Valerie Hansen - A Treasure of the Heart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Many thanks to Bert and Troy for explaining

all the ins and outs of running a small restaurant.

Not only are they nice people, their restaurant

offers the best-tasting, home-style meals

for miles around. And thanks to Joe for taking

me there to eat so often!

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

Epilogue

There were times when days, even weeks, passed without a thought of her past. Then, some little thing would jog Lillie Delaney’s memory and her mind would flit back to Gumption, Arkansas, and the idyllic life she’d once led as a child growing up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

Today, the trigger was a scrap of paper resembling a dry leaf being carried along by the rainwater in a curbside gutter. As Lillie watched, her make-believe leaf became a homemade boat, the gutter a meandering creek and Lillie a seven-year-old seeing her tiny craft sail out of reach.

“Catch it!”

“You catch it. It’s your boat.”

Squealing, Lillie had jumped feetfirst into the stream, slipped on a mossy rock and landed on her back pockets in the icy water while a neighbor boy and his sister had giggled over her plight. She’d been sure she’d be scolded for coming home all wet that day. Instead, Gram had found the incident so funny she’d hugged little Lillie and they’d laughed together until tears had run down their cheeks.

Lillie sighed. Breathed deeply. Brought herself back to the present and hurried across the busy city street as the traffic light changed in her favor. There was something refreshing about the air after a storm, even though the wind off Lake Michigan was cutting through her heavy coat and chilling her to the bone. Here in Chicago she welcomed showers because they cleansed the atmosphere and left behind a temporary respite from the pollution of the bustling city.

Back home in Gumption, the rain always gave the air a heavy sweetness as it nourished the forested hills. This time of year, redbud trees would be finishing their display and dogwoods would be spreading creamy-white four-petal flowers in the dappled shade of the soon-to-leaf-out oaks. Yellowish-green buds would make the forest shimmer in the rain’s aftermath, glistening with the promise of the coming canopy; a roof of coolness beneath the arching azure of a cloudless Southern summer sky.

Shivering, Lillie pushed her way through the revolving door into the imposing stone office building where she’d worked for years. Her heels clacked against the polished marble floor of the crowded lobby. Concerned about the time, she hurried to the elevator and pushed the up button again, even though it was already lit. Slick streets had made her late, not that anyone upstairs would believe that excuse. No one employed there had a passion for his or her job. They simply reported in the morning, put in their required hours behind a desk and went home as soon as possible. That blasé attitude had been hard for Lillie to understand until she’d spent a few months walking in their shoes—or rather, sitting in their desk chairs.

She huffed as she stepped onto the elevator. Months, nothing. She’d been stuck in basically the same job for much longer than that and she was now at the top step in her department. Granted, somebody had to manage the clerks who processed medical insurance records and ordered the authorized payments but if there was a more boring job in the world she couldn’t imagine what it could be.

Three men wearing raincoats and a middle-aged woman carrying a folded, dripping umbrella followed her onto the already crowded elevator. Pressed into a rear corner, Lillie felt nearly as uncomfortable as she had the time she and her girlfriends had crammed together into the janitor’s closet at school, meaning to scare him, and had panicked and nearly suffocated when they’d accidentally locked themselves in. To this day, being in total darkness gave her the willies.

There was no accident involved with her present position, however. She’d come to the city to seek excitement and glamour and had found, instead, boredom and dingy sameness masquerading as job security.

Part of her loneliness was admittedly her own fault. Though she did attend church occasionally, she had never become fully involved in the kind of social life that would bring her into contact with many like-minded people. A few friends from work had invited her to go clubbing with them, years ago, and she had given it a try. In retrospect, she realized they’d meant well but she’d felt about as comfortable in that situation as a newly landed catfish flopping around in the bottom of a fishing boat. Both were clearly out of their element.

The mental picture made her smile. As she removed her scarf and fluffed her shoulder-length light brown hair, she glanced at the woman with the umbrella, wishing she could share her good humor with someone. She was rewarded with a scowl.

“If I wanted to live in a city, I should have gone farther south instead of coming this direction,” Lillie mumbled.

“Beg your pardon?”

Lillie’s smile waned, her blue eyes misty. “Never mind. I was just talking to myself.” The elevator stopped at Lillie’s floor. “Excuse me, please.” She edged toward the open door, bumping shoulders with others in spite of efforts to take care. “Excuse me. I have to get off.”

Someone held the doors long enough for her to exit. They slid closed behind her with a hiss while her last words echoed repeatedly in her mind. I have to get off. I have to get off.

Instead of rushing to her office, she stood in the cavernous hallway, blinking as reality seeped in. Her heart was the only part of her that was still racing and it was galloping laps around her muddled brain. What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she admitted her mistakes long ago, gotten off this figurative treadmill and headed home where she belonged?

The answer was pride. Except for the occasional visit when she had lauded city life as if all her dreams had come true, pride had kept her from going back to Gumption. And pride could keep her locked in the same dead-end job for literally a lifetime if she let it.

She didn’t want to run home to Grandma Darla Sue and admit defeat but she didn’t want to waste what remained of her life, either. There had to be more to a worthwhile existence than she’d found so far. Maybe she was expecting too much. Then again, maybe she’d once lived in the perfect place and had been too dense or stubborn to recognize it.

Lillie squared her shoulders and strode toward her office. There was only one way to find out. She was going to muster her courage, give the two weeks’ notice and head for the only place that had ever felt truly like home.

To Lillie’s surprise her superiors had decided that two weeks’ notice was unnecessary, had accepted her resignation and had told her she was free to leave immediately.

So much for being indispensable!

She’d said a somber if relieved goodbye to coworkers in nearby cubicles and had been on her way home to her apartment to start packing within the hour.

Some of her friends had wanted to throw a going-away party but Lillie talked them out of it by promising to return for her stored furniture and let them have a get-together then, if they still wanted to.

Two days later she was on the road, driving south in a mental haze and wondering what had come over her. There she was, too close to thirty-five for comfort, unemployed and heading for the only place that had ever felt like a real home. The notion of plunking herself back into Grandma Darla Sue’s and Grandpa Max’s lives and making their house her home again, the way she had been forced to as a lonely child, gave her colder chills than the gales off Lake Michigan.