Falling for Trouble Read online

  T-R-O-U-B-L-E

  “Here’s the thing,” she continued, leaning over the table. “I . . . oh, God, okay. Listen. Don’t laugh.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you.”

  Well. He didn’t know why she thought he would laugh at that. Spit his wine out in surprise, maybe. But definitely not laugh.

  “But I’m leaving.”

  “O . . . kay?”

  “So I don’t want you to get too attached.”

  “Okay.” There seemed to be something wrong with his vocabulary.

  “You seem like a nice guy, that’s all.”

  “Thanks?” he said, because that sure didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “And despite what people say, I’m not a total monster. I don’t want to hurt you. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “But I can’t get over this urge to climb across the table and jump you.”

  “Check, please.”

  Also by Sarah Title

  Kentucky Home

  Kentucky Christmas

  Home Sweet Home

  Snowed In

  Two Family Home

  Practice Makes Perfect

  The Undateable

  And read more Sarah Title in

  Delicious

  The Most Wonderful Time

  Falling for Trouble

  SARAH TITLE

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  T-R-O-U-B-L-E

  Also by Sarah Title

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Susan Maguire

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-4185-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4201-4185-6

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-4186-3

  eISBN-10: 1-4201-4186-4

  This one is dedicated to My Own Sister,

  Mary Ellen Maguire,

  whose quest for knowledge and justice is

  matched only by her enthusiasm for headbanging to

  Take the Power Back,

  the world’s first and only all-female

  Rage Against the Machine cover band.

  Nobody loves you like your sister.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When I was twenty-six, I moved from a cool person’s post-collegiate life in San Francisco back to my hometown, which is very small. I was saving for grad school and living with my parents and lying about watching movies all night with my “friend,” Alex, who was a poet. (We weren’t watching movies. We were smooching. Which I’m sure they knew.) One day, while I was barist-ing, my high school English teacher came into the coffee shop and said to the student he was with, oh, here’s Sarah Title, she gave the student-at-large speech at graduation just like you’re going to! And the look of horror on the kid’s face, that he would someday be an old lady working in a coffee shop when he thought he was living a life of such promise . . . Of course, I did have a purpose, but he didn’t know that. Anyway, that experience was pretty much the catalyst for this story. So thanks, Mr. Dunn and Unnamed Student, who hopefully has found lots of success.

  Like a lot of librarians, I grew up in my local public library. The Halikarnassus Public Library is very inspired by the Lee Memorial Library in Allendale, NJ—though, let’s be real, I took a lot of liberties. But all the good parts, those are like Lee Memorial.

  I feel like my books are as much about finding home as they are about finding love. As someone who seems to enjoy a regular state-to-state move (or as a masochist . . . not sure which), I am very grateful to the people I call home, no matter where they are geographically. Trish, Marsha, Toni, Dana; Brock; Maureen; and Tom, Amy, Mary Ellen, and Brian. And my parents. Hi, parents! Ignore that stuff about movies.

  And thank you to Alicia Condon from Kensington who continues to be my biggest champion (except for my mom—hi, Mom !), and without whose insights these stories would not be. Thank you also to Louise Fury from the Bent Agency who is taking me places, baby.

  It’s a rough time to be a woman in America, but I hope, if you’re reading this (and even if you’re not, but you won’t know that if you’re not reading it, will you?), that this story brings you a little laughter and respite and hope that you’ll find the place you were meant to be.

  Prologue

  Peggy checked the clock one more time.

  She really was pathetic. Not pathetic, she told herself. A woman of routine. She’d retired last spring from her forty-two years at Halikarnassus Middle School—did she really expect herself to undo decades of routine in a year?

  Still, she would like to know what it was like to sleep in.

  She looked down at Starr, her ragamuffin little poodle who was another part of the reason she couldn’t sleep in. “You and your old-lady bladder,” she scolded, without much heat. Starr barely lifted her head from the cushion on the kitchen chair that was closest to Peggy’s.

  Peggy had a whole list of things to do, none of which were particularly setting her world on fire. She had promised to make some zucchini bread for her pregnant neighbor, she needed more laundry detergent, she had to make appointments for both herself and Starr at their respective groomers.

  She was just biding her time.

  She wondered if Joanna was up yet. She was in LA, so it was unlikely—more likely that she hadn’t gone to bed yet. Raising that wild granddaughter of hers had earned every gray hair Peggy meticulously covered up. Peggy still had a hard time thinking of Joanna as an adult, capable of living on her own. Not that Joanna was incompetent, she was just . . . stubborn. Sometimes too stubborn to do the right thing.

  Peggy never should have let that girl take guitar lessons.

  Oh, sure, it channeled her rebelliousness into something more creative, but now her
only grandchild was living across the country pursuing a career that did not come with a 401(k). A rock musician. If Joanna’s mom could see Joanna, well, she’d probably blame Peggy for getting her guitar lessons in the first place.

  Peggy reached for her phone—a smartphone, thank you very much—and debated sending Joanna a text. Last night had been a big night for her. Her band, Bunny Slippers, was opening for . . . well, Peggy couldn’t remember. Something to do with pennies? It wasn’t really her style of music. Of course, neither was Bunny Slippers, but those songs kind of grew on a gal. They were all about kick-ass females, as Joanna would say. None of that sappy love garbage.

  Which was so very Joanna. That made Peggy even more proud, that her baby was making it big being nothing but herself. Peggy was nervous when Joanna started talking about signing to a major record label—she had visions of shady, predatory A&R men taking advantage of an all-girl rock group. She knew this was sexist, but she couldn’t help it. Joanna was her baby girl; she’d always be protective of her. But their new manager seemed to have the band’s best interests at heart, and he got them on this tour with the Penny . . . somethings. What were they called?

  Oh yes, the Penny Lickers.

  Absurd.

  But very, very popular.

  Peggy really wanted to call Joanna to see how the first show had gone. She’d just send the text, and if Joanna was up, she’d call her back. If not, Peggy’d talk to her after her thrilling day of postretirement errands.

  She looked up at the clock again.

  Finally.

  “Come on, Starr. Time for a walk!”

  No matter how brightly Peggy said that, Starr always attempted to bolt when the leash came out. She was fast for an old lady, but so was Peggy, and she had ten pounds of squirmy fluff in her arms and leashed in no time. They were running a little late. Peggy hoped she hadn’t missed him.

  This is so very wrong, she said to herself as she shut the front door behind her, which was the same thing she told herself every morning. She waved to Doris, next door, who was watering her flowers, and to Carla across the street, who was at her mailbox, which was a little obvious.

  Still, she couldn’t blame the woman.

  Peggy coaxed Starr down the steps and onto the short path through her front yard, once again amazed at the torque the ten-pound dog could produce when she was faced with something she did not want to do. Starr was just deigning to slowly climb down the stairs when he turned the corner.

  It was wrong, surely, to build her morning around the daily opportunity to ogle the new library director in his running shorts. She would never stand for this kind of behavior from a man toward a woman. And yet, every morning, she joined the other women in the neighborhood to wave and smile at Liam Byrd.

  Sometimes he stopped to chat, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet while they talked about books or about Joanna. Liam was quite the music aficionado. He knew more about the music she grew up with than she did, and he was always asking after Joanna’s career. He told her that he had bought the newest Bunny Slippers album. He said he liked it, although his face told her otherwise. Such a nice young man.

  Lately, he hadn’t been stopping, just waving and jogging on. Poor boy was stressed. The town council was giving him headaches about his budget. Peggy’d like to give the town council a headache. But then she’d watch Liam run on, and she found it hard to be mad at anyone for a good while after that.

  Today looked like it was going to be just a waver, which was just as well, because Peggy’s phone was vibrating in her pocket. She reached for it while offering Liam her brightest smile. Then Starr apparently decided she did want to go on a walk after all, because she started barking and following Liam (not that Peggy could blame her). Except that in her stubbornness, Starr had wrapped herself around Peggy’s legs, and Peggy’s attention was divided between her phone and Liam’s shorts, which left nothing for her balance, so when Starr took off, Peggy didn’t stand a chance.

  She went down.

  Hard.

  Oh, Lord.

  Peggy opened her eyes to see the cloudless spring sky, then Liam’s flushed face.

  “Peggy? Peggy, are you all right?”

  She was fine, she wanted to tell him. Just embarrassed. But she found she couldn’t catch her breath, and she thought she might be having a heart attack but it wasn’t her chest that hurt, it was her leg. Oh, Lord, she’d never felt such pain before in her life, not even when she gave birth to Joanna’s father. Liam’s sweet, concerned face swam in front of hers, and she heard Starr barking and someone talking about an ambulance, which she hoped was not for her because she was fine; it was just a little breath-stealing, paralyzing pain in her leg; there was no need to make such a fuss.

  “Peggy? Stay with me, okay? The ambulance is coming,” Liam said, and he was such a dear. She really should stop objectifying him like that. She should tell Doris and Carla to back off, too. Especially when he was being so nice to her, even if she didn’t really need it. She wanted to tell him that, and to get on her feet to go into the house and ice her leg and maybe find something to drown her shame in. She started to do that, but as she tried to sit up, her leg moved and the look on Liam’s face told her that she had said out loud the curse words she was thinking. Then his face started to darken, and so did the sky, and then she didn’t feel a thing.

  Chapter One

  “Jo? Joey Green?”

  And that, in one frustrating nickname, was the reason why Joanna Green never came back to Halikarnassus. The fact that it was a nosy little town with one bar and few people worth drinking with, she could deal with. It was more the fact that everyone in town seemed obsessed with the Joanna she had been in high school—a screwup and a hell-raiser and a general bad influence. She hadn’t been home in years, and that one nickname made it abundantly clear that no one was going to try to get to know Joanna the Adult.

  Not that Joanna the adult was any less of a screwup. Hell, that was why she was standing in the airport, waiting in baggage claim for the suitcase holding all of her worldly possessions (with the exception of her guitar, which she would never, in a million years, trust to baggage handlers).

  Coming home as an abject failure with your tail between your legs was one thing, Joanna thought. Having to explain that failure to a bunch of people who didn’t expect anything more from you was a new level of humiliation she wasn’t sure she could deal with. Just keep an eye out for your suitcase, she told herself. You don’t have to talk to anyone. You just need to grab your bag, convince a cab to take you all the way to Halikarnassus, and hope that Granny is home to lend you cab fare.

  Totally an adult.

  “I thought it was you!”

  Joanna could no longer ignore the persistent nostalgia at her elbow. A young woman in an enormous gray scarf was looking at her expectantly. Joanna tried to place her . . . she looked vaguely familiar . . .

  “Oh my gosh, you don’t remember me. Skyler Carrington?” Scarf Girl gave her a hopeful look.

  “Holy crap, Skyler? I thought you were like . . .” The last time Joanna had seen Skyler, Joanna was getting in big trouble for making her cry because she wouldn’t let her play with her very expensive guitar. Skyler had been what, five? Seven? She was ten years younger than Joanna, a fact that had caused Trina, Joanna’s best friend and Skyler’s big sister, a minor adolescent breakdown because they now knew where babies came from and she didn’t want to think about her parents doing that. Of course, once Skyler was born, Trina was ruthlessly protective of her sister, who was, frankly, a brat.

  Skyler had been three. Or five. Or whatever. That was a long time ago. She was probably much less bratty now. And wasn’t that why Joanna had avoided coming home? Because she knew people would only see her as she had been back then? Pot and black kettle and all that.

  Back then Joanna was a foul-mouthed, rebellious, broke teenager. Now she was . . . well, she wasn’t a teenager.

  God, how depressing. She’d left town to shak
e off the image everybody had of her, only to find that the reason they had that image was because it was who she was.

  Except that now she was old. And Skyler Carrington was as tall as she was.

  And Skyler Carrington was leaning forward to give Joanna a hug. “Trina’s not going to believe this! What are you doing here?”

  “Just, uh . . .” Skyler Carrington didn’t need to know the whole sad, sordid story, and it made Joanna feel a little better that news of her epic failure had not reached Halikarnassus yet. At least, not the airport two hours from Halikarnassus. “Just visiting.”

  “Granny! How is Granny?”

  “Good, fine.” She hoped, anyway. She hadn’t spoken to Granny in a few days, despite Granny’s best efforts. But Joanna knew she would just want to hear all the details of the big concert, as she called it, and Joanna wasn’t ready to go there yet. Or ever. Granny probably wouldn’t ask any questions when Joanna showed up unannounced on her doorstep, right?

  God, she wasn’t just a failure. She was a delusional failure.

  And Skyler was looking at her expectantly. “What are you doing here?” Joanna asked. “Love the scarf.”

  “Oh my God, I just finished a semester in France. I’m, like, so not used to speaking English! And everyone here is so . . . American!”

  “You’ll get that, what with being in America,” Joanna suggested.

  “I’m just having, like, culture shock. Literally everything in France is, like, so much better. I can’t even with this.” Skyler waved her hand around.

  Joanna couldn’t even with the baggage claim, either. She also couldn’t with this kid having adventures in France while Joanna had been working hard, making music, then throwing it all away in one stupid night. Skyler had probably done more in her teenage life than Joanna had in her . . . more than teenage life. They both talked big; this kid had actually done big things.