This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5)(56)

"Hey, there, Christina." Kevin gave the woman a smile that was way too sexy as he rose to greet her.

She extended the white cardboard box, and Molly spotted a blue seal on the side with say fudge embossed on it. "You seemed to enjoy the fudge last night, ja? This is a small present to welcome you to Wind Lake. Our sample box."

"Thanks a lot." He looked so pleased that Molly wanted to remind him it was just candy, not a Super Bowl ring! "Christina, this is Molly. Christina owns that fudge shop over there. I met her yesterday when I came into town to grab a burger."

Christina was more slender than a woman who owned a fudge shop should be. That struck Molly as a crime against nature.

"Pleasure to meet you, Molly."

"Nice meeting you, too." Molly could have ignored the curiosity in her expression, but she wasn't that good a person. "I'm Kevin's wife."

"Oh." Her disappointment was just as blatant as her mission with the fudge box.

"Estranged wife," Kevin cut in. "Molly writes children's books."

"Ach so? I've always wanted to write a children's book. Maybe you could give me a few suggestions sometime."

Molly kept her expression pleasant but noncommittal.

Just once she'd like to meet someone who didn't want to write a children's book. People assumed they were easy to write because they were short. They had no idea what went into writing a successful book, one that children genuinely enjoyed and learned from, not just something adults had decided a child should enjoy.

"I'm sorry you're going to sell the campground, Kevin. We'll miss you." Before Christina could drool over him any more, she spotted a woman heading into the fudge shop. "I have to go. Stop by the next time you're in town so you can sample my cherry chocolate."

The minute she was out of earshot, Molly turned on him. "You can't sell the campground!"

"I told you from the beginning that's what I was doing."

True, but it hadn't meant anything at the time. Now she couldn't bear the idea that he would throw it away. The campground was a permanent part of him, part of his family, and in a strange way she couldn't analyze, it was beginning to feel like part of her.

He misunderstood her silence. "Don't worry. We won't have to stay around that long. The minute I find someone to take over, we're out of here."

All the way back to the campground, Molly tried to sort out her thoughts. The only deep roots Kevin had left were here. He'd lost his parents, he had no siblings, and he didn't seem inclined to let Lilly into his life. The house where he'd grown up belonged to the church. He had nothing to connect him with his past except the campground. It would be wrong to give that up.

The Common came into sight, and her jumbled thoughts gave way to a feeling of peace. Charlotte Long was sweeping her front porch, an elderly man rode by on a three-wheel bike, and a couple chatted on a bench. Molly drank in the storybook cottages and shady trees.

No wonder she'd experienced a sense of familiarity the moment she'd arrived here. She'd stepped through the pages of her books right into Nightingale Woods.



Instead of heading along the lake where she might meet someone, Lilly followed a narrow path that led into the woods beyond the Common. She'd changed into a pair of slacks and a square-neck, tobacco-brown top, but she was still hot, and she wished she were thin enough to wear shorts. Those little white ones that had been a permanent part of her wardrobe on Lace, Inc. They'd barely covered her bottom.

Weeds brushed her legs as the trees opened into a meadow. Her toes felt pleasantly gritty inside her sandals, and some of the tension she'd been carrying all day began to ease. She heard running water from a stream and turned to look for it, only to see something so out of place that she blinked.

A chrome diner's chair with a red vinyl seat.

Lilly couldn't imagine what it was doing in the middle of the meadow. As she began to walk toward it, she saw a creek with ferns growing among the reeds and mossy rocks. The chair sat on a lichen-encrusted boulder. Its red vinyl seat sparkled in the sunlight, and there was no visible rust, so it had been put there recently. But why? Its perch was precarious, and it wobbled as she touched it.

"Leave that alone!"

She spun around to see a big bear of a man crouched in bars of sunlight at the edge of the meadow.

Her hand flew to her throat.

Behind her the chair splashed into the creek.

"Damn it!" The man jumped to his feet.

He was huge, with shoulders as wide as twelve lanes of L.A. freeway and a scowling, rough-hewn face that belonged on the villain in an old B Western. I got ways of makin' a woman like you talk. The only thing missing was a week's worth of stubble on that grim jaw.

His hair was a Hollywood stylist's nightmare or daydream, she wasn't sure which. Thick and graying at the temples, it grew too long at the collar, where it looked as if he might have swiped at it with the knife he undoubtedly kept in his boot. Except he wore a pair of battered running shoes instead, with socks that slouched around his ankles. And his eyes—mysteriously dark in that deeply tanned, dangerously lined face.

Every casting agent in Hollywood would salivate over him.

All those thoughts were scrambling through Lilly's head instead of the one thought that should have been there: Run!