A Small Town Thanksgiving. Marie Ferrarella

she had undertaken this career, she had never seen the outside of her little suburban Maryland town. She’d had twenty-five years of moving along the same streets, nodding at the same neighbors and being completely devoid of any desire to see anything beyond those boundaries.

      Those were hard things to give up.

      But she had to.

      With Danny gone, a bank account amounting to seventeen dollars and twelve cents and bills to pay, Sam knew she had no other choice. She had no way to take care of herself if she remained inert.

      Danny had been the very light of her life, but he hadn’t exactly been the kind who believed in saving for a rainy day. He believed in spending every dime as long as the sun was shining.

      Which was exactly what happened when he went on that February skiing trip with his two best friends. Promising to be “back before you know it,” he went off for a carefree weekend of fun.

      He hadn’t counted on an encounter with a tanker truck whose cross-country driver had pushed himself too hard and had fallen asleep behind the wheel. The truck careened out of control and despite Danny’s frantic attempts to get the car out of harm’s way, there had been a collision. It ultimately turned out not to be as serious as it could have been—but just serious enough for one fatality—Danny’s.

      His two friends and the sleeping driver survived the crash.

      And so, a little more than eighteen months after becoming a bride, she had become a widow. A widow with bills and no way to pay them. There were no parents for her to fall back on or turn to, no parents around at all. Her father had never been in the picture, vanishing months before she was born, and her mother had worked endless hours to provide for the two of them. When she wasn’t working, her mother was searching for “Mr. Right,” someone to take them away from the brink of poverty where they had always existed.

      However, when her mother finally found that man, he only took her away. And Sam was left behind. By then, she had turned eighteen and was officially on her own, the way she had been, unofficially, for most of her life.

      But she wasn’t alone, not really. Danny had lived across the street and had been part of her life since she’d had her first memory.

      Before even that.

      They were friends, and then sweethearts and then lovers who were destined to get married. When they did, Sam was truly ready for a happily-ever-after life—as much as any life could be happily-ever-after.

      But fate had other ideas and fate always won out in the end. So, at twenty-seven, she found herself very much alone and determined to hold her head up high. The latter entailed providing for herself. All she needed was the way how.

      Sam loved biographies and had always had the ability to put words together eloquently on a page. She eventually combined her passion and talent to become a ghostwriter. A much sought-after ghostwriter because she also had the ability to mimic any voice, sound like any person who hired her to do the heavy lifting and tell the story of their life.

      In addition, she had an aptitude for knowing what interested readers and a neat, clean style that delivered what had been promised while leaving the so-called autobiographer’s ego intact.

      Her chosen career necessitated travel, which in turn required a certain independence she was only now growing accustomed to. Eventually, she hoped to be comfortable with flying to parts unknown at a moment’s notice.

      Right now, Sam thought as she deplaned amid a flock of passengers, she needed to find her new employer, for while the publishing house paid her salary, the person whose autobiography she would be fashioning was her boss. It was something she didn’t ever forget and that one small trick was responsible for her working as steadily as she had been these past two years.

      Joan, the main publisher’s assistant at Tatum House, had told her to be on the lookout for her driver. The man had been described as tall, dark and handsome. He was also said to be scowling, although about what Joan hadn’t a clue. The person who had called her hadn’t covered that detail.

      So there she was, walking in slow motion and taking in both sides of the area as best she could. The person, Joan had promised, would be holding a sign with her name on it.

      So there was hope.

      Bingo, Sam thought as she zeroed in on a man who fit the description she’d been given to a T.

      And he was holding a large sign with her name written on it.

      Doctor Livingston, I presume, she thought to herself as she began to forge a path toward the man who hadn’t made eye contact with her yet.

      Chapter Two

      “Excuse me, are you Miguel Rodriguez?”

      The melodic voice cut through the layers of tangled thoughts going through Mike’s mind. When he turned to look at the source of the voice, his mind was still struggling to focus, fighting its way out of a fantasy-filled zone. He was imagining the woman he’d been sent to meet, picturing a matronly lady right down to a pair of sensible shoes and a tailored, unflattering suit.

      Instead, the woman addressing him looked like what he would have conjured up after encountering a genie in a bottle. The petite young blonde standing before him would have constituted his first wish—and quite possibly just about every wish that he’d ever had.

      “Yes. Yes, I am,” he replied, the inside of his mouth unaccountably turning bone-dry. So much so that it felt as if any second now, he would start exhaling dust. “How did you know?” he heard himself asking.

      She smiled up at him, causing his heart to momentarily stop before it suddenly started beating double time, all within the scope of approximately fifteen seconds. Her sky-blue eyes teasingly captured his as she pointed to the rectangular piece of cardboard he’d forgotten he was holding in his hands.

      “That kind of gave me a clue,” she told him. “You’re holding up my name,” she explained when he made no effort to acknowledge what she’d just said

      Mike blinked, slowly coming to. “I am? Oh, yeah, I am.”

      The next moment, as his own words—as well as Samantha Monroe’s—sank in, he suddenly felt like a contestant for—and most likely the winner of—the crown of Jackass of the Decade.

      Possibly of the century.

      A massive wave of embarrassment washed over him.

      He had no idea what had just come over him. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a beautiful woman before. His own sister, Alma, though he wouldn’t have readily admitted it to her, was an extremely attractive young woman, as were the women that his brothers, Eli, Gabe and Rafe, had married.

      But something about this woman, about the laughter in her eyes, her straight golden hair and her sexy figure sent an earthquake rippling through him. The sum total of those assets could have made a dead man sit up and beg.

      “Well, since I found you, I think you can put the sign down now,” Sam gently prompted.

      “Yeah,” Mike agreed, still stumbling over his tongue. That part of his anatomy seemed to have inexplicably grown in weight and girth.

      “Funny,” Sam went on to observe, “I pictured someone a bit older when I spoke to you on the phone the other day.” There was amusement in her eyes as she told him, “You certainly don’t look like the patriarch of such a large family.”

      “No, I d— Wait, what?” he asked, confusion running rampant through the fog that encircled his brain.

      “I said I pictured someone older when I spoke to you the other day,” Sam repeated.

      She was fairly certain that there had to be some sort of a mistake. No matter which way you sliced it, the tall, handsome cowboy standing before her was not well into his fifth decade. She doubted if he was finished with his second one. Or, at the very most, had just gotten a toehold of his third.