Lynnette Kent - The Third Mrs. Mitchell

Mary Rose shook her head hard and sat down on the sofa, sifting through the magazines on Pete’s coffee table, mostly law enforcement publications and racing rags. The summer they were together, she recalled, he’d read all the golf journals…and the racing rags. Some things never changed.

But some things did. Ten years ago—July 7, to be exact—she’d married Pete Mitchell. They’d lived together for a little over a month in the one-room apartment he’d rented, sharing the cheap furniture that came with the place, subsistence groceries and the red Mustang her parents had given her as a graduation present. Not to mention the fantastic sex.

After ten years they were obviously different people, at different points in their lives, not the kids they’d been long ago. Mary Rose didn’t act on impulse anymore. She considered options, made plans, evaluated results. Yet after ten years, here she was again…in Pete Mitchell’s place.

The Third Mrs. Mitchell

Lynnette Kent

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Kathy, Barbara and Julie, my sisters…in law and so much more.

Dear Reader,

As a navy wife, I appreciated the opportunity to travel across the United States and see firsthand the amazing diversity and beauty of this country. When the time came for my husband to retire, however, the choice of where to go was never in doubt…we couldn’t imagine settling down outside the South. Neighborhoods where all the children play together and treat each other’s houses, and parents, as their own, backyard vegetable gardens and lazy, sun-soaked summers, honeysuckle vines and moss-draped live oak trees—these are our childhood memories, this the lifestyle we wanted our daughters to experience. We’ve come close to our ideal in North Carolina, although the bustle of the modern world now penetrates all but the remotest country retreats. These days, even rural backwaters have their Internet cafés, rush-hour traffic and crime statistics.

Still, I have a deep affection for the real South and the people who live here. And so I’m offering Superromance readers a series of books set in a small Southern town, stories about folks who stayed nearby after high school or who have come back to make a home in the place where they were born. There’s plenty of material to draw from, since life gets complicated when you know everybody and they all know you, when your smallest transgression is the main topic of conversation the next morning over breakfast at the local diner!

Sometimes, though, the place that’s all too familiar is the best place to make a brand-new start. In The Third Mrs. Mitchell, Mary Rose Bowdrey discovers that coming home means dealing with the mistakes and misjudgments of the past…not to mention Pete Mitchell, the man she’s never quite managed to forget. Pete’s got his life all planned out; after two failed marriages, he’s taken himself out of the relationship game permanently. But when these ex-lovers keep running into each other, their best intentions aren’t enough to keep love from having its own way.

I hope you enjoy the first book in my AT THE CAROLINA DINER series. I love to hear from readers—feel free to write me at my new address: PMB 304, Westwood Shopping Center, Fayetteville, NC 28314.

All the best,

Lynnette Kent

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

765—ONE MORE RODEO

793—WHEN SPARKS FLY

824—WHAT A MAN’S GOT TO DO

868—EXPECTING THE BEST

901—LUKE’S DAUGHTERS

938—MATT’S FAMILY

988—NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE

1002—MARRIED IN MONTANA

1024—SHENANDOAH CHRISTMAS

1080—THE THIRD MRS. MITCHELL

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

THE RED PORSCHE flashed by at an impressive 84.7 miles per hour.

Parked within the deep shade of the pine trees in the median, Pete Mitchell sighed, pushed his shades up on his nose, then flipped the switch for the siren and the lights and eased his patrol car into the northbound lane of Interstate 95. Another day, another speeder, another hundred dollars for the county.

Traffic was light at 3:00 p.m. on a Thursday and he caught up with the Porsche before five miles had passed, noting the South Carolina license plate. The driver glanced in the rearview mirror as he moved over behind her in the right lane. Her fist hit the steering wheel in frustration.

“Gotcha,” Pete told her with a grin, staying close as she slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. After checking for oncoming traffic, he eased out of the car and set his hat straight on his head, then took his time getting to the driver’s window.

The windowpane slid down as he came close. A long slender arm stretched out with a driver’s license and registration sheet clipped between two pink-frosted fingertips. The diamond tennis bracelet weighing down that elegant left hand could easily have doubled as a handcuff.

“Trying out for a NASCAR berth, ma’am?” Pete slid the papers free. “I think you’ve confused Interstate 95 with Darlington Speedway.” He turned on his toe to head back to the cruiser, but one glance at the license stopped him cold. Taking off his shades, he checked out the name again. Looked at the face in the picture. Swore under his breath.

Mary Rose Bowdrey. Born May 1, 1974. Height, five-eight; weight, one-thirty. That hadn’t changed in ten years. Eyes, blue—the color, as he remembered, of the Atlantic Ocean at noon on a sunny day. Hair, blond—a rich gold shot through with streaks of silver which didn’t show up in the lousy license photo. Pete hadn’t known her long enough or well enough to be sure whether all that color was natural or not.

After all, they’d only been married thirty-six days.

He pivoted back to the window, automatically taking off his hat. “Mary Rose?”

The red door swung open. The best legs on Hilton Head Island during the summer of 1992—and probably every year since—unfolded into the sunlight. In one smooth move, Ms. Bowdrey stood up out of the car and faced him, pushing up the sleeves of her navy-blue sweater, tucking strands of shiny, shoulder-length hair behind her ears. “I don’t believe this. Pete?”

“That’s right.” He needed a second to remember the next line. “Uh…how are you?” His mama always said good manners could salvage even the most bizarre situations. “It’s been a long time.” Not that he could tell by looking at the woman in front of him. Still sleek as a cat, this Mary Rose could be the eighteen-year-old girl he’d spent that summer with. Married.

Worked so damn hard to forget.

His first ex-wife gave him a beauty-queen smile. “That it has. I’m fine. How about you?” With a faint clink of diamonds and gold, her hands slipped into the pockets of her short white skirt, heading off any impulse he might have felt to give her a hug. She kept her dark sunglasses on, so he couldn’t read the expression in those marine-blue eyes.

Pete didn’t need an interpreter for this message: Keep your distance was as clear as the nearby billboard for fast food and gas. “I’m good. Where’re you headed?”

“New Skye. I’ll be visiting my sister for a little while.”

“That so?” He’d have felt better if she’d said the sky was falling. The possibility of Mary Rose spending more than an afternoon in the same county he lived in, let alone the same town, was big-time bad news.