A Woman Like Annie

As she’d looked that afternoon on the drive back, smiling, a little flushed from the craziness of the day.

He could not remember the last time he’d enjoyed a woman’s company as much as he’d enjoyed Annie’s today. There was something about being with her that felt natural and easy. It seemed as if they had known one another for years.

But then, everything about his attraction to Annie was different.

The admission tripped him a little, and he felt the unbalancing of the convictions he’d held on to for so long. He wondered if he had met the woman who could make him believe once and for all that real love was not a fairy tale.

Dear Reader,

I’ve loved books for as long as I can remember, might actually have read every title in my elementary school library. I was one of those kids who never went anywhere without one in my hand or tucked inside my bag.

I now have three precious daughters who love them, too. One of them promises to be just like me. She’s a toddler, and she likes all books. Sits and looks at the pages, even when there are no pictures, just words. She’s fascinated and comforted by them. That pretty much sums up how I feel about stories that let me, the reader, step into other lives for a while, meet someone I think about long after I’ve finished the book.

If I can do that for someone else, I will consider that my greatest accomplishment as a writer.

I love to hear from readers. Please visit my Web site at www.inglathcooper.com. Or write to me at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151.

All best,

Inglath

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Kavvi, Tatti and Nadia…sweet, sweet daughters.

My life’s blessing.

And for Monica Caltabiano. Truest friend.

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

EPILOGUE

MAYOR ANNIE MCCABE WAS LATE.

Her meeting with Jack Corbin was not the kind of meeting a person was late for. It had taken three weeks of unreturned phone calls to get it. And in less than thirty minutes, she would be sitting across a table from the one man who had the power to prevent the town of Macon’s Point from drying up and blowing right off the Virginia state map.

The population sign standing guard at the Langor County line read 3032. Anyone passing through would likely label the town nothing special. True, there was no hubbub of cultural activity at its center, no opera or art museum. Only a farmer’s market and a once-monthly Friday night bluegrass jamboree. But Macon’s Point had become home to Annie in the past three years.

And to her that meant something.

In the year since her divorce, Annie had found peace in this town, a certainty that she would be perfectly content to spend the rest of her life here. It was that kind of place.

The only problem?

If Jack Corbin auctioned off Corbin Manufacturing, half the town would have to move elsewhere. Somehow, tonight, she had to find the words to make him look for another solution to the company’s problems.

Meanwhile, her hair was still wet, and her blouse was missing its middle button.

“Mama?”

“What, honey?” Annie wrestled a comb through her tangled hair, glancing up with a distracted smile at her six-year-old son’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes it shocked her how much he looked like J.D. His hair was a shade of blond women tried to emulate in the priciest salons. His blue eyes had lashes thick enough to generate the same kind of envy. The one concession to cuteness over outright beauty was the dimple in each cheek.

In the father, those dimples had once made her knees go weak. In the son, she was similarly unable to frown on even the most mischievous of deeds when he turned them on her.

“Cyrus sure does like chocolate cake,” Tommy said.

“Did he tell you that?” Annie gave up on the comb and grabbed the hair dryer from the second drawer of her vanity. Tommy was always telling her something Cyrus had said. She sometimes thought the two of them had a language of their own.

“No, but he ate it real fast. Wasn’t it s’posed to be my birthday cake?”

Tommy’s birthday was on Friday. Annie had made the cake early to freeze in an effort to be a step ahead of herself. She dropped the blow-dryer on the sink counter, grabbed her son’s hand and bolted down the stairs. “Cyyyyrus!”

With Tommy still attached to her hand, she skidded to a stop in the kitchen doorway, a run popping up in the right heel of her stockings. Too late. In the middle of the floor sat Cyrus, all one-hundred-plus pounds of him, his nose looking as if it had been dipped in chocolate, the plastic plate on which the cake had been sitting as clean as if it had gone through the dishwasher’s pot-scrubber cycle.

“Oh, Cyrus.”

“See, Mama. I told you he liked it.”

“Bad, Cyrus. At least you look guilty,” Annie said, picking up the plate. Chocolate. The cake had been chocolate. Wasn’t chocolate bad for dogs? She struggled to remember what she’d heard about it, but only came up with the vague recollection that it could damage their nervous systems.