Annie Jones - Home to Stay

“I have a policy. Once I’ve carried a woman over a threshold in a wedding gown, we’re on a first-name basis from that point on.”

A shiver snaked up Emma’s spine. Try as she might she could not contain her own smile. She tried looking away to keep him from seeing how much she found herself drawn to him with his easygoing approach, kind wit and seemingly endless patience. He wasn’t bad to look at either.

Emma shut her eyes and drew in a deep breath. The familiar smells of the old kitchen eased into every nuance of her mind and memory. The ever-present hint in the air of Louisiana loam and moss and river grasses, of lemon oil used to polish all the wood in the old house and of fresh cotton from all the kitchen linens aired on the clothesline. It all comforted her but did not blot out the image of Hank Corsaut in faded jeans and a denim work shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned forearms.

Winner of a Holt Medallion for Southern-themed fiction, and the Houston Chronicle’s Best Christian Fiction Author of 1999, Annie Jones grew up in a family that loved to laugh, eat and talk—often all at the same time. They instilled in her the gift of sharing through words and humor, and the confidence to go after her heart’s desire (and to act fast if she wanted the last chicken leg). A former social worker, she feels called to be a “voice for the voiceless” and has carried that calling into her writing by creating characters often overlooked in our fast-paced culture—from seventysomethings who still have a zest for life to women over thirty with big mouths and hearts to match. Having moved thirteen times during her marriage, she is currently living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two children.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

—Isaiah 40:31

For Natalie and Patrick, for being my inspirations and joy

For Bob for being my hero

For my family for being themselves, and being my touchstone

For my by-marriage family for being so much fun

For the next generation of “Joneses”: Ethan, Wyatt, Evie, Waylon and whoever comes along next, Aunt Annie and Uncle Bobby love you always (and will keep the toy closet stocked)

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

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

“If I’m not mistaken—and the twist in my gut tells me I’m not—that there—” Hank Corsaut fixed his eyes on a puff of dirt stirred up on the road a quarter of a mile in the distance “—is trouble.”

The silver SUV went sailing over the bumps in the old dirt road that led from the highway to the sanctuary proper and disappeared down a hill.

Hank braced his hand against the dinged-up fender of his old truck and shifted his white straw cowboy hat to the back of his head. He had come out to check on things at the Gall Rive Migratory Bird Sanctuary this morning with all the good humor and enthusiasm of a feral tomcat facing a flea dip. He was a large-animal vet, after all, not a watchdog.

The car slid around the last long curve then went whisking by where he had pulled off to the side of the road without so much as the customary “hey, I see ya there” wave of her hand.

“Yep. That’s trouble all right. Wavy-haired, heart-stompin’, stubborn-as-she-is-beautiful trouble,” he muttered.

This new development was doing nothing to brighten his mood.

Not that he had been particularly cheerful since Samantha Jolene Newberry, the woman who single-handedly ran the bird sanctuary and more often than not thought she ought to run Hank’s life, had fainted dead away in his arms. Dead away. In this case it was not a colorful turn of phrase.

He wasn’t sure for how long, but being a doctor of veterinary medicine he knew that when her body fell into his arms her heart had stopped beating. And Sammie Jo’s being one of the biggest hearts he’d ever known, it had grieved him like nothing he’d ever experienced. Then her eyes opened again, and she let loose on him a whole new wave of grief—of the bossing him around, getting him to agree to do things he didn’t have the time or inclination to do variety. He had had to agree to do her bidding before she’d let him call for help.

Hank rubbed his eyes, clenched his teeth and wondered what he was thinking when he had taken on the task. These acres of untouched natural habitat swept with tall grasses, live oaks hung thick with moss, isolated with nothing but dirt roads to connect them to the highway and nearest neighbors, had withstood hurricanes and the high-strung females that lived here. What could happen in the few days Sammie Jo would have to be under a doctor’s care as she recovered from her near brush with a heart attack?

The silver SUV didn’t just make the turn into the drive that most people, even ones who had been out to the Newberry family home dozens of times, missed. It went gliding around the bend and through the crookedly hanging open iron gates like a plane coming in for a perfect landing.

Hank’s feet seemed to grow roots, anchoring him in place. He’d pulled over just shy of Sammie Jo’s yard to let the dogs run for a minute to expend some energy so the animals would be less inclined to chase any wounded or unsuspecting birds on the sanctuary proper. That’s what he’d told himself. In truth he’d needed a moment alone with his thoughts, alone with the Lord, to regroup and go back to the place where not twelve hours ago he’d thought he’d lost one of the first people who had ever believed in him.

The SUV disappeared over a rise in the sparsely graveled drive.

What could happen while the owner was away? The past could come calling, that’s what. Sammie Jo’s past. Gall Rive’s past. Hank’s past.

All those pasts wrapped up in the form of Emma Evangeline Newberry, the girl who had run out on him on the eve of their elopement. He pressed his callused fingers against the pale blue oxidized paint of the truck until his skin burned.

If he got into that truck right now and drove until he got back to town or maybe even all the way back to New Orleans, where he had lived before he ever heard of the Newberry family, no one would blame him. But Sammie Jo had asked him to help out, and he had vowed to do it. Unlike some people he could think of—that he often thought of over the past ten years—he would not turn his back on someone just because things did not go according to the plan.

With a snap of his fingers, Hank directed his pair of rescued shelter dogs to get into the extended cab behind the seat.

“Gotta go, boys.” He climbed in behind the steering wheel and slammed the door. “Looks like Emma Newberry has finally come home to Gall Rive. Let’s go welcome her, shall we?”

Earnest T, a lanky, scruffy-looking Australian shepherd and Airedale mix, stuck his head between the seat and the passenger-side window and gave a gruff woof.

Hank cranked the engine and shifted into Drive. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of getting involved with her.”

A doctor of veterinary medicine for about a decade now, he didn’t hold much with the idea some folks had of carrying on conversations with the creatures in the animal kingdom. Particularly when those people took it upon themselves to hold up both sides of that exchange as if they knew the minds of the animals themselves. But as a man who had landed wounded and weary in this small town hoping to put his lonely and painful childhood and family life behind him, he also embraced the notion that sometimes a man needed to think things out loud, to unload a bit to a sympathetic ear. All the better if that ear didn’t have a direct connection to a pair of lips that might blab it all to the neighbors.

“No, I’ve learned my lesson as far as Emma Newberry is concerned,” Hank said.

Otis, Earnest T’s bulldog best buddy, snorted.

“I mean it.” He pulled the old truck onto the well-rutted road and headed after the SUV. “I won’t give her the chance to get to me again. Not that she would be interested… She made that perfectly clear when she left me without even saying goodbye.”

The truck hit a dip in the road. The dogs bounced into each other. Earnest T laid his ears back and gave Hank a look someone else might have described as scolding. Otis lapped his tongue out and slobbered.

“Almost there, right through these trees, boys.” He wasn’t talking to the dogs, he justified inwardly. He was talking…to keep from thinking about what waited for him through those trees, what had his pulse racing and his mouth dry. He eased out a long, resigned breath then gripped the steering wheel to maintain control over the last bit of broken road.

Up ahead sat the silver SUV framed by a yard scattered with live oaks. Hank thought the moss hanging from their branches looked like streamers, as if the very landscape had arranged itself to welcome home this too-long-absent member of the family.

Movement in the driver’s seat drew his attention, but the SUV’s tinted windows kept him from seeing the driver clearly. He reached across the seat of his truck to the passenger-side door and yanked the handle. When she opened her door, he would call out to her. Better that than jumping out of a truck and striding up to her. He was only thinking of her feelings.

Which meant he had completely forgotten to take into account his dogs’ eagerness to get out and get an eyeful and a snout full of Gall Rive’s newest arrival.

As soon as the passenger door of his truck came open just a crack, Earnest T gave Hank’s elbow a hard nudge. The truck door swung outward. The already banged-up truck door went clanging into the cautiously opening door of the SUV just a few feet away. The wham of metal against metal rang in the quiet of the slowly spreading daylight.

Earnest T leaped out.

Otis came clumping along after.

A flurry of waves of rich brown hair whipped forward and back from the SUV’s open door. The lower part of a tanned leg kicked outward. A high-heeled shoe went somersaulting into the shaggy, damp grass. A glimpse of black fabric, a flash of something shiny and a hand grasping nothing but air. That was all Hank saw of her.

That was enough.

His heart lodged in his throat, sending a hard, expectant pounding beat all the way to his temples.

She let out a sound that, as a vet, Hank was prone to call a yelp followed by a series of unfinished thoughts that went something like, “My car! Dogs? Where did… This is my family’s property… Keep these vicious animals…”