Hometown Princess. Lenora Worth

      “Rick, you remember our Cari, don’t you?”

      “I do now. Didn’t at first but we talked a bit yesterday afternoon. Good to see you again, Cari. Hope you had a good first night home.”

      “It was okay,” she said, the warmth of his dark blue eyes washing over her. Could it be possible that he had matured into an even better looking man than the boy she remembered? Highly possible.

      Jolena’s gaze shifted from Rick to Cari, her grin growing with each blink. “You two went to school together, right?”

      Cari felt the crimson moving over her freckles. “Yes, we did but Rick was the big man on campus. He…we…didn’t hang out together too much.”

      “And that’s a shame,” Rick replied, winking at Cari. “But high school’s always hard, you know. I’m sure we’ve both changed since those days.”

      When the overly interested Jolena’s eyebrows shot up, Cari slumped on her stool, wishing she could just dive under the counter. Did the man know the effect he had on women? Or did he just do this to her?

      LENORA WORTH

      has written more than forty books, most of those for Steeple Hill. She has worked freelance for a local magazine, where she wrote monthly opinion columns, feature articles and social commentaries. She also wrote for the local paper for five years. Married to her high school sweetheart for thirty-five years, Lenora lives in Louisiana and has two grown children and a cat. She loves to read, take long walks, sit in her garden and go shoe shopping.

      Hometown Princess

      Lenora Worth

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Commit to the Lord whatever you do,

       and your plans will succeed.

      —Proverbs 16:3

      To my sister-in-law Kathy Baker

      Contents

      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

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      It was all about the shoes.

      Carinna Clark Duncan stood in front of the store window, staring at the pair of red pumps winking at her through the glass. She wanted those shoes. But she couldn’t have them. Not now. Maybe not ever. Her days of extravagant shoe shopping were over. Lead me not to temptation, Lord.

      She glanced around the quaint main street of Knotwood Mountain, Georgia, and then looked to her left at the old run-down turn-of-the-century Victorian house she’d inherited after her father’s death a month ago. Duncan House—that’s what her parents had called it. Now it had a dilapidated old sign that said Photography and Frames—Reasonable Prices hanging off one of the porch beams. Her childhood home had been reduced to a business rental, but the last renter had left in a hurry from what she’d been told by her father’s lawyer.

      The house was the only part of James Duncan’s vast estate she’d received. The bitterness and pain rose up like bile inside her. But it wasn’t because she wanted the whole estate, even though some cold hard cash would be good right now. No, her deep-seated resentment and anger came from another source. And her prayers for release hadn’t worked.

      This anger and jealousy was toward the woman who’d swooped in and wooed Cari’s still-grieving father into marrying her just months after Cari’s mother had died. That woman, Doreen Stillman, and her two children, had managed not only to fool Cari’s vulnerable father for the last few years; they’d also managed to turn him against his only daughter. The daughter who’d loved and adored him and still grieved for her mother and him so much it woke her up in tears in the middle of the night.

      Once the apple of her doting father’s eye, Cari had soon become the outcast, the troublemaker who stood against Doreen. And Doreen made sure James Duncan knew this, made sure he heard all about how horribly Cari treated Doreen and her children. Even if it wasn’t true, even if she’d been the one who’d been mistreated, there was no way to convince her besotted, grief-stricken father. No way. And now it was too late to make amends with him. Cari only hoped she’d been able to get through to him enough before he died to make him understand that she loved him.

      Staring at the shoes with a Monday morning moroseness, she thought it was pretty ironic that a pair of shoes had started the whole chain of events that had eventually caused Cari to fall out of her father’s good graces in the first place. Cari and her younger stepsister Bridget had been fighting over a pair of blue sandals. They belonged to Cari, but Bridget had insisted she wanted to borrow them. Cari had refused, saying Bridget was too young and her feet too long for the narrow, strappy shoes that Cari intended to wear to a party that night. But Doreen and Cari’s father had sided with Bridget. Cari had not only lost the shoes—Bridget never gave them back—she’d also lost a lot of respect for her father. And apparently, he’d lost respect for her, too. Things had gone from bad to worse after that. Her once storybook life had become miserable.

      But he had left her the house.

      That alone had sustained Cari after his death. He’d left her the one thing she remembered with happiness and joy—the house where she’d grown up with both her parents. It had been a loving, wonderful, faith-filled home back then, full of adventure and all the things a little girl loved, including a turret room. Cari used to pretend she was a princess; she’d dreamed big dreams in that round little room just off her bedroom on the right side of the two-story house. Now, the pretty memories faded and she was left staring at a harsh reality.

      Doreen had immediately moved the family out to a big, modern house on the Chattahoochee River and convinced James to let the town rezone this house for commercial use. Only she’d neglected to take care of this particular piece of property. Doreen wouldn’t know a house with good bones if it fell on her.

      The old house was still solid, but it needed a lot of cosmetic work, Cari thought. And so did she. Maybe she could make some sense of things, redoing this old place. Maybe. By leaving her the house, her father had given her a new lease on life. She once again had big dreams—for herself and for the house she had opened up earlier today. She planned to renovate it room by room. And she planned to open a quaint little boutique to showcase her jewelry and trinkets on the first floor. She could live on the second floor. It would be a great arrangement if she could make a go of it. Please, God, let me do this right.

      But she did have another big problem. A definite lack of capital. She had to figure out a way to find the money to do everything she envisioned. From the research she’d done, a loan didn’t look possible.

      She turned back to the shoes, a longing bursting through her heart. She was a material girl—or at least she used to be. She reminded herself that those days were gone and so she couldn’t afford the shoes. But she sure did admire them anyway.

      Just