The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

      The Debutante’s Second Chance

      Liz Flaherty

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Tahne Flaherty, Kari Wilson, Laura Flaherty,

       Chris Flaherty, Jim Wilson and Jeremy Flaherty. Some by blood and some in-law, but all the children of my heart.

      Contents

      Prologue

      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

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Susan, I’m married to my high-school heartthrob, and have three great kids. I named this column “Window Over the Sink” because it’s my favorite part of my house. I call it the poor woman’s therapist, because when I look through its panes at the Twilight River and imagine the breeze singing through the sycamores and maples and cottonwoods, I feel immense comfort. I’m writing this first column right around April Fool’s day because that’s something else that gives comfort in this life: being a damn fool once in a while….

      The first column appeared on Micah Walker’s desk on the last day of March, before he’d even put out the first issue of the Taft Tribune with his name on the masthead as the owner-editor. The article was in a plain, white, number-ten envelope that had been mailed in Taft; the return address was a post office box. The column ran about seven hundred words, neatly printed on a laser printer. Some of it, like “high-school heartthrob,” made his journalistic side wince, but the terminology fit in the small Indiana town on the Twilight River. If he tightened it a little, it would fit right into the Tribune.

      Allison Scott, the reporter who had come with him from Lexington to work on the Tribune, stood in the doorway of his office. “Did you write this by any chance?” he asked when she came in. He handed her the column.

      “No,” she said instantly, and began to read. When she was finished, she looked wistful. “I kind of wish I had. It’s not technically perfect, but you sure can feel it.”

      “You’re a romantic.” She was, but that didn’t stop her from being one of the finest reporters he’d ever met. “I’ll tighten it up and run it. I don’t think ‘Susan Billings’ is her real name, but that’s who we’ll make the check out to.”

      “Don’t tighten it,” Allie suggested. “Let the feelings come through.” She turned to go.

      He nodded. “Where are you off to?”

      “A meeting. Domestic Violence Awareness. They’re going to discuss a sheltering system for battered women and children, the Safe Harbor Railroad.”

      Micah shook his head. “Little towns are supposed to be utopian. They shouldn’t need that kind of group. Let me know if there’s something the paper can do,” he said, “without endangering anyone, I mean.”

      “I don’t know if they’ll even let me in. Secrecy is the reason for its success, I guess.”

      He nodded, half-listening. “How’s your mother?” he asked, without looking up.

      “What?” Allie sounded startled.

      “You know, your mom. How’s she doing?” Micah never interfered in anyone’s private life; he was pretty proud of remembering that Allie’s mother had been ill.

      “Oh. Better. Much better.” But she seemed shaken by the question.

      “Good.” He smiled absently in her direction, his mind already moving away. “That’s good.”

      “Well.”

      She seemed uncharacteristically indecisive, and he looked at her again. “Was there something else, Allie? Do you need a few more days off?”

      “No. No, thanks.” She straightened. “Well, I’m off to the meeting. You’re right, though—how could a place that produces a ‘Window Over the Sink’ need an Underground Railroad? It just seems wrong.”

      Chapter One

      Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Sometimes I miss having heroes. All the ones I knew when I was young seem to have developed feet of clay and leapt without conscience from the pedestals I placed them on. But today I lay on an uncomfortable cot and gave blood. I looked around at the people who gave their time freely, at the others who gave their blood just as freely. I saw a minister, a newspaper editor, a reg istered nurse who was spending her day off inserting slender needles into veins, half the Taft High School baseball team still wearing their practice jerseys. And I realized there are heroes all around us, and they don’t need to be on pedestals because they don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.

      Landy Wisdom didn’t look at all the way Micah remembered her from high school. Her hair had been the color of sunlight then, her eyes like the darkest of the lilacs that grew in studied profusion in her grandmother’s side yard. Her figure had been lithe and nubile in her designer jeans and silk blouses and cashmere blazers. Her clothes hadn’t been bought at JC Penney or Kmart like most everyone else’s, but on shopping trips to Cincinnati and Louisville. She’d been, in a town without a social scale, a debutante. Her grandmother had owned the brewery and was one of the few people in town who had servants. Landy’s boyfriend had been the high school quarterback, the son of Taft’s best-known attorney, who’d gone on to stardom at Notre Dame.

      But there had been more to Landy than that. Her best friend had been Jessie Titus, whose grandmother had kept house for old Mrs. Wisdom. Landy had aided with her grandmother’s charities, but she’d been hands-on help. She’d washed dishes at dinners, cleaned up after dances and walked every inch of every walkathon ever held in Taft.

      Micah remembered talking to her once as she slogged through rain for crippled children. She hadn’t had a raincoat because she’d tossed it over the shoulders of the minister’s wife, and mud splashed up her legs as she walked.

      “Who are you?” he’d demanded. He’d been so angry then, furious at the “haves” in what he was finding to be a “have-not” world. The fact that Landy Wisdom didn’t fit into his idea of a “have” made him even angrier. People who had it all didn’t share things when that sharing got them wet, cold and muddy.

      “I’m just Landy,” she’d said quietly, a hurt look in her eyes, “and I’m sorry you don’t like me.”

      Twenty years later, standing in line in his London Fog raincoat and watching Landis Wisdom as she wrote down information for the Red Cross blood bank, Micah felt a niggle of shame because he’d put that look in her eyes. Good writing and solid investments had made him into one of the “haves” he’d so despised, and along with the money had come the realization that there really wasn’t that much difference in people.

      But he still wondered