Nice To Come Home To. Liz Flaherty

      

      Will an apple a day...

      Keep love at bay?

      For Cass Gentry, coming home to Lake Miniagua, teenage half sister in tow, is bittersweet. But her half of the orchard she inherited awaits, and so does a fresh face—Luke Rossiter, her new business partner. Even though they butt heads in business, they share one key piece of common ground: refusing to ever fall in love again. But as their lives get bigger, that stance doesn’t feel like enough...

      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...over forty years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!

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

       Also By Liz Flaherty

      Back to McGuffey’s

      Every Time We Say Goodbye

      The Happiness Pact

      Nice to Come Home To

      The Debutante’s Second Chance

      Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

      Nice to Come Home To

      Liz Flaherty

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      ISBN: 978-1-474-08586-1

      NICE TO COME HOME TO

      © 2018 Liz Flaherty

      Published in Great Britain 2018

      by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

      All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

      By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      “In my experience, there’s always a shoe about to drop somewhere.”

      She raised her head as he lowered his, and their lips met in a sweet version of an age-old dance.

      “What do you do,” he asked slowly, “when the shoe drops?”

      “Oh.” Her voice sounded reedy. “It depends.”

      “On?”

      Cass laughed, not very convincingly. “On whether it’s a combat boot or a flip-flop.”

      “What about a nice, comfortable loafer? How do you react then?”

      “To tell the truth, usually it’s the combat boot, in which case I turn tail and run.”

      “Well, what’s between you and me doesn’t have to do with the orchard or the coffee shop,” he whispered. “It’s courtship simply for the pleasure of it. Nothing more and nothing less. No promises, no demands. No permanency.” He kissed her again, treasuring her sweet response. “No shoes.”

      Dear Reader,

      When people ask if I write about friends and family, I usually say, “Not really” (with a couple of notable exceptions). There will be characteristics and habits I borrow from time to time, but nothing identifiable. However, when Luke Rossiter, the hero of Nice to Come Home To, showed up with a guitar, it was my husband’s fingers I saw on the strings, tugging the notes out without benefit of a pick. When Cass, the heroine, sat at the corner table in a coffee shop with her laptop, she was every writer I know. It was a reminder of how deeply personal our Heartwarming stories are and how beloved the people that we write about are. I hope you love them, too.

      Liz Flaherty

      Although their help was unwitting, I am grateful to McClure’s and Doud’s, the local orchards I visited to give Keep Cold Orchard its sense of place. I’m grateful to every barista in every coffee shop I’ve written in over the years—I hope the book does you justice. Thanks to Cheryl Reavis for giving the orchard its name and introducing me to the Robert Frost poem from whence it came. And thanks, Charles Griemsman, for everything.

      To Nan Reinhardt, friend and writer extraordinaire—this one’s for you.

      Contents

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

       About the Author

       Booklist

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Dear Reader

       Dedication

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO