The Happiness Pact

The fine line between BFF and happily-ever-after...

Tucker Llewellyn and Libby Worth—strictly platonic!—realize they’re each at a crossroads. Tucker is successful, but he wants a wife and kids: the whole package. Libby knows that small-town life has her set in her ways; the tearoom owner needs to get out more.

So they form a pact: Libby will play matchmaker and Tucker will lead her on the adventure she desperately needs. But the electricity Libby feels when they shake on it should be a warning sign. Soon the matchmaking mishaps pile up, and a personal crisis tests Libby’s limits. Will Tucker be there for her as a best friend...or something more?

“I want to love somebody, Lib.”

He smiled as charmingly as ever, but his eyes remained solemn.

“What if this woman you care about doesn’t want kids?” What if this woman he “cared about” was like Libby? But she wasn’t going to think about that.

“I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. You asked me what my wish was, and that was it.” His voice was as chilly as the air over the frozen six hundred acres of Lake Miniagua.

Tucker had been her friend her whole life. When no one had asked her to dance in the seventh grade, he had—and seen to it his friends followed suit. When her mother died when she was fifteen, and her father committed suicide a few years later, he’d supported her through all the stages of grief until she could bear it. He’d bought her the telescope that time. “See the stars?” he’d said. “They’re still there. Wish on them if you want.”

Sixteen years later, she still wished on stars, and counted on him to be there if she needed him. The least she could do was try to make this one wish come true for him.

“I’ll help.”

Dear Reader,

The Happiness Pact wasn’t the book I intended to write when I first presented the idea to my editor. It was meant to be a funny and gentle journey through the courtship of friends. Then clinical depression inserted itself into the story and it became much more. While the humor and gentleness stayed because they were inherent parts of Libby and Tucker, their journey had some unanticipated twists and turns.

Authors aren’t supposed to have favorites—I think it’s one of those unwritten rules. But from Libby’s messy braid to Tucker’s klutziness, as their story led me to those places I never intended, I fell in love with the book, the people, and—once again—Lake Miniagua. I hope you do, too.

Liz Flaherty

The Happiness Pact

Liz Flaherty

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LIZ FLAHERTY retired from the post office and promised to spend at least fifteen minutes a day on housework. Not wanting to overdo things, she’s since pared that down to ten. She spends nonwriting time sewing, quilting and doing whatever else she wants to. She and Duane, her husband of...oh, quite a while...are the parents of three and grandparents of the Magnificent Seven. They live in the old farmhouse in Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really...forty years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!

She’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

My heartfelt gratitude goes to Danna Bonfiglio, who introduced me to Venus and inspired me to make it Libby’s guardian planet in a way I never could have imagined on my own. Danna’s commitment to the high school students she teaches is an even greater inspiration.

Thanks also to author Jim Cangany, whose wholehearted sharing of his knowledge of clinical depression made The Happiness Pact a better book. I couldn’t have written it without his answers to my shamelessly intrusive questions.

In nearly every town there is a building full of books, CDs and DVDs, there for the education, enlightenment and pleasure of all who enter. I work in one, have had cards in others and appreciate every one of them, so it is to libraries—and to their tireless librarians, boards and Friends—that this book is dedicated.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LIBBY WORTH TAUGHT the primary class at St. Paul’s when Mrs. Miller wasn’t there, tended bar at Anything Goes Grill when Mollie needed a night off and quilted with friends on Sunday afternoons. She made pastries for Anything Goes and the Silver Moon Café because she loved to bake and because sometimes she needed the money. She owned, operated and loved the Seven Pillars Tearoom and lived in a spacious apartment above it with her Maine coon cat, Elijah.

Her very favorite thing was to stand in her backyard and peer into the eyepiece of her telescope. Her knee-trembling, heart-pounding fear of thunderstorms was no match for her fascination with the light show offered by the sky. Besides, Venus was her guardian planet. Other people had guardian angels, she was fond of saying, but her mother made sure she had a whole planet.