Solution: Marriage

“You once said that if I ever needed a favor, I simply had to ask,”

Luke told Callie.

“Well, you have some nerve, Luke Parker. Calling me in on a long-ago favor!”

“My father is set on me taking over the family business.”

Callie didn’t need to hear the steel in his tone to know his take on that. Years ago, something bad must have happened between father and son, something that left Luke vehemently determined to do nothing to increase his father’s fortune.

“Just how do you expect me to help you?” She wanted to sound aloof and uncaring, but she was curious.

“Way I see it,” Luke said carefully, “I need to make myself so undesirable, he’d never let me run the business. And that, darlin’, is where you come in.”

“Forget it, Luke. I’ve got better things to do than playing your girlfriend again so you can annoy your father.”

“I’m not asking you to play my girlfriend,” he said. “No, Callie, I’m asking you to be my wife.”

Dear Reader,

When Patricia Kay was a child, she could be found hiding somewhere…reading. “Ever since I was old enough to realize someone wrote books and they didn’t just magically appear, I dreamed of writing,” she says. And this month Special Edition is proud to publish Patricia’s twenty-second novel, The Millionaire and the Mom, the next of the STOCKWELLS OF TEXAS series. She admits it isn’t always easy keeping her ideas and her writing fresh. What helps, she says, is “nonwriting” activities, such as singing in her church choir, swimming, taking long walks, going to the movies and traveling. “Staying well-rounded keeps me excited about writing,” she says.

We have plenty of other fresh stories to offer this month. After finding herself in the midst of an armed robbery with a gun to her back in Christie Ridgway’s From This Day Forward, Annie Smith vows to chase her dreams…. In the next of A RANCHING FAMILY series by Victoria Pade, Kate McDermot returns from Vegas unexpectedly married and with a Cowboy’s Baby in her belly! And Sally Tyler Hayes’s Magic in a Jelly Jar is what young Luke Morgan hopes for by saving his teeth in a jelly jar…because he thinks that his dentist is the tooth fairy and can grant him one wish: a mother! Also, don’t miss the surprising twists in Her Mysterious Houseguest by Jane Toombs, and an exciting forbidden love story with Barbara Benedict’s Solution: Marriage.

At Special Edition, fresh, innovative books are our passion. We hope you enjoy them all.

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

Solution: Marriage

Barbara Benedict

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my dad,

who showed me and everyone around him

what love truly means.

We’ll all miss you.

BARBARA BENEDICT

Weaving a story has always been part of Barbara Benedict’s life, from the days when her grandfather would gather the kids around his banjo, to the nights of bedtime tales with her own children. To Barbara, starting a story should be like saying, “Come, enter a special new world with me.”

Contents

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Lucky Parker was back in town.

The news ripped through Mamie’s Main Street Styling Salon like a midsummer tornado—Tuesdays always drawing the biggest crowd for the cut-and-curl special—but Callianne Magruder didn’t need the buzz of small-town gossips to alert her to that man’s appearance. Long before the ladies of Latour, Louisiana, began their clucking, she’d felt he was coming.

Thing was, she’d always had this sixth sense when it came to Lucky Parker. Or maybe she might better call it no sense, since it invariably led her to trouble.

Trying to appear calm, if not altogether indifferent, she kept working at Mrs. Pendergast’s thinning gray hair, but her gaze had this way of sliding back to the window where she could watch Lucky swing his long legs out of his fancy BMW sedan. Locking the vehicle—no doubt a habit from his many years away in New York City—he pocketed his keys and turned in the direction of the salon.

Callie’s heart skipped a beat. Given their past, he’d have no reason to come anywhere near her, she told herself, but her sixth sense insisted where else? She wanted to look away, needed to actually be indifferent, but she continued to follow his progress with an almost morbid fascination. At half past three on a July afternoon, Main Street shimmered with pavement-buckling waves of heat, but Lucky sauntered with the same cool arrogance he’d displayed when turning his back to it a good ten years ago. Blond hair still slightly long and glinting in the sun, his tall, athletic body honed by years on the football field, he remained Latour’s Golden Boy, the conquering hero returning home.

Looking at him, Callie felt that old familiar stab, piercing her heart.

She turned her back, fixing her focus on pulling the curlers from Mrs. Pendergast’s hair. She might better use her time earning a good tip from her wealthiest customer. As Gramps used to chant, thinking about that boy would only bring heartache.

And how could it ever be otherwise with the bad blood between their families?

Way back when, Gramps had eloped with the woman Ben Parker wanted to marry, setting off a feud lasting nearly forty years. In a town like Latour, the line separating the haves from have-nots was a distinct one and no Magruder could mess with a Parker and hope to emerge unscathed. Callie had learned the hard way that only a fool tempted fate by spinning dreams about Ben’s sole remaining heir. She might have made the mistake once, but she darned well wasn’t about to repeat it.

Yet her traitorous gaze kept returning to the long plate-glass window with a full view of Main Street. She should know heaps better by now, but she couldn’t stop staring at the ghost from her past, half dreading yet half hoping his destination was indeed Mamie’s salon.

And, oh, wouldn’t the tongues start wagging at that.

Acid churned in her stomach as she thought of what she could say to silence the gossips. Or more important, what she’d say to him. Latour being such a small place, she should have known this moment would come eventually—and heck, she’d had ten long years to practice—yet with each step Lucky took closer, she grew more aware of how ill prepared she was to face him. Where was her anger, her righteous indignation? Why, in the name of all justice, must the mere sight of that man turn her resolve to mush?

Not this time, she swore again.

She forced herself to remember how it had once been. It would be just like Lucky to stroll in here, as casual as you please, expecting her to fall all over herself in gratitude. Let him grin once, with that wicked gleam in his eyes, and she’d let him have it with both barrels. Contrary to past performances, Callie Magruder wasn’t anybody’s doormat, and now was as good a time as any to prove it.

Getting herself primed and ready was one thing. Watching him stride past the shop was quite another.

Stunned, she just stood there, staring out the window for a full minute as Lucky continued on down the street. And wasn’t that typical? she thought as a wave of embarrassment swept through her. One way or another the Parkers always managed to get the last laugh. There he went without a care in the world, and here she stood, all angered up with nowhere to release it. Darn her sixth sense for lying to her.

Mrs. Pendergast whimpered a protest, forcing Callie to realize how roughly she must have been brushing the poor woman’s hair. Styling the springy gray curls, she fired off a swift round of hair spray and sent her customer off before she could inflict further damage. As she pocketed her tip, she found herself agreeing with Mrs. Pendergast’s frowning assessment. If she couldn’t keep her mind on the job, Callie Magruder had no business cutting anyone’s hair for a living.

Not that it had been her first choice, mind you. At one time she’d had far grander plans for her future. Bright, lively, ambitious Callianne Magruder had been at the top of her class at Latour Central, a student destined to go somewhere, be somebody.

All, of course, pre-Lucky Parker.

Reaching for the broom, she told herself she should be grateful he didn’t approach her. She had enough on her plate; she didn’t need any more tests of resolve, thank you all the same. Paying off their debts and keeping a roof over her son’s head was her foremost concern; not some youthful, torrid love affair that ended all too quickly.

All too painfully.

Marshaling the remaining gray wisps of hair into a dustpan, she reminded herself of the infinite reasons she had to hate the Parker name. Grief, that’s all they’d ever caused her, both father and son. If she never had to hear of either man again, she could die a happy woman. The past had long since passed; she had to let it go. She had problems enough with the present, not to mention the future, to expend one more ounce of energy on something she could never change.

Let him keep on walking by. Let him stay out of her life forever. She refused to waste one more thought on a ghost from her past.

Luke Parker paused, turning back to stare at Mamie’s salon. Who did he think he was fooling by heading toward the Fare-Thee-Well Tavern? He could call it what he wanted but deep down he knew he was merely stalling, running away from what he had no stomach to face. The story of his life, up to now.

Staring at the shabby storefronts of the town he’d grown up in, he agreed wholeheartedly with the adage that you should never go home again. Some might find comfort in familiar names and landmarks, but all Luke saw was a slew of unpleasant memories. Given the choice, he’d have gone anywhere else but Latour, yet here he nonetheless was, and there was no going back.

Frowning, he turned and marched to Mamie’s, not liking himself much for what he was about to do. Make no mistake, he was a veteran of selfish acts, but none of his prior misdeeds could hold a flaming Roman candle to this.

Couldn’t be helped. He had to go through with it. The end justifying the means and all that. In a clear case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, you just had to pick the side with the least “damn-age.”

He didn’t like it, though. Using people was something his father excelled at, and lying always made Luke uneasy. Most folks thought him an amoral playboy, but he had his own code of ethics, however jaded, that he tried his best to live by. And what he was aiming to do now went against just about everything he’d ever put on his list.

Yet the old man was right in one thing. Time came in every man’s life when you hit a crossroads and you had to choose one path or the other. After thirty-two self-absorbed years of playing it solo, after an adulthood wasted on boozing, gaming and womanizing, Luke had one last chance to redeem himself. He could seize it or waste the rest of his life with more of the same.

For once he could do something right, make a difference.

Unbidden, the image of Callie Magruder flitted across his mind, looking every bit as young and innocent as the last time he’d seen her—shoulders back and chin up, doing her best to fight the tears misting her eyes as she watched him drive out of town.

Banishing the vision with another determined frown, he yanked open the door to the salon. Over the years Ben Parker had offered little of value when it came to parental guidance, but he had managed to impart one useful piece of advice to his son: if there’s an unpleasant task to be done, it’s best to get instantly to it.

Luke stepped inside the shop. Seven chairs sat between the long mirror and large window fronting Main Street, six of them swiveling as heads snapped in his direction. Ignoring them, his gaze went instantly to Callie at the far end of the line. Some girls were like that, he’d discovered over the years. They had a presence, an aura, that grabbed hold of you right off and kept your attention. Funny, but he’d never before realized that Callie could be one of them.

She was busy sweeping, her spine stiff, straight and aimed right at him. The way she attacked the floor with the broom, you’d think she was beating back an army of invading insects. He could feel the anger coming off her in waves. In such a mood, Luke knew from experience, she would be a force to reckon with. On the flip side, he also knew a softened, smiling Callie could be any man’s dream.

Swallowing his distaste, wishing he had any other way to do this, he went over to Mamie Saunders to cajole her into giving Callie a short break. Luke had never much liked Mamie, with her shrill voice and sharper tongue, but she, like most females in this town, tended to melt like butter in August when he flashed the patented Parker grin. It wasn’t his looks or charm that caused the phenomenon, he knew, but rather his single status, backed up by the obscene heap of cash Ben Parker kept in Tyler Fitzhugh’s First Fidelity Bank.

Though clearly surprised by his request, Mamie proved no obstacle, gesturing grandly to the back of her shop. Luke could hear the whispers behind him as he made his way to Callie, but he’d learned long since to ignore what the ladies of this town had to say about Ben Parker’s sole surviving son. His focus was on the mission before him.

On the woman before him.

He felt like a kid approaching a girl to ask for his first date, knowing he had no guarantee of the outcome. Callie wouldn’t refuse him, he’d taken care to make certain of that, but a good deal of both their futures could hinge upon what was said in the next fifteen minutes. Callie Magruder, he thought with an odd tightening in his throat. The girl he’d left behind.

She’d filled out some in the past ten years, the promise of youth blossoming into all the right curves and softness. Nothing to write home about maybe, not after the movie stars and models he’d dated in New York, yet there was an air about her, a blend of common sense and genuine caring that made a man linger. You could talk to Callie. What was more important, she listened.

“Callie?” he said quietly, trying not to startle her.

No such luck. She went still—no, more like rigid—her knuckles turning white where she gripped the broom. Slowly she turned to face him, her features as pale as if she’d just seen a ghost. He noticed that she still wore her brown hair long and straight. The jeans hugging her slim hips, as threadbare as her sleeveless denim shirt, looked like they might have survived some other era. So much about her was exactly the same, yet something he couldn’t quite put a finger on made Callie seem suddenly a stranger.

An angry stranger.

He told himself that it was no real surprise that she wasn’t overjoyed to see him, but for some reason, her scowl really bugged him. Maybe she felt she had issues with him, but then, don’t forget, he had some of his own with her. He was here on a mission, he told himself sternly, and he had to get to it. By fair means or foul, he’d get her consent. “Got a minute to talk?”

“Leave me be, Lucky Parker,” she said calmly enough, and all too coldly. “Go spread your mischief on your side of town.”

A far-from-auspicious start.

Still, Luke wouldn’t be where he was today if he ever backed down from a challenge. “Luke,” he corrected. “Nowadays, folks have taken to using my given name.”

She gave him a look as if he’d just made the speech in a foreign language.

“I’m thirty-two years old,” he said with a shrug. “Being called Lucky was kid’s stuff. It’s time I grew up, don’t you think?”

Callie wasn’t about to tell him what she was thinking. She held tight to the broom, half to prop herself up but more to hide how her limbs were trembling. All well and good to forget the man when she didn’t have to see him, but here he stood, all six foot two and broad, muscled shoulders of him. Lucky—excuse me, Luke—Parker in the living, breathing flesh. Lord, but she’d let herself forget how truly gorgeous one man could be.

Judge a man not by how he looks, she could hear Gramps chiding, but rather by what he does.

“Besides,” he added, a hard edge creeping into his tone, “I can’t say I’m feeling particularly lucky these days, anyway.”

She tilted her head to the side to study him. “You have your youth, money and health. How much good fortune does one man need?”

“You could say luck is in the eyes of the beholder.” He shrugged, glancing back over his shoulder. “Listen, Callie, can we go somewhere else to talk?”

Following his gaze, she noticed every eye in the shop was on them, each female reduced to speechlessness, their mouths formed in frozen, silent Os. They all knew who Luke was, of course, but few could hazard a guess as to what he could want with Callie. The brief time she’d spent with him that long-ago summer had been as clandestine as it had been idyllic. His approaching her now, right here and like this, must come as a shock to virtually every man, woman and child in the parish.

And make no mistake, it would be all over town in an hour.

“You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear,” she told him, hoping he’d take the hint and leave before he made matters worse.

But she’d forgotten that this was Luke Parker. Left to run wild as a boy, he’d never quite gotten used to heeding the word no.

“You may want to hear this,” he said, this time with his usual cockiness. “Don’t worry, I talked to Mamie. She said it’s okay for you to take your break now.”

Turning her back to him, Callie busied herself with sweeping imaginary hair. “Yeah, well, no one asked me if it was okay.”

He laughed, a sound she’d once lived for, but which now made her as bristly as the broom in her hands. “Some things never change, Cal. You always did want to do things the hard way.”

“Everything changes,” she told him through gritted teeth as she propped the broom against the wall. “Even silly little Callie Magruder.”

He eyed her speculatively. “Nah, I’ll bet my last nickel you’re still the same good sport you’ve always been.”

Good sport? After so many years of absence, of silence, this was what he came to say? Not wanting him to see her resentment—or worse, her hurt—she busied herself with shoving the combs and brushes into her station drawer. “What do you want, Luke?”

“Ah, that’s my Callie. Right to the point. No time to waste on pleasant social discourse.”

“So that’s what you call this? Pleasant discourse?” She didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from her tone.

“Why, I imagine it could be just about anything you want it to be. You set the tone, Cal. I’ll take my cue from you.”

Her fingers curled around a brush handle, the urge to fling it at him nearly overwhelming. He had to know what his presence did to her. Heck, danged near every lady in the salon, with their front-row seats to the action, had to know she was fit to bursting with unreleased tension.

Yet there he stood, acting as if the past ten years had never been.

Loosening her grip on the brush, she carefully set it in the drawer. “I’m real busy,” she said in what she hoped was a calm, measured tone as she slid the drawer shut and turned to face him. “Surely there’s some other girl in this town you can bother.”

“Five minutes. I swear it. C’mon Callie, what can be the harm in that?”

Plenty, she knew, yet she found herself staring back at him, even while knowing better. Lounging against the chair, hip propped against it and his arms crossed casually at his chest, he wore his patented grin, that come-on-you-know-you-want-to call to mischief she’d found so hard to resist.

“Why are you badgering me?” she asked abruptly. “What are you up to now?”

He shook his head, his blue gaze clouding. “To find that out, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

Chapter Two

Callie was curious, as he’d no doubt anticipated, but she had no time for his shenanigans. “I’ve got two more customers, then the long trek home and supper to get on the table,” she told him, betraying her exasperation. “I mean it, Luke Parker. You just move on now and leave me be.”

He held up a hand, fingers splayed. “Five minutes?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you? You’ll just keep at me and at me until you get what you want.”

She’d expected a grin—vintage Lucky Parker at his disarming best—but Luke stared into her eyes, his steady, grim expression startling her into wondering what the ten-year absence might have done to him.

“I can say my piece right here if you want,” he said at last, looking pointedly around them. “That way, I can satisfy everyone’s curiosity.”

Noticing the heads craning in their direction, Callie visibly shuddered. Not knowing what Luke meant to say, could she take the chance of them being overheard? “Why are you doing this?” she hissed at him. “Haven’t you done enough as it is?”

She thought she saw him wince, but his tone was as implacable as ever. “Just hear me out, Callie. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Important for whom? she wanted to scream at him, but that would only prolong an already uncomfortable situation. Better to let him say what he wanted and then get rid of him. She hated being at the mercy of gossips, and she sure didn’t think fondly of Luke for putting her in this position, but she couldn’t see how she had much of a choice. “Five minutes,” she snapped as she turned to march of out the salon. “Not one second more.”

She could feel the stunned stares following her progress across the room, as if all twenty eyeballs were glued to her back. She supposed she should be grateful that none of these gossips could relate the scene to Gramps. The late Zeke Magruder wouldn’t have enjoyed hearing she was “consorting” with the Parker boy. Oh no, he wouldn’t have liked it one bit.

It took her ten strides to reach the door, but Luke made it in less, there in plenty of time to hold it open for her. Passing under his arm, she felt that awful ripple in her midsection again, the intense awareness that he was a man and she was a woman.

A stupid woman, it would seem, wherever Luke Parker was concerned.

She scooted past him, wishing the motion didn’t make her seem quite so skittish, yet determined to maintain a healthy distance. Once outside the shield of air-conditioning, the brick wall of heat made it easier. Dense, moist and stagnant, the air hovered between them like a stubborn chaperon. As if she needed to be reminded of the perils in getting too close.

They walked in silence toward the town square, but once out of earshot of the salon, Luke turned his head to study her. “You look great, Callie,” he said, making the words sound like some grand pronouncement. “A real fine sight for these sore eyes.”

Standing there in her worn jeans and shirt, brown hair frizzing in the humidity, she knew she should take his praise with triple the customary grains of salt. The sad fact was, though, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been paid any compliment. Like a cleansing rain after a long, hard drought, his words soaked into her, revived her. Oh, she knew better than anyone that it was Luke’s way to make a woman feel valued—part of his charm and a skill he practiced shamelessly—but in that moment, he made her feel pretty, and she wanted to relish the sensation a teeny bit longer. What could be the harm in that?