occasions that J.D. called. Annie’s heart throbbed with the realization that pride demanded this lack of concern even in a boy his age. She and Tommy both had made excuses for J.D. until they’d been forced to admit that was all they were. Excuses.