Almost Home Read online

  Table of Contents

  Whale Island

  Queen of Hearts

  The Honeymoon House

  The Marrying Kind

  Praise for the novels of Debbie Macomber!

  “Macomber deftly handles the multiple storylines and emotional terrain of families, while the predictably happy ending is very genuine.”

  Publishers Weekly on Summer on Blossom Street

  “Excellent characterization will keep readers anticipating the next visit to Cedar Cove.”

  Booklist on 311 Pelican Court

  Praise for the novels of Cathy Lamb!

  “Charming.”

  Publishers Weekly on The Last Time I Was Me

  “Julia’s Chocolates is wise, tender, and very funny. In Julia Bennett, Cathy Lamb has created a deeply wonderful character, brave and true. I loved this beguiling novel about love, friendship and the enchantment of really good chocolate.”

  Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

  Praise for Judy Duarte!

  “Mulberry Park is tender and touching…this novel will stay with you long after you have read the last page.”

  Dorothy Garlock, New York Times bestselling author

  “Judy Duarte brings together a cast of lost and lonely characters and deftly weaves their lives into a story that hooked me from a little girl’s aching honest Dear God request until the very last page. A wonderful heartwarming read!”

  Jill Marie Landis, USA Today bestelling author

  Praise for Mary Carter!

  “The sitcom-caliber humor hits its mark, and the trove of mini-mysteries will keep readers guessing.”

  Publishers Weekly on Accidentally Engaged

  “Carter shows she has a knack for creating odd but likable characters, and readers are sure to take notice.”

  Booklist on Accidentally Engaged

  Books by Cathy Lamb

  JULIA’S CHOCOLATES

  THE LAST TIME I WAS ME

  HENRY’S SISTERS

  Books by Judy Duarte

  MULBERRY PARK

  ENTERTAINING ANGELS

  Books by Mary Carter

  SHE’LL TAKE IT

  ACCIDENTALLY ENGAGED

  SUNNYSIDE BLUES

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Almost Home

  DEBBIE MACOMBER

  CATHY LAMB

  JUDY DUARTE

  MARY CARTER

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Contents

  Whale Island

  Cathy Lamb

  Queen of Hearts

  Judy Duarte

  The Honeymoon House

  Mary Carter

  The Marrying Kind

  Debbie Macomber

  Whale Island

  Cathy Lamb

  To my way-cool sister,

  Dr. Karen Straight,

  and her special friend,

  Matt Farwell,

  of the Kindness Ranch,

  a home for former laboratory animals.

  Hartville, Wyoming

  Chapter One

  I could not believe I was going to climb up on Stephen’s roof in a black burglar-type outfit so I could spy on him through his skylight.

  “I have gone over the edge,” I muttered, adjusting my black leather knee-high boots. “I’m completely whacked. Brain-fried. Crazed.”

  “Our mission,” Brenda whispered to me before we scurried onto the roof, the stars our only witnesses to this sheer stupidity, “begins right now. One for all, all for one, and don’t leave a wily woman behind!” She shimmied her hips, then stuck both thumbs up, her black gloves cutting through the cool night.

  My sister Christie and I smothered our laughter.

  “Never give up, ladies!” Christie ordered as she pulled a black-knit hat over her blond hair and down her face, her green eyes twinkling through the eyeholes. “Never surrender! Never accept defeat!”

  “Women unite!” I said as we high-fived each other.

  Brenda fiddled with her night-vision goggles then grabbed the gutter and shimmied her way up the roof. Her agility was impressive, as she’d had a number of strawberry daiquiris.

  I yanked my black-knit hat over my face, pulled the eye and mouth holes into the appropriate places, tucked in my black curls, and followed her, trying hard not to laugh. If I laughed while I was climbing I might wet my pants.

  “I’m a spy!” Brenda whispered as she climbed. She hummed the James Bond theme song. She has a full head of curling reddish hair, now hidden by her full-face black-knit hat, a huge mouth, huge eyes, and a biggish nose. Men went wild for her. “A sexy spy!”

  My laughter broke free, and I had to cross my legs. Don’t wet your pants! Brenda was wearing black leather pants and a black motorcycle jacket, like me. My sister was wearing a black cowboy hat over the face-hiding knit hat, which was so hilarious, and a black coat that wouldn’t close over her stomach because she is gigantically pregnant with twins. Normally she is the size of Tinkerbell. Now she is the size of a small bull.

  “Chalese is not a sexy spy,” I said about my sorry self as I grabbed the gutter to hoist myself up. “Chalese has been dumped. Damn that snaky Stephen.” I hadn’t even liked Stephen. But I didn’t appreciate being dumped. Nothing is worse than being dumped by someone you dated because he was there, a breathing male, and you desperately hoped he was more than he was but you had to quit lying to yourself in the face of overwhelming evidence of his jerkhood.

  A voice inside my blurry head said, Since you believe him to be a jerk, why are you on his roof in the middle of the night dressed like a burglar?

  Why? Because the three of us, me, Brenda, and Christie, together, are lethal. Daring. Truly ridiculous. And a little drunk. Although Christie is stone-cold sober. She never drinks when she’s pregnant.

  But, really, there was no harm in seeing whom Stephen was dating, even if I had to do it via a skylight. I didn’t care, not at all, but knowledge is power. “Knowledge is a daiquiri,” I intoned as I scrambled up, my black gloves offering a little traction. “Strawberry daiquiri, lemon daiquiri, peach daiquiri…”

  Stephen’s roof was flattish, so our climb to the skylight was not too perilous, even in my fuzzy state. I hummed the Rocky fight song, stopping to pump the cool night with my fists, like Rocky did in the movies.

  “What’s going on, Chalese?” my sister hissed from the ground below, her voice coming in from the walkie-talkie on my hip.

  I giggled and held my walkie-talkie to my mouth. “I’m not Chalese! I’m a spy! A secret agent! I am on a serious mission!”

  Why are you talking about a mission? Why aren’t you home reading a romance novel?

  Brenda burped. She says it’s her best quality. That is patently not true. Her best quality is writing screenplays for major motion pictures that make women alternately laugh and cry like banshees. She’s living with me until she smashes through her writing block.

  Christie said, “Copy that, Ms. Bond. All right, 007, carry on.”

  I carefully—as carefully as I could with two strawberry daiquiris under my belt, well, three, actually, but who’s counting—scuttled over to Brenda, who was peering through Stephen’s giant skylight, quiet as a tiny drunken mouse dressed all in black with night-vision goggles.

  I could see the butcher-block island in the middle of the kitchen. “Mission fuzzy,” I whispered.

  Brenda put her black-gloved hands over the skylight to angle a better view. “Command center, I report zero activity.”

  I leaned on the skylight a smidgen, balancing most of my weight on the roof. I could smell Brenda’s perfume,
sultry and earthy.

  I gasped.

  Brenda said, “Holy Tomoly.”

  It was Alanna. Alanna Post.

  I had known Alanna the Man-eater for years. I avoided her at all costs. She was perfect. Blondish hair, highlighted just so, curling under right at her shoulders. Heavy, but annoyingly perfect, makeup. Thin. Oh, I hated how thin she was! Probably a size six. Designer clothes. And always, always, a condescending sneer or raised eyebrow to make it clear that she thought I was a chubby spider beneath her feet. An awkward orangutan with a poofy butt.

  And there she was in Snaky Stephen’s house, the doctor that I was going to dump anyhow! I leaned over the skylight, scooching toward the center, then hissed, “It’s the female praying mantis.”

  Why are you spying on Stephen on his roof? What about that romance novel? How about getting down?

  I gurgled as Alanna the Man-eater slipped off her dress. Underneath, she was wearing a red negligee, black fishnet tights, and black heels.

  This I could not have! Stephen had dumped me a month ago. I hadn’t even slept with him, and already he was getting in the flesh with Alanna the Man-eater?

  “She has deplorable taste!” Brenda whispered. “If I had an outfit like that on, I would have added a halo and tail.”

  “That patronizing witch,” I muttered. “Did I ever tell you Stephen has a flabby bottom?”

  We leaned over for better viewing angles.

  “Those boobs!” Brenda said, dismayed. “They have to be fake. No one has boobs that upright, do they?”

  “No one should have boobs that bouncy-ball perfect, even if they’re fake. It isn’t fair. It’s against the sisterhood of women, the Society of Decent Females.”

  Brenda and I scooched a bit more onto the skylight. Alanna had stretched out in front of the fire on the fake thick white fur. If I was wearing that red getup my stomach would be slouching over like a bag of red flour, with the wrinkles etched through my thighs doing little for my sex appeal.

  “I wanna be up there, I wanna be up there,” my sister whined from the ground. “Why don’t I ever get to do any of the fun stuff with you two?”

  “That’s easy,” I snapped. “It’s because you’re always pregnant, Fertile Myrtle!” Christie had three kids at home with her husband, Cary, the nicest man on the planet.

  “Well…well…well!” she sputtered. “Poop!”

  I sucked in my breath as Stephen with the flabby bottom stepped into view. He paused when he saw Alanna the Man-eater. I could see his shock. I pushed my feet hard into the roof so I wouldn’t fall off of it.

  I’m thirty-five, and I’m climbing on roofs to spy on my ex-boyfriend. What’s wrong with this picture?

  “I have got to use this in my next movie. Do you mind, Chalese?” Brenda asked, pushing her night-vision goggles on top of her head.

  “If I said I did, would you not use it?”

  “Silly lady. I’d use it anyhow.” She winked at me.

  “Brenda,” I snapped, “how do you think I feel seeing myself in your movies? All the dumb things we’ve done? Everything stupid I’ve said in my life since we were kids streaming out of some actress’s mouth?”

  “Think of it as being famous without the fame. You’re never mobbed by paparazzi, are you? There’s something to be said for that, sweetie. And you don’t need to hire bodyguards.”

  I grunted and tugged at the eyeholes in my hat. Brenda and I wrote wild, crazy, thrilling, romantic stories, sometimes with talking animals, when we were kids. She went on to write screenplays, and I went on to be a children’s book writer and illustrator. Who knew we’d end up clinging to a roof?

  We moved onto the skylight a smidgen more when the Man-eater stood up.

  “Can’t he see the piranha beneath the makeup?” I asked.

  “Nope. He’s a man. All he can see is the negligee and bra cup.”

  “Men are beasts.” I growled for effect, slashing the air with my claws. Brenda growled back at me, gnashed her teeth.

  It was at that beastly second that I heard a crack beneath my hands, then another one.

  My face froze in terror.

  “Oh no. Move slowly,” Brenda panted. “Slowly.”

  I felt the crack beneath my knees. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. This couldn’t be happening. The skylight was not breaking, was it? What was I doing on top of a skylight anyhow?

  I watched the alarm in Brenda’s eyes grow to free-flowing fright as another crack ripped through the night. My mouth went dry as stone, and my body started to shake.

  “Back up, Chalese!”

  I tried, I did, but panic turned my bones to liquid.

  Another crack. As Brenda and I locked mortified gazes, the skylight shattered completely, the noise deafening, and we went smashing through it, our fall broken by Snaky Stephen’s butcher-block counter below.

  Brenda swore. I screamed. Then she screamed. I swore.

  We landed hard, on our knees, but I did not hear any bones crack, any heads splitting open, any limbs disengaging. A piece of glass conked me on the head and splintered.

  I groaned. Brenda moaned.

  I heard the Man-eater screeching and Stephen yelling “What the hell? What the hell?”

  Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize us with our black-knit hats on? Our black leather biker jackets? Our leather pants?

  The Man-eater was still at it with her high-pitched, earsplitting howls.

  I turned to Brenda and whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Ya think, Sherlock?” she whispered back.

  We scrambled off the counter, averting our covered faces, hoping we could slink right out of that house. I’d pay Mervin Tunnel to come in and clean up the mess tomorrow. He’d keep his mouth shut; he owed me a favor anyhow.

  We had almost limped our way to the kitchen door, glass trailing in our wake, when I heard Stephen say, incredulously, “Chalese, is that you?”

  Crashing through a skylight like a drunken angel was not the worst part of my week.

  Stepping on the scale and noting that, yes, all by myself, I had bravely packed on an extra fifteen pounds was not the worst, either. Nor were the two zits on my cheek, as the zits will undoubtedly complement my hot flashes.

  Resisting pressure from Gina Martinez, my friend the pet communicator, who was pestering me to stage a “pet rescue” of a horse she was convinced was “depressed and anxious,” was not on my list for Most Terrible Part of the Week.

  Knowing that my next children’s book was already late and I was nowhere close to being done with it had my nerves hyperventilating, but it had not made the list.

  Also not on the list was Brenda’s dance on top of a bar in town singing the Pretty Woman theme song. That I went up there with her does not need to be mentioned, except it was one more humiliating thing in my life that I have done, especially since I cannot sing.

  The worst part of my week was when the reporter arrived.

  It was the morning after the skylight incident. I limped out of my car after collapsing on the sofa at Christie’s for the night, and Aiden Bridger was there, at my yellow house, on my white front porch, one of my slobbery dogs, Mrs. Zebra, in his lap. I was dressed all in black, with a truly pounding hangover and scrapes on my face that made it appear I’d been attacked by a temperamental rat. My long, black, curling hair resembled a dead pelt on my head.

  He had that gorgeous, roughed-up, been-around-the-block appearance. He was super tall, a human skyscraper with a lanky build and longish thick brown curls, and I knew that he was gonna be a problem, and not simply because my body about lost all its breath as I took him in. He was…all man. A manly man. A manly muscled man.

  “Hello. You must be Chalese.” He stood up, and Mrs. Zebra rolled off his lap and whined. She has no loyalty. If I was ever robbed, she would slobber on the robber. “I’m Aiden Bridger from the Washington Review.”

  I knew who he was. Oh boy, did I know who he was.

  With one look at him, I knew I w
as toast, too.

  Why? Not because he was cursedly, dangerously hot, but because that he-man reporter could blow my quiet, private life to Kingdom Come. Everyone would know who I was now, and who I was in my other life, and the scandal would be revived again, the shame, the humiliation, and I’d have to deal with all the other bubbling, sordid, sad memories and secrets.

  That, definitely, was the worst part of my week.

  And, somehow, the best.

  Chapter Two

  “I’ve told you I don’t want to talk to you.”

  I grimaced as I limped up the porch steps and tried to glare at him without salivating. Why did he have to be so yummy-rugged and full of such glorious testosterone? That wasn’t fair.

  “Yes, I know.” For a few long seconds Aiden stared right at me. His eyes were greenish, and he had long lusty eyelashes. The corners of his mouth tilted up, then back down again.

  “What happened? Were you in an accident?”

  “No.”

  “Did you fall?”

  Pause. “Not really.” I glanced away from those bright eyes and reminded myself that men are cagey, deceptive beasts and hairy vermin.

  “Did someone hurt you?”

  I did not miss the outrage in his tone, the beginning of incredulous fury. My heart didn’t miss it, either, but I told my heart to shut up.

  “No, no man would ever hit me, because they know I’d flatten them into a kidney-smeared mass of flesh. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He exhaled, his hands on the waistband of his jeans. “Can I help you? Are you hurt in other places, too?”

  Can he help me? Geez. That one little question stopped me right up. How often had a man said “Can I help you?” to me and really meant it? Not often.