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Available on its own for the first time! #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Virgin River and Thunder Point series Robyn Carr delights readers with a tale of second-chance romance in this classic novella.

Leigh Brackon is back home to look after her “ailing” mother. But she suspects maternal meddling when she finds her old flame John McElroy knee-deep in landscaping in her mom’s backyard.

Leigh and John’s summer affair five years ago ended badly, and they’re both leery of relationships after their own failed marriages. But John has always been drawn to Leigh, even though the handyman doubts he’s good enough for the brilliant scientist and her twin boys. And Leigh has a secret that could change everything. But have they changed enough to have a real chance this time around?

With a little help from the neighborhood matchmakers, they might see that it isn’t too late to find a way forward together.

Previously published.

Praise

Praise for #1 New York Times
and #1 USA TODAY bestselling author

ROBYN
CARR

“As usual, Carr delves into the lives of others in town, laying the groundwork for future books.
This cozy read satisfies.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Chance

“Carr focuses her superior storytelling on one couple for a can’t-put-down read.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Chance

“A touch of danger and suspense make the latest in Carr’s Thunder Point series a powerful read.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Hero

“With her trademark mixture of humor, realistic conflict, and razor-sharp insights, Carr brings Thunder Point to vivid life.”
—Library Journal on The Newcomer

“No one can do small-town life like Carr.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Wanderer

“Carr has hit her stride with this captivating series.”
—Library Journal on the Virgin River series

Booklist

Also available from Robyn Carr and MIRA Books

Novels

SWEPT AWAY

WHAT WE FIND

FOUR FRIENDS

A SUMMER IN SONOMA

NEVER TOO LATE

BLUE SKIES

THE WEDDING PARTY

THE HOUSE ON OLIVE STREET

Thunder Point

WILDEST DREAMS

A NEW HOPE

ONE WISH

THE HOMECOMING

THE PROMISE

THE CHANCE

THE HERO

THE NEWCOMER

THE WANDERER

Virgin River

MY KIND OF CHRISTMAS

SUNRISE POINT

REDWOOD BEND

HIDDEN SUMMIT

BRING ME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

HARVEST MOON

WILD MAN CREEK

PROMISE CANYON

MOONLIGHT ROAD

ANGEL’S PEAK

FORBIDDEN FALLS

PARADISE VALLEY

TEMPTATION RIDGE

SECOND CHANCE PASS

A VIRGIN RIVER CHRISTMAS

WHISPERING ROCK

SHELTER MOUNTAIN

VIRGIN RIVER

Grace Valley

DEEP IN THE VALLEY

JUST OVER THE MOUNTAIN

DOWN BY THE RIVER

Look for Robyn Carr’s next novel, THE LIFE SHE WANTS available soon from MIRA Books.

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

John drove past Jess Wainscott’s house regularly, his eyes always sharpened for a glimpse of her daughter, Leigh. It had been almost five years. He hated that he looked for her; he wanted to be over her. He looked in spite of himself—and he wasn’t over her in the least.

Today he wasn’t just driving past. Jess had called him to do a job. John owned his own business in Durango—McElroy Property Services—which included home maintenance and repairs, landscaping and a very fine nursery, and Jess wanted to know if now—early March—was too early to plant a flowering plum tree. Though his business had incidentally or accidentally become successful, he still considered himself a handyman and lawn maintenance person. He could not only bring her a flowering plum, but also change the faucet on the sink, hang wallpaper, install a hot tub, pour a cement patio. Or have one of his employees do it.

“No, it’s not too early,” he had said. “Not as long as you’re willing to protect it from a possible late freeze and pay the price of having some poor slob try to dig into the hard ground.”

“Only if that poor slob is you,” she cheerfully replied. “I really have my heart set on seeing those blossoms outside my bedroom window this spring.” And then she had sighed. John had never before heard a wistful sound from Jess. Sentimentality was not in her repertoire.

Jess Wainscott was sixty and had been widowed for eight years. At fifty-two, a ripe age for a woman of sound health and strong looks, she had lost her mate, but not her vitality. Jess chaired both the Friends of the Library board of directors and the Women’s Council of the First Presbyterian Church. Additionally, she served on many committees and worked for several charitable causes. She could be found at almost every art fair, fund-raiser, ball game, black-tie dinner or barbecue in town. And she skied, which was where John saw her most often, because he was on the volunteer ski patrol.

“Cal told me if he came back after death he’d be a hummingbird and suck the nectar out of the blossoms outside my bedroom window,” she told John. John grunted as he hauled the can holding the plum tree from the back of his pickup. He let it drop with a bang. “I have to get something planted and see if he was putting me on.”

“You’ve been widowed quite a few years, Jess,” John pointed out. She was the fourth and newest member of a group of vivacious women who referred to themselves as the widows’ brigade. They were best friends, seen together all over town, and John did handiwork for all of them. Peg, Abby, Kate and Jess. He had many clients, not all widows, but these four women were his favorites. They all overpaid him, pestered him, tried to feed him like a son.

“Eight years,” she said. “I tend to procrastinate,” she laughed. “Until now, I didn’t want his interference.”

The cars lining the driveway indicated that Jess had company. “Meeting of the brigade?” he asked.

“Tuesday. Garden club. Or is it mah-jongg day? I never remember. We hardly ever do what we planned to do, anyway. Usually we just try to have something to do while we gossip,” she said. She followed John to the side of the house where the tree would be planted and asked him questions the whole time he dug. Had he led the ski patrol again last winter? Did the nursery do much business winters? What softball team would he be on this summer so she could watch for one of his games? Did he still have that condo for rent at Purgatory? Not just questions. Also statements. The yard needed to be resodded. She was thinking of moving the piano upstairs. Leigh, her daughter, would be arriving soon.

The shovel paused in midair.

“My daughter, Leigh. Surely you’ve met her on one of her visits. She was here for two or three months the summer Cal died. She spent another whole summer here a few years…ah, five years ago, I guess. Maybe you met her then.”

“I…ah, might’ve. Yeah. Maybe.”

“Oh, you’d remember, John. She’s very striking. Rather unforgettable, actually.”

Yes. Unforgettable. Completely. His brow began to bead with sweat. The temperature was fifty-two degrees, and there was still snow here and there in crevices around yards, at the edges of driveways, sidewalks, but he was sweating. His heart rate had been about one-ten from digging; the mention of Leigh Wainscott Brackon had caused it to shoot to two-sixty.

“You never mention her,” he said.

“Don’t I? Oh, nonsense, you just haven’t been paying attention. I hardly talk about anything else.”

But not to him. They didn’t move in the same social circles, have mutual friends, or seek common amusements. Their only common trait was that they were equally well-known in town, for entirely different reasons. Everyone knew John McElroy because he was in charge of the volunteer ski patrol and A-Number-One Mr. Fix-it, and everyone knew Jess Wainscott because she belonged to every club, charity and social group in Durango. One of the town matrons and the town’s best handyman. And although they liked each other fine, they weren’t exactly friends.

Every time Jess called him out on a chore, he hung on her every word. Leigh never came into the conversation; it wasn’t as though he would have missed it. The few times he had done indoor jobs, he had scanned the place for pictures, and there was only an old one—Leigh in her twenties. The same picture that had been there when he cleaned Jess’s chimney, put up her new chandelier, unplugged the kitchen drain. It seemed to move around a lot, but there was never a new one. “Does she ski?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

“Leigh does many remarkable things, although athletically she isn’t accomplished. She’s kind of…uncoordinated. She hasn’t been out here for a long time. Well, two years ago last October, and then only for a couple of days. She prefers that I visit her, since she has so many obligations, and she has plenty of room. Los Angeles is a nice place to get a tan in winter. That’s about all I care to do there, anyway.”

Los Angeles? It had been Los Altos when she was at Stanford University. But she had said there was a job at UCLA if she wanted it. He shook these thoughts from his mind. God, so long ago. She’d never looked back; what had she decided their relationship was? Dalliance? Panic attack? Mistake? He’d written her at her office, only to have letters returned. He’d called; a secretary took messages. Her home phone number in Los Altos, which had been difficult to find, was changed. Shovel ready, he mentally scanned those events while he dug, and dug hard.

He plunked the tree into the hole and started pushing dirt in around it. “If she’s coming for a long visit, I’ll probably meet her,” he said. He thought about getting drunk later.

“I’m practically forcing her to come. I’ve been trying to get her back here for a long, long time. Now the darnedest thing has come up. You just won’t believe it. It seems I’ve developed some kind of heart problem.” His eyes shot to her face; Jess was a breathtakingly robust sixty-year-old woman with the appearance of absolutely rude good health. Her hair had been thick gray for as long as he’d known her; her face was healthily tanned and only slightly wrinkled at the corners of her clear, intelligent blue eyes. Her cheeks were pink, her lips cherry red, and she looked smashing on skis. If it weren’t for her shock of silver hair, she could pass for forty, maybe forty-five. She shrugged off his look of concern. “Not unheard of at my age.”

“That’s awful. What’s Doc doing about it?”

“Heavens! Tom Meadows doesn’t even know,” she said, which instantly made John suspicious. Tom Meadows was seen with the widows often…with one or all of them. He must be some kind of late-in-life beau.

“You’re not seeing Doc about this?” he asked. He had just assumed Doc was everyone’s Doc.

“Well, now, Tom is a fine doctor, I’m sure, but he isn’t a cardiologist.”

“I really hate to hear this, Jess. Please, be careful. Do as you’re told.”

“Well, I’d rather it were something like a testy heart than all the things it could be. I’ve always been just a bit ticked off at Cal for the abrupt way he left us, but all things considered, if I could just nod off in the garden, I would rather do that than be sick. I feel all right, you see. I’ve just been diet-restricted as all hell. Can’t eat anything truly enjoyable. However, besides eliminating strenuous exercise like skiing, my lifestyle is unchanged. I do watch cholesterol much better now. I thought I had watched it before, but now I watch. And I take long walks.”

“Is it bad?”

“Bad tickers are getting to be a regular thing, John,” she said philosophically. “They can check your cholesterol at the grocery store. Now that they know so much about hearts, seems no one just drops dead anymore—everyone is getting a bypass or something. The fact is, if I’m very conscientious I could live long enough to become a nuisance. On the other hand, I shouldn’t get hooked on any serial novels right now.”

“Jess!”

She laughed at him. A resounding, loud, hilarious laugh—typical. It made him flinch; he worried she might keel over. “You know, John, you could drop dead tomorrow, too. The only difference is that if I do, it won’t be completely unexpected. I want to get that girl home and straightened out. She needs a keeper, that one. Lord, raising her was a job for ten mothers. Come in and I’ll write you a check. You can have a glass of wine with the girls and me—it’s my medication.” For a moment he thought she had read his mind. The news that Leigh was coming had caused him to think he could use a glass—or ten. “It’s the only nice thing about a tricky heart—a glass in the afternoon, a glass in the evening.”

“I have to pass on the wine,” he said. “But I’ll take the check.”

He followed her up the stairs to the redwood deck surrounding her large home, then in the back door to the kitchen. There, as predicted, were the other women at the kitchen table. What they were doing today was unclear; nothing but writing paper and coffee cups covered the surface between them. They could be planning a cotillion or writing book reviews for the local paper. Once, when he’d seen them around a table with writing tablets and impetuously inquired about their current project, they had said they were writing their wills. He hadn’t asked since. “Hi, John,” he heard three more times.

“Will you promise to drop by when Leigh and the boys are here?”

“Boys?” His voice had gone an octave higher. He had to concentrate to keep the shock from showing all over his face. So, Leigh had achieved motherhood. That had been one of her chief desires, children. At the time he had been with her, having children had been low on his list of wants, but hearing she had sons caused a pang of envy. Was Jess going to insist she’d been talking about “the boys” all these years, too?

“Mitch and Ty, my grandsons,” she replied, digging into her purse for her checkbook. “You’d hit it off, I think. They’re absolute hellions. Unlike their mother, they’re quite athletic.” She wrote his name on the line. “I wouldn’t say Leigh is a bad mother. She adores them. But her mind wanders, and she’s frequently off in la-la land. She’s really no fun for little boys to play with. She’s too prissy. She’s the kind of woman who’s…brilliant, but without a lick of sense, you know?”

He knew.

“I think she has burnout,” Jess was saying as she wrote the check. “Pressures, deadlines, complications, work work work. Her housekeeper quit, leaving Leigh in charge, and Leigh’s a slob. My fault. With all she learned, she was too busy to straighten up. Gad. Leigh never takes time off unless she’s completely frazzled.”

Like last time, he thought. “How old are your grandsons?” he asked.

“Four,” she supplied, fishing her wallet out of her purse. “Twin boys.” She flipped open the picture section of her wallet. John didn’t audibly gasp, but his heart did flip around in panic. “I can’t believe I haven’t bragged about them, but maybe I just bore other people.”

“She is an awful show-off about those boys,” Kate said.

“We don’t exactly get sick of hearing about them,” Peg said, “but a change of subject once in a while wouldn’t hurt.”

John looked at the pictures. One was blond and blue eyed, one dark. Interesting. Leigh was blond and blue eyed. He himself, it so happened, had very dark brown hair and brown eyes. He gulped. “They look older than four,” he tried a bit breathlessly, baiting her, his heart not only hammering, but racing. He hoped his voice didn’t sound terribly unnatural.

“Oh, no, they just turned four.” He almost fainted. His eyes did a long blink. “End of January, I think… Yes, the twenty-eighth.”

His eyes actually closed while he calculated, but he didn’t drum his fingers one at a time; he wasn’t the snap at math that Leigh was. At anything, for that matter. Seven months from the time he met her. An old pain shot through him and hurt slightly more. Oh, no. Oh, no. She had already achieved motherhood. And hadn’t known? She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have gotten involved with him if she…

“I wonder if I could impose on you to take them fishing or something? We have a fundamental absence of men here.”

“Yeah. Sure,” he said, suddenly exhausted. His eyes began to blur, and he acknowledged the remarkable presence of threatening tears. God, how he had loved her. “Let me know if there’s anything more you need,” he said, pocketing the check, dying to get back to his truck. He usually loved hanging around with the women, but this time he couldn’t chance it. He could barely breathe. “And for God’s sake, take care of yourself, Jess.”

“I do need a crew, beginning soon, to spruce up the place. I’m planning to have a very large party here in mid-June, and I want some extensive landscaping and building done. I’m going to wait for Leigh to get here—just a couple of days from now—and get her input before I start, since she’s going to live here for several months…though I do hope she stays on permanently now. You can do it, can’t you? Handle a big job?”

“Permanently?” He nearly choked. “She’s coming to live here permanently?”

She laughed, and the women joined her, stifling their chuckles. “Well, I admit I’m only calling it a long visit, but I fully intend to hang on to her this time. She loves Durango. No reason she can’t stay. It’s the perfect place to raise kids, and Leigh knows that.”

“Sure,” he said weakly. Imagine having her around all the time, running into her at the grocery store, at the Jaycee’s Spring Art Fair…at the Steak House.

“Will you be able to do the yard this spring, John?”

“Yeah. Sure. Gotta run. Busy day. Lotta calls. Take it easy, ladies.”

“Bye, John,” was said, times four.

He let the back door slam shut, took the steps down from the deck two at a time and loped to his truck. At last he was alone. He waited a minute to start the engine. Leigh was burned-out and frazzled, he thought. That was what had been itching in her before, when he’d hoped it was him. It hadn’t been, obviously.

* * *

Jess saw him sitting in his truck in front of the house as she watched from the living-room window. Abby came up behind her and reached over her shoulder to pull back the curtain for a better look.

“Don’t do that,” Jess whispered. “What if he sees us watching him.”

“You don’t have to whisper,” Kate said. “He can’t hear us.”

“So? What do you think?” Jess asked.

“He just about fainted when you told him she had kids, but that doesn’t mean anything. How did he react when you said she was coming home?”

“Oh, like he wanted to get in the hole he was digging.”

“I don’t think you’ll know anything for sure until you see them together. Wouldn’t it be just as easy to come right out and ask her if she just happened to be in love with our favorite handyman about five years ago when she was here for the summer getting pregnant?”

Jess scowled. “It’s just not that simple. She nearly had a nervous breakdown. I was worried about her survival. Now I’m worried about her future and the future of those little cuties. But don’t you think John would be good for them even if it’s not him?”

“He’d be good for anyone.” Peg sighed. “Oh, to be forty years younger.”

“Look at him. He’s just sitting there. He’s in shock. I’d say that’s a good sign,” Kate said. “Doesn’t that seem like a good sign?”

“He’s in shock? That could be a bad sign,” said Abby.

“Oh, to put a man in shock.” Peg sighed. “Just once more.”

“I just don’t know if this is going to work,” Jess mused, watching the truck just sit there.

“Logically, I don’t think anyone can be tricked into getting married,” Kate said.

“Of course they can’t,” Jess said. “I wouldn’t even attempt that. I thought I’d just trick them into being together again. If they still care for each other, they’ll do the getting married part themselves.”

“They didn’t before.”

“Well…things were different then.”

“Not as different as things are now,” Kate said.

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

John couldn’t move. He would drive away in a minute, but not until his breathing began to smooth out and his heart quit leaping around.

Five years ago—just about the first of June, when everything was gloriously green, when Durango, Colorado, was as fresh and alive as a new baby—he had met her. Leigh, twenty-seven, long limbed, intelligent, monied, home to see her mother for a long visit. She had filed for divorce after a year-long separation from her husband. It was uncontested, mutually desired and would be no-muss, no-fuss, simple and quick. A mere formality, said Leigh, since she and her estranged husband had always been more student and teacher than husband and wife.

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