The Reasons to Stay (Harlequin Superromance) Read online

  Where she belongs?

  Free spirit Priscilla Hart doesn’t get tied down, to anyone or any place. Then she arrives in Widow’s Grove and meets her half brother. The ten-year-old tough guy has no one else but her. So Priss stays—for now.

  But her sexy new landlord, Adam Preston, is interfering with her ideas. He’s everything Priss normally steers clear of—committed, stable and no rebellious urges in sight. As opposite as they are, each conversation, each touch, each kiss they share feels so right. Can a little gangster-wannabe, an irresistible “nice guy” and an odd assortment of new friends make Priss want to stay for good?

  “My legendary luck is running true to form.”

  Adam looked out to where the sun neared the horizon. “The most intriguing woman I’ve met in years, and she’s on her way to somewhere else.”

  Priss’s small shoulder gave his a gentle bump. “It’s only March. Nacho’s not out of school till the end of June.”

  “We’d better get going, if we want to be back by dark.” Adam stood, and reached a hand down to help her up. Her hand fit in his as if it belonged there.

  She squeezed his hand. The look in her dark eyes lit the pilot flame in his chest, and the heat cranked up.

  When his pâté sandwich tried to crawl up his throat, he swallowed it again. He’d just made up his mind to grab for the life he wanted….

  Three months was not going to be near long enough.

  Dear Reader,

  I was so happy when, after Her Road Home (Harlequin Superromance, August 2013), Harlequin wanted more stories! I was missing the little Central Coast California tourist town of Widow’s Grove and the townspeople.

  The Reasons to Stay was born of my personal experience with cobbled-together families. You see, when I met my Alpha Dog twenty-eight years ago, he came with a bonus: sole custody of his two young children. Overnight, this clueless single girl became a wife and mother. Although none of this book is autobiographical, I hope I was able to convey some of the perpetual lostness I felt during that first year.

  I hope you enjoy The Reasons to Stay, and watch for the cameo appearance of Sam and Jesse from the first book. Then watch for them all to turn up in the next book coming in 2015!

  Laura Drake

  P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact me and sign up for my newsletter through my website, www.lauradrakebooks.com.

  LAURA

  DRAKE

  The Reasons to Stay

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both women’s fiction and romance stories. She rode a hundred thousand miles on the back of her husband’s motorcycle, propping a book against him and reading on the boring stretches. Then she learned to ride her own motorcycle, and now owns two—Elvis, a 1985 BMW Mystic, and Sting, a 1999 BMW R1100. Since then, she’s put in a hundred thousand miles riding the back roads, getting to know the small Western towns that are her books’ settings. Her twenty-five-year aspirations came true this year when she officially became a Texan! She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full-time. In the remaining waking hours, she’s a wife, grandmother and motorcycle chick.

  Books by Laura Drake

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1870—HER ROAD HOME

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  This book is dedicated to my long-suffering resilient children, Glenn and Kimarie. In spite of my well-meant, yet fumbling efforts, you’ve grown to be strong, wonderful people. I couldn’t be prouder if I’d given birth to you.

  I learned much more from you than you ever did me. Thank you.

  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 NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EXCERPT

  CHAPTER ONE

  BILLY JOEL IS full of crap. Not only the good die young.

  The low gray clouds seemed to settle on Priss’s shoulders as she walked between the graves, zipping her leather jacket against the chill air. Was it a sin to wear jeans to a funeral? Probably. But it was a long way from Boulder to Widow’s Grove, and Mona had overheated in Phoenix. If she’d stopped to change clothes, Priss would have been alone in this graveyard.

  As it was, there were only two other people in the cemetery on the right side of the winter-brown grass. They stood beside the subtly Astroturfed dirt pile.

  She stopped a few feet short of the open grave. Her mother was down there. Shouldn’t she feel something beyond tired? Hearing her heart thud in her ears, she listened for something else. Sadness, maybe, or loss? Regret?

  A little late for that. Old wounds didn’t always heal—the deepest ones festered.

  By the time the hospital had tracked down Priss and called, her mother was gone. Better that way really, for them both.

  “Come, Ignacio. It’s time to go.” A meager woman stood at the foot of the grave, both her face and raincoat set in similar generic authoritarian lines.

  Priss recognized a social worker when she saw one. Given her past, she should.

  A kid stood beside her, head down, face obscured by a black hoodie pulled out of shape by fists crammed into the pocket across the front. Crotch-sagging jeans puddled atop untied tennis shoes that might have, in a former life, been white.

  The woman touched his shoulder. The kid shrugged her off. One hand appeared from his pocket, and Priss got a flash of knuckles lettered with homemade tattoos before it disappeared beneath the hood.

  She heard a muffled snuffle, and the boy swiped the sleeve across his face.

  Priss felt a pinch in her chest, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

  Shit.

  The hood flew back and for the first time, she stared into the defiant eyes of her half brother. She stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I’m Priss, your—”

  “I know who you are.” Below the knit stocking cap, his almost delicate eyebrows drew together over narrowed eyes.

  His hostility slapped her hard. She took a step back.

  The matron spoke up. “Well, I don’t know who you are.”

  Priss looked her over. “Who are you?”

  She sniffed and looked Priss over. “I am Ms. Barnes, children’s social worker for Santa Barbara County. And you haven’t answered my question.” Her tone was haughty, but her glare was weak. She should ask the kid for lessons.

  “I’m Priscilla Hart.” She tipped her chin at the grave. “My mother’s the one in the box.”

  The Barnes woman tsk-tsked and her lip curled, as if she’d encountered a turd in a church pew. It was a response Priss was used to. She’d always been what her mother called, “outspoken,” but Priss didn’t know how else to be.

  Her opinions were like a deposit of crude oil, buried shallower than most people’s.
Others had regulators to control and filter to a civilized flow; hers were much more likely to spew. She never meant to hurt people’s feelings, but mostly the nuances of refined talk escaped her. Dancing around the facts to be polite made her head hurt.

  She’d take her facts straight up, thank you.

  The social worker reached for the kid’s shoulder again but at his glare, dropped her hand. “Come, Ignacio. We’ll get your things.”

  “My name is Nacho!” His shout rolled away through the empty graveyard.

  The woman pursed her lips and pink spread from her cheeks to the rest of her face. “Well, then...come with me.” She turned, took a few steps and waved her hands to encourage Nacho to follow her.

  But the kid didn’t move, just stood looking at his sister. His defiant eyes had taken on a shiny cast and his bottom lip wobbled. The tough guy morphed into a scared ten-year-old.

  Oh, crap.

  When Priss followed the social worker away from the grave, Nacho was right behind her. “Where are you taking him?”

  “To pick up his clothing at his home.”

  Something old and lumbering stirred deep inside Priss. She was curious to see where her mother had lived. “I’m going with you.” She said it to Nacho, but Ms. Barnes stopped and turned.

  “I’ll need some identification to prove you’re related to...” She shot a glance at Nacho. “Mr. Hart.”

  The kid rolled his eyes.

  Priss restrained herself from doing the same, pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket and handed over her Colorado driver’s license.

  The social worker inspected it like a Stop-n-Go clerk checks a twenty then handed it back. “I suppose you are also next of kin. You can follow me in your car.”

  Deciding the clouds were window dressing for the funeral rather than rainmakers, Priss left Mona’s top down and pulled out behind the county Chevy.

  When they reached the outskirts of town, Priss took in the fussy Victorians perched on manicured lawns, looking down their patrician noses at the traffic in the street.

  She rolled to a four-way stop in the middle of town. A tall flagpole with a limp flag graced the middle of the intersection. Up the cross street, buildings crowded each other for space, cute wooden signs declaring them B & Bs, antique shops, art galleries, coffeehouses.

  Her mother sure hadn’t lived in this part of town.

  Following the county car, Priss took a left. Sure enough, the posh buildings were replaced by ranch houses, and after they crossed over a creek, single-wide trailers and ramshackle cracker-box houses lined the street. The stunted, skeletal trees did nothing to soften the dingy neighborhood.

  After parking behind the Chevy, Priss cut the engine and waited as Mona went through the death throes the ’81 Caddy had been named for. Priss had seen past the scaly black paint and the rust-dotted chrome to the Glory of Detroit in Mona’s lines and under her hood. She’d bought Mona off a university student and since then had put every penny she could spare into restoring her.

  Priss finger-combed her short stand-up black hair in the rearview mirror. The painful squeal of her car door cracked the quiet.

  The squat one-story wooden building was set in a C, creating a courtyard full of weeds and wind-blown trash. It had probably been a Motor Lodge, back in the ’60s. But that heyday was long past. Its boards were warped and wavy, a faded barn-red. The hand-lettered wooden sign out front advertised rooms for rent by the week.

  The familiar weight of poverty and want settled over Priss like a foul-smelling wool blanket. As she stepped out of the car, a shudder of déjà vu ran through her, helping to shake off a taint of despair. It wasn’t hers any longer.

  But it is his.

  Nacho stood on the cracked sidewalk, his face empty of emotion. When Ms. Barnes asked him a question, he dug in his pocket and handed over a key. She led the way to a door at the end of the derelict building.

  Nacho walked in first, and Ms. Barnes followed, flipping on the light. She flinched slightly, but to her credit she didn’t wrinkle her nose.

  Priss stepped in behind them. It wasn’t the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that brought it all back, or the tired room it illuminated. It was the smell. The walls exhaled ghosts of damp rot, untold cartons of her mother’s cigarettes and decades of starchy food, into her face.

  Oh, yeah. She knew this place.

  It was her past.

  Priss glanced at the tinfoil-tipped rabbit ears on the TV, the sagging, sheet-covered couch, the dime-store painting of a rapturous bleeding Christ hanging over it. His suffering-crazed eyes had always frightened her—as if his hanging on the dirty wall was somehow her fault.

  She shouldn’t have been curious about this place—her mom changed locations a lot, but “home” remained the same. Widow’s Grove was the final stop on Cora Hart’s rutted road in search of happy.

  Priss had bailed off that road ten years ago, when public school set her free with an emancipation proclamation they called a diploma.

  The county lady walked across the warped linoleum to the kitchen area. “Just pack a few changes of clothes. We’ll deal with the rest later.” She pulled open a sagging cabinet and peered in.

  Head down, Nacho strode to the doorless room on the right. Priss followed. A small, rumpled cot with dingy sheets took up one corner of the eight-by-eight room. Nacho pulled a backpack from under the bed and stuffed it with clothes from a stack of plastic storage bins. Priss had had that same dresser, growing up.

  He glanced at the schoolbooks lying on the bed, then shot a sly look at Priss. She just shrugged. None of her concern if he left them behind. He pushed past her, stopped in the bathroom only long enough to pick up his toothbrush and jammed it in the outside pocket of the backpack.

  Outside the bathroom door he reached for a small, ornate iron cross hanging on the wall beside his head. He lifted the cross off the hook, dropped it into the backpack and snapped the bag’s flap closed. His eyes cut to her again. Sad, moist eyes.

  She remembered that cross. According to her mother it had been passed down from her Spanish ancestors; it was her proudest possession. A gossamer wisp of nostalgia floated through Priss’s chest before she could quash it.

  Pushing away from the wall, she sauntered to the kitchen area feigning untouchable indifference. “What happens to all this stuff?”

  Ms. Barnes handed Priss her business card. “Anything of value will be sold to reimburse the State for her medical care.” Her pinched lips told Priss what she thought of that likelihood.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A museum might want the TV.”

  Nacho walked by her. “Museums don’t pay for things, stupid.”

  She smiled. He sounded like her. “You’ve got a point there, kid.”

  He stopped in front of the social worker who stood washing her hands at the sink. “I could stay here. There’s food, and I know how to cook.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call what’s in that refrigerator food. You’re ten years old. You cannot live by yourself.”

  “She could stay with me.” The thumb he threw over his shoulder pointed at Priss.

  She backed away. “Oh, no. Uh-uh. I’ve been there and done that. Couldn’t afford the T-shirt.” Alarm raced along her skin, chasing the goose bumps.

  It didn’t matter that she was grown, had a life of her own and some money in the bank. Her first instinct was that someone was going to force her to stay here. Forever.

  Claustrophobia bloomed like squid’s ink in her brain. In a panic she rushed out of the apartment. Outside in the clean air, she pulled in deep, grateful lungfuls, exhaling the past.

  Her ears buzzed. Exhaustion or déjà vu? Maybe both.

  Nacho barreled past her, stopped in the weeds and chest heaving, looked at her, his eyes full of betrayal. “Don’t you think I know nobody
wants me?” His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  The pain and animosity on the kid’s face brought it all back—a slap-in-the-face reminder of why she had never come back.

  Ms. Barnes stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. “Now, now, Ignacio. I understand that you’ve had an emotional day. But anger will not serve you well.”

  “My mom’s dead. My dad’s in prison. And this one—” he jerked a thumb at Priss “—is useless.” He spit into the weeds. “Fine. Take me. I don’t give a shit.” He stalked to the car and stood with his back to them, shoulders square, head up.

  Way to go, Mom. As usual, you bail and leave someone else to be responsible. Well, I didn’t sign up for this. It’s not my problem.

  She strode to her car, got in, and peeled out, tires squealing as she made her way back to her life.

  * * *

  WHEN THE GUNMETAL-GRAY ocean rose in the horizon of her windshield, Priss realized she’d made a wrong turn. No surprise, since she couldn’t recall the roads she’d taken to get here.

  Idling at the corner of whatever and Pacific Coast Highway, she stared at the moody water until a driver honked behind her. Her mind still churning, she pulled across the road to an empty parking lot on the deserted beach.

  Memories banged at the door she’d locked years ago and her head pounded with the hammering. Jesus, the smell in that apartment. She thought she’d forgotten it but when she stepped inside that hole it was all there, waiting for her.

  She switched off the engine and Mona settled with a wheeze. Opening the door, she stepped into the wind. It was much colder here than inland. Her eyes watered, so she closed them and absorbed the astringent scent of timeless salt caverns at the bottom of the ocean. Zipping her leather jacket, she floundered through the loose sand to where the waves pounded the beach smooth, making walking easier. She walked, watching the little bubbles that rose with each wave’s retreat.

  She ached for the mindless drift of Colorado. Those days when Ryan was home and they’d make love in the long, languid mornings until her skin burned all over from passion and his beard stubble. Reading him the comics, tangled in the sheets and sunlight.