Good Neighbors, page 1
Sheila Roberts
MORE THAN WORDS
Good Neighbors
More Than Words: Bestselling authors & Real-life heroines
Each year, the Harlequin More Than Words award is given to three women who have worked hard to change people’s lives for the better. Inspired by their accomplishments, three bestselling authors have written stories to honor these real-life heroines.
In Good Neighbors, Meredith Lange hopes that she and her son can start over in Icicle Falls, Washington. Her family’s cabin is the only thing she’s got left after settling her late husband’s gambling debts. But on the first night in her new home, Jed Banks shows up, claiming to be the cabin’s rightful owner. Then her son, Leo, starts getting into trouble at school.
Jed offers to help Leo adjust to life in Icicle Falls. His charitable organization, Youth Power, pairs up troubled kids with a responsible teen mentor. But how can Meredith accept Jed’s help? He may be a devoted advocate for young people and a very attractive man, but he’s also trying to take away her home...
Look for all three ebooks inspired by real-life heroines: Good Neighbors by Sheila Roberts, Just Joe by Carla Cassidy and Light This Candle by Cindy Dees. Visit the Harlequin More Than Words website at www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com or your favorite ebook retailer to download these free novellas today.
Dear Reader,
For many years Harlequin has been a leader in supporting and promoting women’s charitable efforts. Through Harlequin More Than Words, each year we celebrate three women who make extraordinary differences in the lives of others, and Harlequin donates $15,000 each to their chosen causes.
We are proud to highlight the current Harlequin More Than Words recipients with the help of some of the biggest names in women’s fiction, Harlequin authors, who have created fictional stories inspired by these women and the charities they support. Within the following pages you will find Good Neighbors, a touching story written by Sheila Roberts—one of three ebooks available at www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com. Be sure to look for Carla Cassidy’s Just Joe, and Cindy Dees’s Light This Candle—also available online. A book with three additional stories, written by Sherryl Woods, Christina Skye and Pamela Morsi, can be found on the shelves of your favorite bookstore in More Than Words, Where Dreams Begin. All six of these stories are beautiful tributes to the Harlequin More Than Words recipients and we hope they will ignite the heroine in you.
For more information on how you can get involved, please visit our website at www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com.
Together we can make a difference!
Sincerely,
Donna Hayes
Publisher and CEO
Harlequin
Youth Assisting Youth
Name: Sally Spencer
Hometown: North York, Ontario
Recipient’s Related Charity: Youth Assisting Youth (YAY)
Website: http://www.yay.org
How Sally inspires others:
As a social worker, Sally Spencer had grown frustrated with the ineffective and vicious cycle of dealing with street kids. She would dust the kids off and send them home only to find them back on the street within six months, usually in worse condition than before. Sally wanted a way to stop that revolving door.
Now, as the CEO of Youth Assisting Youth, Sally is the driving force of an organization whose goal is to prevent kids from ending up on the streets by working with them before things go bad. To do this, YAY matches at-risk and newcomer children aged six to fifteen with trained mentors aged sixteen to twenty-nine, mentors they can relate to and who will act as positive role models in their turbulent lives.
“The power of mentoring makes an incredible difference to the lives of these kids,” Sally says. “I’ve seen, firsthand, children who are in trouble with the law and in danger of not finishing school have their lives turned around within six months of being mentored by another young person. They start to enjoy going to school, associating with more positive friends and making better life choices.”
With a staff of fifteen, Sally is hands-on with every facet of YAY, from interviewing the families and assessing the needs of the kids to recruiting and training the volunteers on a daily basis.
Under Sally’s leadership, the organization has grown to offer a greater range of therapeutic programs and recreational activities while servicing a wider range of kids and areas. With enough dollars to reach more communities and to be as creative and dynamic as she envisions, Sally knows “the sky’s the limit for YAY.”
Good Neighbors
Sheila Roberts
About the Author
Sheila Roberts, a married mother of three, lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. Her novels have appeared in Readers Digest Condensed books and have been published in several languages, and her perennial holiday favorite, On Strike for Christmas, was made into a movie for the Lifetime Movie Network. When she’s not writing songs, hanging out with her girlfriends or hitting the dance floor with her husband, she can be found writing about those things dear to women’s hearts: family, friends, and chocolate.
You can visit Sheila at her website (www.sheilasplace.com). You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.
Dedication
For Sally Spencer
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
Meredith Lange picked up the picture of her husband, George, and her, and examined it in the August sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. To pack or not to pack, that was the question. She decided not to and tossed it in the garbage. It would be silly to keep a picture of her Prince Charming who’d turned out to be Prince Poop.
How perfect her life had seemed when George Lange first swooped into it. Just goes to show, you can’t trust perfection. Not in a man, anyway.
George had it all. Good looks, charm and a great sense of humor, and she fell hard for him. In addition to being a great guy, he’d come with an added bonus, several actually—a house on Lake Washington (primo Seattle real estate), a boat, a truck, a Mercedes and a fat bank account. At least that was what she’d thought. For a single mom who’d worked hard to put herself through nursing school, this was like discovering El Dorado.
Fool’s gold, more like. For all his glitzy facade, George had a tiny problem, one that involved racehorses, casinos, lotto, you name it. Ironic, considering the fact that he earned his living as a financial advisor.
She’d discovered his addiction when their savings did a nosedive. When he decided he wanted to sell the boat. And the truck. Oh, and put the house on the market. They really didn’t need this much house for the three of them.
“Tell that to Leo,” she’d argued. Her son, twelve at the time, had loved water-skiing behind that boat, loved having his friends over to watch movies in the media room in the house that was suddenly too much for them. And she’d loved seeing her son enjoy a lifestyle grander than either she or his maternal grandparents had ever been able to give him.
Most of all, though, Leo had loved having a dad. He’d been three when she and George got serious, about the age when it was getting hard to explain why he didn’t have a daddy like his friends, not even a father to stay with on weekends or holidays. “Your daddy was a bum, little more than a sperm donor,” was nothing Meredith had been ready to tell him. Just as now she wasn’t ready to tell him that his stepdaddy had been an out-of-control gambler and every penny they’d made from the sale of the house had gone to pay off debts, and that was why they were moving to their vacation cabin on the edge of Icicle Falls. It was the only place they could afford.
She was paying the price for nobly protecting her husband’s memory. With the move imminent, Leo was barely talking to her. As if it was her fault George had medicated his pain with bourbon and wrapped his (still unsold) Mercedes around a tree. As if it was her fault they had to downsize. Dealing with the bank and their various creditors, on top of the loss of her husband, had made the last year a nightmare. Now she was dealing with her son’s anger over the loss of their house and their upcoming move, and that was almost as bad.
“Children always blame the parent they’re with. If you were divorced, it would be your fault,” her mother had said.
“But we weren’t divorced,” she’d retorted. Broke, yes, but not divorced. They’d have gone for counseling, worked things out somehow. Angry as she’d been at George, she’d still loved him. She still did now, even though there were times she wished she could exhume his body simply so she could slap him. Damn the man. And how was it her fault he was dead?
She sighed and fished the picture out of the waste can and wrapped it in newspaper.
Leo appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Can I go over to David’s house?”
Mark it on the calendar. Today her son was speaking to her. Never mind that this was only because he had to.
He wasn’t the happy, loving boy he’d been a year ago, but she couldn’t blame him . His world had been tipped upside down and he, like her, was simply trying to hang on.
There he stood in her doorway. He reminded her of a young lion with a mane of tawny hair and light brown eyes. He was gangly, all legs and arms, still needing to grow into his feet. The other day his voice had cracked. How long before he shot up, filled out and then moved out? Hadn’t he been a baby just yesterday?
“Sure. Be back by dinner, though. Okay?”
“They said I can stay for dinner,” he said, and hurried off down the hall before she could dare suggest that staying for dinner was up for discussion.
“Have fun,” she called after him, to show she was a good sport. She fell onto the bed and sighed. Good sportsmanship was overrated.
Her phone rang. It was her mother’s cell phone. Mom, a girl’s best friend.
“I got some more boxes for you,” her mother said. “Should I bring them over?”
“Thanks. I’ve almost filled the ones we got last week.” Surprising how many boxes she was filling, considering how much she’d lost.
“I’ll drop them by on my way home with the groceries,” Mom said.
“Or I can come over there and pick them up.” Maybe if she played her cards right, she’d get invited to stay for dinner, too. “Leo’s gone to his friend David’s and won’t be home until this evening.”
“Well, then you should eat with us,” Mom said. “Your father’s making his infamous fish sandwiches.”
Which meant her mother had made coleslaw and there would be Pepsi in the fridge. “Sounds good. I need a break.” Meredith needed a break from more than packing. She needed a break from life. But since that wasn’t an option, she’d settle for a breather and a fish sandwich.
They’d just finished dinner when Leo called, asking if he could stay at his friend’s house a a little longer. A rousing game of backyard badminton was about to begin with David and his brother and father.
She’d be taking him away from his friends soon enough. “Sure,” she said. “I’m at Grammy’s. I’ll get you on my way home.” Not that he needed to be driven home. David only lived two blocks away. But she wanted to pick up her son, wanted to remind herself by that one small act that he still needed her, that they were still a team.
“I can walk, Mom.”
She could tell by his tone of voice that she’d insulted him. The sun wouldn’t set until well after he was safely home. She gave up on the team-spirit thing. “Okay. You can stay until eight, but then I want you home.” She could hear his friends in the background, calling for him to hurry up and get off the phone.
“Okay. Bye,” he said, little-boy enthusiasm back in his voice.
Meredith ended the call with a sigh. “I hate that I’m taking him away from his friends.”
“He’ll make new ones,” said her mother.
“Kids are resilient,” her father added. “He’ll be okay.”
“We’re more worried about you,” Mom put in.
“Oh, you know me. I always get back up again,” Meredith said with an easy shrug. Except that this time she didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay down. On the couch, with a box of Sweet Dreams chocolates. “And thanks to you two, I have a place where I can do that.” Both the getting back up and the chocolate eating, since Icicle Falls offered the bonus of its very own chocolate factory.
“It’s a wonder he didn’t gamble away the cabin,” her father muttered.
“With what the house was worth, he didn’t need to,” Meredith said.
But that would have been the worst. The cabin in the woods at the edge of the town nestled in the Cascades wasn’t the most glamorous place on the planet but as far as Meredith was concerned, it was the coolest. A two-level A-frame, it had a bedroom downstairs and a big loft upstairs lined with four single beds where she and her girlfriends used to giggle until they fell asleep or her father hollered for them to please be quiet. And now it was perfect for boy sleepovers. The whole place was paneled with cedar and decorated with paintings bought at garage sales. The living room came with furniture left over from the sixties and a funky old woodstove. The kitchen was small but serviceable and you couldn’t beat the view out the window—pine and fir trees, wild huckleberry bushes and wildflowers, and often a deer wandering through. Beyond that was Icicle Creek. It was kid heaven, the perfect place to play capture the flag or build a fort. The deck at the back held an ancient barbecue grill and a picnic table, and she could remember eating many a hot dog there with family friends, cousins, whoever her parents felt needed a getaway. In winter her family would stay up at the cabin to enjoy cross-country skiing, then sip hot cocoa while a fire crackled in the woodstove. The place was rich with memories and she loved it.
Leo loved it, too. But Leo didn’t love the idea of living there full-time. In fact, he hated the idea. And as far as he was concerned, it was all her fault that he was having to leave his friends.
“I still wish you’d stay here. You could move in with us until you get back on your feet,” Mom said.
That was tempting, but no. That would be going backward. She’d lived with her parents in their modest Ballard home when Leo was a baby, when she was going to school to get her nursing degree. It was home and it was comfortable, just like her parents’ company. But she was too old to move in with Mommy and Daddy. “I need to make a new start, and this job will give me a chance to do that.”
Maybe she wouldn’t get rich working for Dr. Sharp at the Icicle Falls Clinic, but she’d have a normal day job and she’d be able to spend more time with Leo. That was priceless.
“Well, if it doesn’t work out, remember you can come home,” her mother said.
“I’ll be home.”
Mom smiled. “Yes, that place was a second home to you for many years. To all of us.”
“Are you sorry you gave it up?” Meredith asked. It had been a generous gift. Her parents weren’t all that old, hovering near the end of their sixties. Sometimes she wondered why they’d parted with the place so early.
Her father shook his head. “Not at all. We know the new owner. She’ll let us come visit.”
“And I hope you will. I’ll even let you have your old bedroom back.”
“Then that’s enough for us,” said her father. “Anyway, we thought it would be nicer to give you your inheritance sooner rather than later so you could enjoy it with your family.” Thislast remark left him frowning as if he’d eaten a rotten nut.
Yes, well, the family thing hadn’t quite worked out.
She’d always assumed she’d wind up like her parents, logging in a lifetime of happy marriage years, growing gray and stoop shouldered together with her husband. She thought she’d finally gotten it right when she married George. But somehow, her parents had failed to pass on the happy-marriage gene. Oh, well. Instead of a happy homemaker she’d be a merry widow. And she and Leo would be just fine.
She reached across the kitchen table and laid a hand on her dad’s arm. “My family is going to enjoy it. And thank God we have it.”
“I hate to think of you up there all by yourself,” her mother said. “I wish you’d at least let us help you move this weekend.”
“There’s not that much to help with. I’ve haven’t got a lot to move. And I won’t be all by myself. I’ll have a whole town full of people to keep me company. You’ve both been up there enough to know it’s a very friendly place. So don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”
* * *
“I’ll be okay,” she repeated to herself when she finally settled into the old brass bed in what was now her room in her new mountain home’ after a very long weekend of trekking over the mountains and unpacking the leftovers from her previous life.
So what if a mouse had run over her foot when she was unpacking food in the kitchen? So what if Leo had been sullen when she took him to Herman’s Hamburgers for dinner? So what if they didn’t have cable? So what? So what? So what? It was only their first day in their new home. They’d get used to it. Everything would be fine.
