One Summer
One Summer
Karen Robards
Random House LLC (2011)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General
Fictionttt Romancettt Generalttt
He was pure, unadulterated trouble. Johnny Harris is home again, his too-tight jeans and damn-your-eyes belligerence honed to perfection by a ten-year stretch in federal prison for murder. Now he's out on parole and ready for the job Rachel Grant has promised to help him begin a new life. Unlike the rest of the town, Rachel has always believed in her former student's innocence. But one thing has changed...The sullenly handsome boy she remembers is still sullen, still handsome...but no longer a boy. And now the small Kentucky town is alive with gossip and whispers of a scandal, as friendship turns to passion and Rachel abandons a lifetime of propriety in the ex-con's arms. Then the killer strikes again. All evidence points to Johnny Harris, but Rachel knows he is innocent. And she knows she is next...as a shattering truth is uncovered and dark passions explode in the relentless summer heat.From the Paperback edition.
“DANCE WITH ME, RACHEL. COME ON, IT’LL
BE FUN, AND THEN I’LL LET YOU GO.
PROMISE.”
His eyes gleamed down at her, teasing her, luring her. His hand hard and warm about hers, Johnny pulled her out into the cavernous nightclub and with her in tow, headed toward the dance floor.
The flashing overhead light changed to a glittering ball that swept the room with tiny red and purple pulse points.
“Ain’t it romantic?” The entertainer sighed into his microphone, then struck up the opening bars of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.”
“ ‘Be my—be my little baby,’ ” the singer crooned.
Rachel had never danced like this in her life. Johnny shimmied with her, turned with her, dipped her back and pulled her up into his arms again. All the while the friction of his leg moving between hers stole away the last vestiges of her good sense.
After a single shocked attempt to pull away, Rachel, mesmerized, didn’t even try to resist him. He was taking her with him to heaven or hell—Rachel didn’t know which—and as the explosive combination of song and man and her own longing combined to strip her of her reason she didn’t much care.…
The critics love:
KAREN ROBARDS
“Splendid … among the best!”
—Affaire de Coeur
and her wonderful best-selling novels
NOBODY’S ANGEL
“A WONDERFULLY WARM AND WITTY TALE … Karen Robards has taken some of our most treasured fantasies and blended them with a Cinderella love story that will have you laughing and crying.”
—
Romantic Times
“VERY ENJOYABLE … just the kind of romance I like to read.”
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Louisville Courier-Journal
“A saucy Cinderella story … sure to please readers who relish sexy period romps.”
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Publishers Weekly
“BEAUTIFULLY TOLD … the dialogue is crisp, the secondary characters bright and interesting, and the plot intriguing enough to keep you turning page after page.”
—Inside Romance
THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN
“Karen Robards demonstrates an entire new side of her writing personality in this humorous, tender, tempestuous, and heartwarming romance.”
—Romantic Times
“A FUNNY, POIGNANT, FAST READ which kept me turning the pages—I finished it in one sitting! Excellent in every way!”
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Rendezvous
Dell books by Karen Robards
GHOST MOON
THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
SEA FIRE
ISLAND FLAME
THE SENATOR’S WIFE
FORBIDDEN LOVE
HEARTBREAKER
HUNTER’S MOON
WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT
MAGGY’S CHILD
ONE SUMMER
NOBODY’S ANGEL
THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1993 by Karen Robards
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.
The trademark Dell
®
is registered in the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80137-1
v3.1
This book is dedicated to my sister Lee, who once again inspired me. And, as always, it is also dedicated with much love to the men in my life—my husband, Doug, and my sons, Peter and Chris.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Epilogue
1
E
ver since that nightmarish dawn, Rachel Grant had not been able to abide the scent of summersweet. It was ironic that at this of all possible moments the smell seemed to be practically smothering her.
She stood on the sweltering asphalt in front of the Greyhound bus station, waiting to welcome Johnny Harris home. Johnny Harris, the bad boy to whom she had tried to teach high school English all those years ago. Johnny Harris, the swaggering son of the local no-good, whom the whole town had expected to turn out just like his dad but who had in fact turned out to be far worse.
Johnny Harris, convicted of murdering and accused of raping a seventeen-year-old high school cheerleader eleven years before.
Today, with her help, Johnny Harris was coming home.
The sound of the bus engine reached her before the vehicle itself came into view. Rachel tensed, glancing nervously around to see who might be watching. Bob Gibson, the ticket agent, was nothing more than a blur behind the plate-glass window that fronted the converted gas station that served Tylerville as a bus depot. Jeff Skaggs, who’d graduated from high school this past May and now worked at the 7-Eleven, was dropping coins into the Coke machine at the side of the building. Just beyond his parked
pickup truck she discovered the summersweet bush with its shiny bright green leaves and spikes of white flowers.
Identifying a very real source for the smell made Rachel feel a little better. Still, the coincidence was eerie. Marybeth Edwards’s bloody corpse had been found beside a summersweet bush eleven years ago almost to the day in the midst of a heat wave much like the one Tylerville was presently experiencing. A shower of blossoms, apparently dislodged in her struggle with her assailant, had covered the girl’s body. The sweet scent of the flowers had almost masked the more pungent odor of blood. Then as now, it had been late August, and as hot as the inside of a pizza oven. Rachel, on her way to Tylerville High to get her classroom in order for the coming year, had been one of the first on the scene. The horror of the sight had never left her.
Neither had her certainty that Johnny Harris, who’d been notoriously sweet on the pretty blonde, had not killed her. He had been seeing Marybeth on the sly, against her parents’ orders, and when she was found dead with his semen inside her body, the case had seemed open and shut. He’d been arrested within a week of the murder, tried, and subsequently convicted of murder, on the theory that Marybeth had told him that night that she meant to stop seeing him. The rape charge was dismissed. There had been too many people, like Rachel, who knew exactly what kind of relationship Marybeth had had with Johnny. She’d been sure that the boy she knew could not have committed so heinous a crime. She’d always been convinced that the only crime of which he was guilty was simply being Johnny Harris.
Now she only prayed she was right.
With a swoosh of tires and a squeal of brakes, the bus pulled into the station and stopped. The door opened. Rachel watched the empty spot, her fingers tightening around the strap of her summer purse. The heels of her
neat white pumps sank into the asphalt as her body tensed in anticipation.
Then there he was, in the doorway. Johnny Harris. He wore scuffed brown cowboy boots and beat-up jeans and a white cotton T-shirt. His shoulders were wide enough to stretch the knit shirt taut across them. His biceps bulged with muscle, and his skin was surprisingly tan. He was thin. No, that wasn’t the right word—
lean
was the one she wanted. Lean and hard and tough as leather. His hair was the same color, coal black, as it had always been, though it was longer than he used to wear it, almost touching his shoulders, and wavy. His face was the same—she would have recognized him anywhere once she looked into it, although several days’ worth of stubble blurred the lines of his jaw and chin. The sullenly handsome boy she remembered was still sullen, still handsome, but no longer a boy. He had matured into a dangerous-looking man.
It occurred to her with a sense of shock that Johnny Harris was now almost thirty years old. If she had ever known anything about him, she no longer did.
He had spent the last ten years of his life in federal prison.
He stepped down onto the asphalt, glanced around. Rachel, who had been standing off to one side, gave herself a mental shake and started forward. Her heels caught in the tiny craters they had created in the pavement, and she stumbled. When she recovered her balance, his eyes were on her.