Small Town Romance Boxed Set: Books 1 - 5

Chapter 1-2

The next morning, I was out bright and early. If you lived in Montana, you got out and enjoyed good weather while the getting was good. Even in July. Especially in July. The days were long, the sky was big and there was a lot to do before it got cold. I didn’t mean November like the real world. This was Bozeman. Summer was over the day after Labor Day. It had even been known to snow in July. With that small window for wearing shorts and flip-flops and the threat of white flakes at any time, I was out and about by seven on a Saturday. I got more done before nine in the morning than the military. Not because I really wanted to, but because I had kids.

My boys, Zach and Bobby, were raring to go. Since it was Saturday morning, that meant garage sales. To kids, garage sales were serious business. Toys to be had, books to find. Even free stuff to rake in. As a grown up, I loved buying things I didn’t know I needed. Last week, I bought a shoe rack for my closet and a toaster for the pop-up camper. For two dollars, I could have some toast while camping in the wilderness.

We were in the car, Kids Bop bounced out from the CD player. I had the hot garage sales circled in the classifieds, the Bozeman Chronicle open on the passenger seat next to me, ready to guide us to our treasures. The morning’s first stop was a volunteer fire department’s pancake breakfast. Bargain shopping could wait. With a pancake breakfast, I didn’t have to cook—at seven in the morning, who wanted to?—the kids could stuff their faces, and I could get coffee. Coffee.

I realized the boys were yakking at me, so I turned down a sugary version of Dynamite to listen.

“He’s so cool, Mom. He’s a fireman and he was a soldier and he said we could play in his yard. He’s at least seven feet tall. His snow blower is bigger than ours. His truck is silver and it has four doors,” Zach said from his booster in the back.

“He gave me a high five after I ridden my bike down the sidewalk. His name is Mr. Strickland,” Bobby added. I peeked in the rearview mirror and saw him nod his head, super serious.

The man I’d heard about ever since the boys woke me up was Mr. Strickland, the new neighbor. Mr. Strickland did this, Mr. Strickland did that. The boys’ new super hero had bought the house two doors down and just moved in. I hadn’t met him yet, but the kids obviously had. In my coffee deprived mind, I pictured a fifty-something man with half a head of graying hair, a slight paunch—he was a fireman, so it couldn’t be too big—and by Zach’s description, taller than a basketball player. Great. He’d come in real handy when another ball got stuck up in the gutter.

“The Colonel likes him a lot,” Zach said.

Well, that settled it. If the Colonel gave his approval, the man had to be all right, regardless of gargantuan size. The Colonel’s real name is William Reinhoff, but everyone who knew him, which was the entire town, called him Colonel. He’d earned the title while fighting in Vietnam and it stuck. Gruff and ornery on the outside with a campfire toasted marshmallow center, he was one of my favorite people. The Colonel’s house was wedged between Mr. Strickland’s and mine. He was next-door neighbor, pseudo father, close friend, occasional babysitter, and my mother’s long-distance boyfriend. The kids had obviously met Mr. Strickland with the Colonel while I was at work yesterday and the man had made a serious impression. No way would the Colonel let the kids call the man by his first name. He was entirely too old school for that.

I pulled into the packed dirt parking lot of the fire department, parked, and turned to the kids. They sat in their boosters with the dollar bills I’d given each of them to spend on garage sale paraphernalia clenched in their fists. At seven, Zach was string bean skinny with knobby knees and dimples. Blond hair and light eyes had him looking like me. No one was sure where Bobby got his black hair and dark eyes as they surely hadn’t come from either me or his father. Some people said he might be the Fed Ex man’s kid, but I didn’t see much humor in that. My husband had been the cheater, not me.

“Take only what you can eat, good manners, and put your dollar bill in your pocket so you don’t lose it,” I reminded them.

The kids nodded their heads with excitement. Garage sales and pancakes. Could life get any better?

The sun felt warm on my face. It had just popped up over the mountains, even though it had been light for almost two hours. “Leave your sweatshirts in the car. It’ll be warm when we come out.” I stripped off my fleece jacket and tossed it onto the front seat. It might have been summer, but it still dropped into the forties overnight.

The breakfast was in the fire department’s bay. One big space, concrete floor and walls made of gray sheet metal siding. Two fire trucks were parked out in front with volunteer firemen watching kids swarm over the equipment. My two looked longingly at the apparatus but knew they could explore only once they’d eaten. Inside, it smelled like bacon and coffee. Two of my favorite things. I collected paper plates and plastic utensils and got in the buffet line for food.

“There’s Jack from school,” Zach said as he tugged on my arm and pointed. I waved to Jack and his parents who were already digging into their pancakes at one of the long tables. Everywhere you went in Bozeman, you ran into someone you knew. It was impossible to avoid it. Even a seven-year-old like Zach felt popular. It was nice sometimes, the sense of community, but once I’d ducked around an aisle at the grocery store to avoid someone so I didn’t have to talk to them. Who hasn’t? That time it had been my dental hygienist, and I hadn’t been overly interested in being interrogated about my flossing practice.

Since I ran Goldilocks, the only adult store nearby—you had to go all the way to Billings otherwise—I had a lot of customers. Local customers. It was hard sometimes to make small talk with someone at the deli counter when you really only knew them from the time they came to the store to purchase n****e clamps for the little wife. Thus, the ducking around in stores. I held a lot of confidences, kept a lot of secrets, and over the years, the general population trusted me with them.

We approached the first breakfast offering. At the word ‘eggs’, the boys stuck out their plates. I watched them load up and move on to hash browns, which they skipped over with a polite, “No, thank you.” I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back for their good manners. They could squawk like roosters at each other but were almost always polite to strangers who offered food.

“Mom! There’s Mr. Strickland!” Zach practically yelled.

“Hi, Mr. Strickland!” Bobby chimed.

I searched for Mr. Strickland over the crowd of tables, down the length of the food, looking for the Mr. Strickland of my imagination. Where was the fifty-something man? The paunch? Zach held out his plate for pancakes.

“Hey, Champ!” the pancake man said to Zach.

My heart jumped into my throat and I broke out in an adrenaline-induced sweat.

“Holy crap,” I said.

Pancake man was not fifty. Not even forty. He most definitely didn’t have a pot belly. Only an incredibly flat one under a navy fire department T-shirt. Solid. Hot. Zach had certainly exaggerated Mr. Strickland’s height. He was tall. I had to tilt my head up a bit to look him in the eye, which I found A-OK. Being five-eight, I liked a man with altitude.

The fireman was certainly lighting my fire.

“Holy crap?” Pancake man, also known as Mr. Strickland, replied.

Flustered, I tried to smile, but I was mortified. Not because I’d said holy crap. That had just slipped out. I could have probably come up with something better, but holy crap, he was the fireman who’d come into the store for the fire inspection. The one with the Whopper Dong. The one who—

“I know you,” Ty said, smiling. Damn. His teeth were straight and perfect. I could feel my blood pressure going through the roof. No bacon for breakfast for me or I might have an embolism on the spot. “You’re Jane from Goldilocks.”

His smile widened into a full-on grin. Yeah, he remembered me and the array of dildos.

“You know Mom from work?” asked Bobby, eyeing both of us curiously. His plate was filled with food and he needed two hands to carry it. “Mom says her work is for grown-ups.”

Ty nodded his head and looked Bobby in the eye. “I had to inspect the sprinkler system and make sure there are fire extinguishers in the store. I was working, too.”

“Boys, take your plates and find a place to sit.” I angled my head toward the tables. “I’ll be right there.”

“Will you sit with us, Mr. Strickland?” Zach asked, full of hope.

“Why don’t you two call me Ty, all right?”

The boys nodded their heads.

“Give me a few minutes to finish here and I’ll join you,” Ty replied, holding up his metal tongs to prove he had serious work to do. The kids scurried off to scarf down their meals. Ty watched the boys go then turned his gaze to me. Grinned some more.

“I learned a lot from you at the store yesterday,” Ty said. He appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. Me, not so much. Mr. Tall, Light and Handsome was…was flirting with me.

Standing in the pancake line, I did a quick mental inventory. It wasn't quite eight in the morning so I wasn’t at my best. On a good day, or at least later in the morning, I liked to think of myself as better than average looking. I’m above average in height, longer than average in curly, dark blond hair, larger than average in breast size, and lighter than average in weight. The weight part I could thank my mom. Like her, I can eat whatever I wanted and not gain an ounce. My best friend Kelly hated me for that, but what could I do? She should hate my mother instead.

The downside to being skinny was that I had no calves. None. It was a straight shot down from knobby knees to feet. I could run until the cows came home and I wouldn’t develop calves. At least Kelly had calves. The rest, including the calves, was just weird genetics.

Of course, this morning I hadn’t pulled myself together as I should, or how Kelly said I should. I was what was called a low maintenance woman. I didn’t even think I had a can of hairspray in my house.

I went over the crucial things in my mind. Hair, breath, bra, zipper. At least I'd brushed my teeth, but my hair was pulled up into a ratty ponytail, probably curls sticking out every which way. I wore shorts—the zipper was up, an old Sweet Pea Festival T-shirt and flip-flops. No make-up. It couldn’t have gotten much worse unless I had decided to skip a bra. Which, being a 34D, would have been really bad.

I was a mess! Kelly would disavow any knowledge of me if she came through the door.

Then I remembered Ty was my new neighbor. No matter how much I felt like it at the moment, I couldn’t hide from him forever.

What could this guy see in me besides a complete slob who was an expert in dildos? What had I worn yesterday? It didn’t matter. He’d probably been too blinded by all the s*x toys to have noticed my clothing. I felt like a total freak. And yet he was flirting.

“This is one of those embarrassing moments in life.” I pointed my finger at him. Hot or not, I felt very cranky. How dare he flirt with me when I was unprepared! “You need to tell me a secret about you so it balances out.”

A corner of his mouth tipped up into a grin. “Fair enough.” He leaned toward me over the platter of pancakes, looked to the left and right and whispered so only I could hear. “I can see the perks of the silicone dildo you talked about yesterday, even the one with the top that rotates.” He twirled his finger in the air to demonstrate, then looked me straight in the eye. “But I like a woman who goes for the real thing.”

Was that steam coming up off the platter of pancakes I was leaning over, or did I just break out in sweat?