Last-Minute Marriage
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING RIVERBEND, INDIANARiverbend…home of the River Rats–a group of small-town sons and daughters who've been friends since high school. The River Rats are all grown up now. Living their lives and learning that some days are good and some days aren't–and that you can get through anything as long as you have your friends.Mitch Sterling has a lot on his plate. He owns a hardware store that's competing with a big national chain. He's taking care of his elderly grandfather–though Granddad might argue about that–and he's a single father to a young child. On top of that, he's just met a very pregnant, very stranded, very single woman who needs a friend. And if Mitch is honest with himself, he'll admit that he wants to be more than her friend.…
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#942 LAST-MINUTE MARRIAGE
Riverbend
Marisa Carroll
#943 BECCA’S BABY
Shelter Valley Stories
Tara Taylor Quinn
#944 THE DAUGHTER MERGER
Janice Kay Johnson
#945 OBSESSION
Kay David
#946 THE HOUSE AT
BRIAR LAKE
Roxanne Rustand
#947 THE MAN BEHIND
THE BADGE
Count on a Cop
Dawn Stewardson
Dad, can I stay up late tonight?”
“Not on a school night,” Mitch said. “Now, why don’t you go show Granddad your drawing, then get to your homework?”
Sam grumbled something unintelligible and went inside with his head hanging. By the time he’d greeted their yellow Lab and shown his grandfather his drawing, he was in a better mood.
Mitch watched the two most important people in his world for a moment. But a part of his brain refused to focus on the scene. Instead, it kept pestering him to check out the car in the lot near the park’s rose bed. Unless he missed his guess, it was a red compact. And as far as he knew, there had only been one red car there today.
But Tessa Masterson was supposed to be safely ensconced in her room at the River View, not sitting in a dark parking lot on a wet October night.
“I’m going out for a quick run,” he informed Sam and his grandfather.
“It’s raining,” Sam observed.
“Your dad’s losing his marbles, going out for a run on a night like this,” Caleb said, drawing circles on his temple with his index finger.
Maybe he was crazy, Mitch thought. Crazy enough to have to see for himself if the car in the parking lot had California plates and a pregnant, sad-eyed woman inside.
*
Dear Reader,
Over the past year and a half, Riverbend, Indiana, has become very real to us. It has come to life in a manner we would have never thought possible when we were first asked to help create this wonderful little town and the people who inhabit it. And along the way, we’ve gained new friends of our own—the other authors in the series.
We’ve come together from across the country to find that even though none of us has ever been to Riverbend, our visions of what we wanted it to be were very much alike. No matter where we grew up, north or south, city or country, we all hold a place much like it in our hearts.
We hope you enjoy reading Tessa and Mitch’s story as much as we enjoyed writing it, and that all the Riverbend stories will find a permanent place in your hearts.
Sincerely,
Carol and Marian (writing as Marisa Carroll)
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Mitch Sterling: Single father, owner/operator of Sterling Hardware and River Rat
Tessa Masterson: Unmarried, seven months pregnant, stranded in Riverbend
Sam Sterling: Mitch’s ten-year-old son
Caleb Sterling: Mitch’s grandfather, lifelong Riverbend resident
Brian Delaney: Father of Tessa’s child
Tom Baines: Prize-winning journalist, estranged father and River Rat
Lynn Kendall: Minister and newcomer to Riverbend
Ruth and Rachel Steele: Tom’s twin maiden aunts, operators of Steele’s Books
Kate McMann: Manager of Steele’s Books and Lynn’s best friend
Charlie Callahan: Contractor, temporary guardian and River Rat
Beth Pennington: Physician’s assistant, athletic trainer and Charlie’s ex-wife
Aaron Mazerik: Former bad boy, current basketball coach and counselor at Riverbend High
Lily Bennett Holden: Golden Girl, widow, artist and River Rat
Abraham Steele: Town patriarch and bank president, recently deceased
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
SHE WAS LOST.
There was no getting around it. She was thoroughly lost on the back-country roads of rural Indiana. Lost, almost out of gas, and totally shaken by her near miss with a gargantuan piece of farm machinery at the last crossroads.
Tessa Masterson got out of the car and took a couple of deep breaths. It wouldn’t help her baby if she went into a fit of hysterics. And even if she allowed herself to give in to the urge, what good would hysterics do in the middle of nowhere?
And she was in the middle of nowhere. She looked around. Cornstalks nine feet high lined both sides of the narrow road. They stretched away, ahead and behind her, like a long golden tunnel, blocking the view of the tree-studded, nearly flat landscape. Overhead the sky was a bright autumn blue, not a cloud in sight. But she knew the blue sky and the warmth of the October afternoon were an illusion. The air would grow cold when the sun went down, and storm clouds were gathering along the western horizon. She’d watched them piling up in her rearview window for the past couple of hours.
Grasshoppers whirred around her, leaping in the dry brown grasses growing along the banks of the shallow ditch that paralleled the road. It was a much smaller ditch than the one she’d nearly driven into trying to avoid the huge green combine with its wicked-looking, spear-tipped attachment that took up almost the entire road.
The wizened farmer in the cab of the machine probably hadn’t even seen her predicament. If he had, he didn’t bother to stop and help. By the time she’d righted the car and stopped shaking enough to drive on, she’d lost track of the directions the highway patrolman had given her as he’d waved her off the main highway to detour around a jackknifed eighteen wheeler. She reached into the back seat, took a map out of her backpack and spread it open on the hood of the car.
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