Ask Me Why

by Jodi Thomas, Marie Force, Shirley Jump, Virginia Kantra

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Western Romance; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections

Synopsis

New novellas in the Green Mountain, Harmony, Southern Belle Book Club, and Dare Island series!

From four contemporary romance stars, stories filled with first kisses, first dances, and happily-ever-afters…

You’ll Be Mine by Marie Force: Will Abbott and Cameron Murphy are finally ready to tie the knot—as long as family, friends and a love-struck moose don’t get in the way.

Midnight Bet by Jodi Thomas: When cousins Rick and Lizzy Matheson of Harmony, Texas, wind up on the wrong side of an attempted shooting, they know they’re in deep. Still, the biggest danger is losing their hearts—Rick to an old flame and Lizzy to an old friend she’d never noticed before…

Wrapped Around Your Finger by Shirley Jump: Maggie McBride is just one of the guys in the hard-knocks world of construction. Until she’s dared to ask Nick Patterson to a wedding, enticing her to knock down some walls—and risk falling in love.

Carolina Heart by Virginia Kantra: Determined to leave her wild past behind, Cynthie Lodge is forging a new life for herself and her daughters—one that’s man-free and drama-free. But when her high school crush shows up on Dare Island, he’s determined to make her break her rules…

Release date: July 7, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

CONTENTS

YOU’LL BE MINE

Marie Force

Along with their parents,

Patrick Murphy & Lincoln and Molly Abbott,

Cameron Murphy and Will Abbott

invite you to attend their wedding

on Saturday, October 24, at 2 P.M.

at their home in Butler, Vermont.

Reception to follow immediately.

ONE

TWO DAYS BEFORE her wedding to Will Abbott, Cameron Murphy shut off her laptop at exactly one forty-five in the afternoon and left it in the office she shared with her fiancé. She wouldn’t need the computer for two weeks. The next time she returned to the office, he’d be her husband and they’d be back from their honeymoon.

Filled with giddy excitement, Cameron turned off the office light and closed the door behind her. Will was already gone for the day, running last-minute wedding errands while she finished up at work.

Their office manager, Mary, stood up and came around her desk to give Cameron a hug. “Enjoy every minute of this special time,” she said, nearly reducing Cameron to tears.

“Thank you so much, Mary. I’ll see you tomorrow night, right?” She was one of a few special friends invited to join the family for the rehearsal dinner Will’s parents were throwing at the big red barn where Will and his siblings had been raised.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Cameron skipped down the stairs and into the store where she was greeted with more hugs and good wishes from the employees. While no one would mistake her little old nuptials for the royal wedding, it sort of had that feel to it. In Butler, Vermont, the Abbotts were royalty. With a family of ten children and businesses that employed numerous members of the local community, an Abbott wedding was big news.

She accepted a hug, a kiss, best wishes and a cider doughnut from Dottie, who ran the doughnut counter. After talking wedding plans with Dottie and the other ladies for a couple of minutes, Cameron took her doughnut to the store’s front porch to enjoy it in relative peace. With only two days to go, she was no longer worried about fitting into her dress, so she took a seat on one of the rockers and ate her treat in guilt-free heaven.

She’d no sooner begun to relax than who should appear on a leisurely stroll down Elm Street but her very own stalker, Fred the Moose. Cameron sank deeper into the rocker, hoping Fred wouldn’t notice her. In all her years of living in New York City and after scores of first dates, she’d never had an actual stalker—until she came to Vermont and slammed her MINI Cooper into Fred, the Butler town moose. Since then he’d taken such a keen interest in her that Will’s dad, Lincoln, had recently concluded that Fred had a crush on her.

Fantastic. A moose with a crush. With her dad due at two, and Patrick Murphy always on time, the last thing she needed was yet another mooseastrophy. Fortunately, Fred didn’t see her sitting on the porch and continued on his merry way, leaving Cameron to breathe easier about Fred but not about her dad’s impending arrival.

The thought of her billionaire businessman father in tiny Butler had provoked more nerves than anything else about the upcoming weekend. Marrying Will? No worries at all. Getting through the wedding? Who cared if it all went wrong? At the end of the day, she’d be married to Will. That was all that mattered. But bringing Patrick here to this place she now called home?

Cameron drew in a deep breath and blew it out. She hoped he wouldn’t do or say something to make her feel less at home here, because she loved everything about Butler and her life with Will in Vermont. She’d experienced mud season—along with a late-season blast of snow—spring, summer and now the glorious autumn, which was, without a doubt, her favorite season so far.

How could she adequately describe the russet glow of the trees, the vivid blue skies, the bright sunny days and the chilly autumn nights spent snuggled up with Will in front of the woodstove? The apples, pumpkins, chrysanthemums, corn husks tied to porch rails, hay bales and cider. She loved it all, but she especially loved the scent of wood smoke in the air.

Cameron couldn’t have asked for a better time of year to pitch a tent in their enormous yard and throw a great big party. All her favorite autumn touches would be incorporated into the wedding, and she couldn’t wait to see it all come together on Saturday. At Will’s suggestion, they’d hired a wedding planner to see to the myriad details because they were both so busy at work.

At first, Cameron had balked at the idea of hiring a stranger to plan the most important day of her life, but Regan had won her over at their first meeting and had quickly become essential to her. No way could Cameron have focused on the website she was building for the store and planned a wedding at the same time.

She glanced at her watch. Three minutes until two. Patrick would be here any second, probably in the town car he used to get around the city. Under no circumstances could she picture her dad driving himself six hours north to Vermont. Not when there were deals to be struck and money to be made. Time, he always said, was money.

He’d shocked the hell out of her when he told her he wanted to come up on Thursday so he could spend some time with her and Will before the madness began in earnest. Her dad would be sleeping in their loft tonight, and Will had already put her on notice that he would not have sex with her while her dad was in the house. She couldn’t wait to break his resolve.

The thought of how she planned to accomplish that had her in giggles that died on her lips at the familiar thump, thump, thump sound that suddenly invaded the peaceful afternoon.

No way. No freaking way. He did not!

If this was what she thought it was, she’d have no choice but to kill him. Warily, she got up from her chair and ventured down the stairs to look up at the sky just as her father’s big, black Sikorsky helicopter came swooping in on tiny Butler, bringing cars and people to a halt on Elm Street.

One woman let out an ear-piercing scream and dove for some nearby bushes.

Equal parts amused and aggravated, Cameron took off jogging toward the town common, the one space nearby where the bird could land unencumbered. As she went, she realized she should’ve expected him to make an entrance. Didn’t he always?

Nolan and Skeeter were outside the garage looking up when she went by.

“What the hell was that?” asked Nolan, who would be her brother-in-law after the wedding. He was married to Will’s sister Hannah, who’d become Cameron’s close friend since she had moved to Butler.

“Just my dad coming to town.”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Skeeter said. “Thought it was the end of the world.”

“Nope, just Patrick Murphy coming to what he considers the end of the earth. Gotta run. See you later.”

“Bye, Cam,” Nolan said.

“I assume that’s with you,” Lucas Abbott said, gesturing toward the town common with his thumb, as Cameron trotted past his woodworking barn.

“You’d be correct.”

“That thing is righteous. Does he give rides?”

“I’ll be sure to ask him.”

“Nice.”

Cameron sort of hated that everyone in town would know her pedigree after her father’s auspicious arrival. Maybe they already knew. In fact, they probably did. The Butler gossip grapevine was nothing short of astonishing. If the people in town knew who she was, or who her father was, no one made a thing of it. After this, they probably would, which saddened her. She loved her low-key, under-the-radar life in Butler and wouldn’t change a thing about it.

But she also loved her dad, and after thirty years as his daughter, she should certainly be accustomed to the grandiose way he did things. She got to the field just as he was emerging from the gigantic black bird with the gold PME lettering on the side: Patrick Murphy Enterprises. Those initials were as familiar to Cameron as her own because they’d always been part of her life.

Hoping to regain her breath and her composure, she came to a stop about twenty yards from the landing site and waited for him to come to her—by himself. That was interesting, as she’d expected his girlfriend-slash-housekeeper Lena to be with him.

With her hands on her hips, Cameron watched him exchange a few words with the pilot before shaking his hand, grabbing a suitcase and garment bag as well as his ever-present messenger bag, which he slung over his shoulder. Wait until he experienced Butler Wi-Fi, or the lack thereof.

He was tall with dark blond hair, piercing blue eyes and a smile on his handsome face, and as he walked to Cameron, her heart softened toward him, as it always did, no matter how outrageous he might be.

She took the garment bag from him and lifted her cheek to receive his kiss. “Always gotta make an entrance, don’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The bird, Dad. You scared the hell out of everyone. They thought we were being attacked.”

He looked completely baffled. “I told you I’d be here at two.”

“I was watching for a car, not a chopper.”

Recoiling from the very idea, he said, “I didn’t have six hours to sit in traffic on the Taconic. As it is, my ass is numb after ninety minutes in the chopper.”

“We do have airports in Vermont, you know.”

“We checked on that. Closest one that could take the Lear is in Burlington, which is more than two hours from here. Time—”

“Is money,” she said with a sigh. “I know.”

“Besides, you’re taking the Lear to Fiji, and for the record, I’d like to point out it wasn’t my idea to move you out to the bumfuck of nowhere.”

Cameron laughed at his colorful wording. “This is not the bumfuck of nowhere. This,” she said, with a dramatic sweep of her arm, “is the lovely, magnificent town of Butler, Vermont.”

“It’s as charming as I recall from the last time I was here for Linc’s wedding.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Me? Sarcastic?”

“I thought Lena was coming with you.”

“Yeah, about that . . . We’ve kind of cooled it.”

“Is she still working for you?” Cameron had spoken to her recently and hadn’t heard that she was no longer in Patrick’s employ.

“Oh, yeah. It’s all good.”

Cameron was certainly used to the way women came and went in her father’s life. She’d learned not to get attached to any of them. They didn’t stick around long enough to make it worth her while. “Well, it’s great to see you and to have you here. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but I think you’ll enjoy it.”

He stopped walking and turned to her. “You’re here. That’s all I need to enjoy myself, honey.”

Cameron let the garment bag flop over her arm so she could hug him. “Thank you so much for coming, Dad.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “Happy to be anywhere you are.”

*   *   *

THEY stashed Patrick’s bags in Cameron’s black SUV. “Where’d you get this beast?”

“Will insisted I trade the MINI for something built for Vermont winters. I don’t love it, but as I haven’t survived a winter here yet, I’ll take his word for it.”

“So this is the store, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Show me around.”

“You really want to see it?”

“I really do.”

She took Patrick’s hand, eager to introduce him to all her new friends. “Right this way.”

He followed her up the stairs to the porch and into the Green Mountain Country Store in all its glory.

“Wow.” Patrick took a look around and glanced up at the vintage bicycle fastened to one of the wooden beams above the store. “I feel like I just stepped into an episode of Little House on the Prairie.”

“Isn’t it amazing? I’ll never forget the first time I came in here. It was like I’d been transported or something.” She looked up at him as he took in the barrels full of peanuts and iced bottles of Coke and products from a bygone era, a simpler time, hoping he’d see the magic she saw every time she came through the doors to the store. “That’s dumb, right?”

“Not at all. It’s quite something. I’m wondering, though, how in the name of hell you build a website for a place like this.”

Cameron laughed. “Slowly and painstakingly.”

“I can’t wait to see how you’ve captured it.”

She tugged on his hand. “Come meet Dottie and have a cider doughnut.”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

“You have to! Your visit won’t be complete without one.” She led him back to the doughnut counter where Dottie was pulling a fresh batch from the oven. “Perfect timing. Dottie, this is my dad, Patrick, and he’s in bad need of a doughnut.”

Dottie wiped her hands on a towel before reaching across the counter to shake Patrick’s hand. “So nice to meet you, Patrick. We’re all very big fans of your daughter.”

“As am I.”

“Can I get one of those for him?”

“Of course! Another for you, sweetie?”

“Absolutely not! I’ve got a dress to fit into on Saturday, so don’t tempt me.” To Patrick, Cameron added, “Dottie is the devil when it comes to these doughnuts.”

“Why, thank you,” Dottie said with a proud smile as she handed over a piping-hot doughnut to Patrick.

Both women watched expectantly as he took a bite.

His blue eyes lit up. “Holy Moses, that’s good.”

“Right?” Cameron said, pleased by his obvious pleasure. “I limit myself to two a week, or I wouldn’t fit through the doors around here. Come on upstairs and check out the office. See you later, Dottie.”

“Bye, Cam. Nice to meet you, Patrick.”

“You, too.”

He followed her through the store, stopping to look at various items as they went.

“That’s Hannah’s jewelry,” Cameron said of the pieces that had stopped him for a closer look. “She’s Will’s older sister, twin to Hunter, who’s the company CFO.”

“She does beautiful work.”

“I know! I’m a huge fan. I have a couple of her bracelets. Helps to have friends in high places.”

“I’m glad you’re making friends here.”

They proceeded up the stairs to the offices on the second floor. “So many friends. And now Lucy’s here a lot, too, which makes it even better.”

“Back so soon?” Mary asked when they arrived in the reception area. “I didn’t think I’d see you here again for at least two weeks.”

“I wanted you to meet my dad, Patrick.”

Mary came around her desk to shake his hand. “So nice to meet Cameron’s dad. We adore her here.”

“So I’m hearing. Nice to meet you, too.”

“This is our office.” Cameron opened the door and turned on the lights so her dad could see her workspace.

“Our office?”

“Mine and Will’s.”

“You two share an office? They didn’t give you one of your own?”

“We tried,” Mary said. “Those kids are inseparable.”

Cameron blushed and shrugged. “What she said. Besides, if I’m in another office, how am I supposed to play footsie with him during the day?”

“Ugh,” Patrick said with a grunt of laughter. “TMI. I’d go crazy sharing office space with anyone, especially such a small one.”

“Not everyone can have an acre in the sky to call their own,” Cameron said disdainfully.

He tweaked her nose. “It’s not a full acre, and I do need my elbow room.”

“You’re a spoiled, pampered brat, and we all know it.”

Mary laughed at their sparring.

“Don’t listen to her, Mary,” Patrick said with a wink, which had Mary blushing to the roots of her brown hair. “We all know who the spoiled brat is here.”

“Yeah, and it’s not me.”

“I’m afraid I have to side with your daughter, Patrick. There’s nothing spoiled about her. She works harder than all of us put together.”

“Thank you, Mary. I’ll make sure Hunter hears about your fifty percent raise.”

They left Mary laughing as they went back downstairs.

“What’s her story?” Patrick asked.

“Who, Mary?”

“Yeah. She’s adorable.”

“Dad . . . Don’t. She’s a really nice person. Leave her alone. She wouldn’t stand a chance against your brand of charm.”

“Why can’t I have a little fun while I’m in town?”

Cameron stopped on the landing and turned to him. “She’s off-limits. I mean that.”

“Don’t be so touchy, Cam.” He kissed her cheek and proceeded ahead of her into the store.

She watched him go with a growing sense of unease. She’d be watching him this weekend and keeping him far, far away from Mary—and all the other single women in Butler.

TWO

AFTER A WINDSHIELD tour of Butler and the surrounding area, Cameron took her dad home to their cabin in the woods. “I want to make sure you know it’s kind of rustic,” she said, biting her lip nervously. “You might find it primitive compared to what you’re used to.”

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t always a billionaire with a Park Avenue penthouse. You forget I grew up in a six-room ranch house in New Jersey with a single bathroom shared by five people. I can do rustic.”

“It’s just . . . I know you’ll be tempted, but don’t make fun of the cabin. Will loves that place, and he built it himself.”

“Not sure what you take me for, sweetheart, but I’m not about to poke fun at my future son-in-law’s home.”

“Okay,” Cameron said on a deep sigh of relief.

“I wish you’d relax. I’ve got no plans to rain on your parade. I know you’re happy here, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you, believe it or not.”

Cameron tried to do as he requested. What did she care, really, if he hated everything about her new home? It wouldn’t change how she felt about it. Except . . . she wanted him to understand why she’d chosen to live here. His approval had always mattered more than it should have. That was just a fact of her life.

“Right here is where I first met Fred the Moose,” she said, pointing to the spot on the road where her life had changed forever.

“He’s the one who crushed the MINI, right?”

“Yep, only he’d tell you the MINI crushed him, not the other way around.”

“And you have conversations regularly with this moose?”

“More often than I’d like to. Lincoln says he has a crush on me.”

Patrick laughed. “Is that right? Well, I hope to meet this fellow while I’m here so I can gauge his intentions toward my daughter.”

“I hope none of us lay eyes on him this weekend,” Cameron said hopefully. By now, she knew better than to expect a day completely free of Fred. He seemed to turn up with alarming regularity wherever she was. The thought of Fred crashing the wedding was one that Cameron refused to entertain.

“And here we are at home sweet home.” Cameron took the right turn onto the dirt road that also served as their driveway. “When I first came here last spring, it was mud season and this road was full of potholes.” Why was she telling him that? What did he care?

“It’s nice and smooth now. Does Will have to fix it every year?”

“Every year.”

“Sure is pretty out here.”

“We think so, too.”

“But remote. Seriously, Cam. What do you do when you need milk?”

“We wait until the morning and get it when we’re in town.”

Patrick shuddered dramatically. “I’d go crazy.”

“I thought I would, too, but it’s amazing how quickly I adapted to life without everything at the tip of my fingers. Being way out here is an adventure, and I love it.”

“Will you still love it when you have babies and need diapers in the midst of a blizzard?”

Cameron laughed. Leave it to him to come up with a worst-case scenario. “I’ll send my mountain man out to get them for me. A blizzard is nothing new to him.”

“Better him than me.”

“Definitely better him than you. As I recall, you’ve never changed a diaper in your life.”

“Touché,” he said, chuckling.

They drove around the final bend in the road before the cabin came into view with a huge white tent off to the left side of the house. The autumn foliage was now past peak but had retained a breathtakingly beautiful golden hue that would perfectly match the dark gold silk dresses her bridesmaids would wear on Saturday.

As she brought her car to a halt outside the cabin, she was relieved to park next to Will’s big truck. She was glad he was here to help her welcome her dad to their home. At the sound of Cameron’s car arriving, their yellow Labs, Tanner and Trevor, came running around the cabin to greet her.

“There’re my boys,” she said to Patrick. “Come meet them.” She got out of the SUV and was immediately accosted by the dogs, who were now hers as much as they were Will’s. “Hi, guys! How was your day?” Cameron gave them both an equal amount of love and attention, which was richly rewarded with wet dog kisses that she absolutely adored.

“Boys, this is your grandpa, Patrick. Dad, meet your granddogs, Trevor and Tanner. Trevor has the black collar and Tanner’s is red. That’s how we tell them apart. And Tanner has this sweet white patch on the top of his head.”

“Nice to meet you, boys.”

“Sit.” Both rear ends dropped at Cameron’s command. “Now shake a paw and say hello properly.” Two left paws were extended to Patrick, who played along, laughing as he shook each one.

“They’re adorable.”

“I know, right?”

“They only do that for her,” Will said as he joined them, extending his hand to Patrick.

Her dad surprised them both when he bypassed Will’s hand to hug him. “Good to see you again.”

“You, too.” Will seemed pleased by Patrick’s warm greeting. “Welcome to our humble home.”

“It’s beautiful.” Patrick took a long look around at the towering evergreens and Butler Mountain in the distance. “I can see why you love it here.”

“It’s our own little slice of heaven.” Cameron leaned into Will’s one-armed embrace, closing her eyes when he kissed her temple. She opened her eyes to find her dad watching them with a smile on his face. “Come on in and see the rest.”

“I’ll get your bags,” Will said.

“Thank you.” Patrick offered his arm to Cameron. “We need to practice for Saturday. I’ve heard I’m supposed to give you away or some such nonsense?”

Cameron laughed. “It’s not nonsense, Dad. It’s tradition.”

“What if I give you away and then decide I want you back? Does this arrangement come with any sort of return policy?”

“Absolutely not,” Will said from behind them.

“I had a feeling he would say that,” Patrick replied glumly. “A girl owns your heart and soul for thirty years, and then you have to give her to another guy? It’s wrong, I tell you. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Cameron and Will laughed at his running commentary as they led him into the tiny cabin they called home. Will had lit the woodstove, so the space was warm and cozy and immaculate, thanks to the hours they’d spent the night before cleaning in preparation for her dad’s arrival.

She’d been a nervous wreck about making everything perfect, working until well past midnight when Will declared that it was as good as it was going to get. He’d picked her up and carried her to bed over her vociferous objections.

“This is great, you guys,” Patrick said as he looked around at their home. “I love it.”

Will took Patrick’s bag up the ladder to the loft.

“That’s your penthouse for the evening,” Cameron said, pointing.

“Looks good to me.”

Cameron went to him and hugged him. “Thanks for being such a good sport about everything.”

He returned her embrace. “I have no idea what you were expecting.”

She looked up at him and rolled her eyes dramatically, making him laugh. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Molly and Lincoln are coming for dinner.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” Patrick said of his Yale University classmate. It had been Lincoln’s idea to hire his old friend’s daughter to build a website for the store, which is what had brought her to Butler in the first place.

“Dinner is already in the oven,” Will said of the lasagna they’d made themselves.

“Smells amazing,” Patrick said.

“How about a beer?” Will asked.

“I’d never say no to that.”

While they waited for Will’s parents to arrive, they sat on the sofa with beers and the crackers and cheese Cameron put out to hold them over until dinner.

“So talk to me about the wedding plans,” Patrick said.

Cameron glanced at Will, who gestured for her to have at it. “Everything starts tomorrow afternoon with a rehearsal here followed by the rehearsal dinner at Lincoln and Molly’s.”

“Who’s coming to that?”

“The wedding party and a few friends.”

“Tell me again who’s in the wedding party. I know Lucy is your maid of honor.”

“Right, the others are Emma, Will’s sisters Hannah, Ella and Charley, and Simone is the flower girl.”

“What about you?” Patrick asked Will.

“I asked Colton to be my best man since we’re practically marrying sisters,” he said, referring to Lucy, Cameron’s best friend from the city and now Colton’s fiancée. “My other five brothers will be groomsmen along with Troy.”

“That’s a big wedding party,” Patrick said.

“I know,” Cameron said, “but we couldn’t narrow it down, so we decided to have everyone we wanted.” She shrugged. “This is what happens when you marry into a family of ten kids. Everything is big!”

“Ten kids.” Patrick shook his head. “I still can’t believe my old college buddy has ten kids.”

“Neither can he,” Will said. “They joke that by the time they figured out what was causing all these kids to arrive, they had ten of them.”

“I can hear him saying that,” Patrick said, chuckling.

“He also likes to talk about the long, cold winter in Vermont and the lack of things to do,” Cameron added.

“Does that mean you’re going to have ten kids, too?” Patrick asked.

“Oh, hell no!”

“We’ve agreed to stop at eight,” Will said.

“He lies.”

Patrick cringed at the thought. “I sure hope so.”

“I’ve agreed to two, and then we’ll see,” Cameron