Small Town Secrets

by Alys Murray

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romance; Clean & Wholesome Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Stepping off the Greyhound bus, I look at the town glinting in the distance beyond a crystal-clear mountain lake. The lines I've memorized from the ad are on repeat in my mind: accommodation and employment provided to women willing to relocate to a historic town with a shortage of women.When Virginia first sees the ad, her breath catches. Female? Check. Small-town seclusion needed? Check. Currently without a home or a job? Check and check. She dabs an extra layer of concealer over the bruise on her cheek, bundles up her belongings, and her secrets, and escapes her life in Savannah.But arriving at Fortune Springs, Colorado, Virginia realizes that her plan to lay low and heal her tattered heart won't stand up against the prying questions from Calla, the brusque older woman who gives her a place to live. She's on the brink of leaving when Calla's twelve-year-old granddaughter arrives at the house, abandoned and alone. Virginia recognizes the feeling, and she realizes she can't be another adult to let the girl down. Then there's the handsome, aloof firefighter Owen, whose company is giving her a whole 'nother reason to stay...But when she returns one day from a walk amongst the wildflowers to find a face from her past waiting for her, Virginia realizes that a secret she's kept has exposed the people around her to a new world of danger. Can she find the strength to fight for the life, and love, she's found in Fortune Springs?An emotional, gripping story full of family drama. Fans of Carolyn Brown, Robyn Carr and Debbie Macomber will be hooked.Readers love Alys Murray:"Swept me away in its warmth. I couldn't stay away until I finished... feels and fun, family and love." Goodreads reviewer"Fabulous. Will remain with you long after you've reached the last page... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED." Brook Cottage Books Blog"The warmth of the story enveloped my soul." Goodreads reviewer"Full of lovely characters, witty dialogue and wonderful settings, the kind of place where you'd like to live." Goodreads reviewerThe first book featuring the Anderson family, The Magnolia Sisters, reached #40 in the US top 100. Alys' previous title, The Christmas Company, was turned into a Hallmark movieFor fans of Jenny Hale, Debbie Macomber and Carolyn Brown-

Release date: March 24, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

I wasn’t sure when, exactly, the road had lulled me to sleep. All I knew was that one minute, I was staring out of the window of the Greyhound bus, and the next, the collision of tires with a pothole jolted me awake. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I checked my watch, nervous that I’d missed my stop.

No, it was only 12:15. Unless the bus was running ahead of schedule—something I couldn’t believe, considering how late we’d been at our earlier stops—we’d be pulling in to Fortune Springs in just a few minutes.

I couldn’t wait to stand up. After almost three days on a bus across this great nation, I was sick and tired of amber waves of grain and purple-mountains majesty. I wanted a hot meal, air conditioning that worked properly, and a chair that didn’t make my rear end ache. I wanted something to look at besides the road disappearing beside me. I wanted to feel something other than unanswered anticipation.

That was the worst part, for me. The waiting. Knowing where you’re going is a whole lot different than actually getting there, a fact I learned more and more with each passing mile. I knew where I was headed, obviously. Some small town in the middle of nowhere Colorado called Fortune Springs. Surrounded on all sides by equally twee-named places like Edwards and Beaver Creek, the online brochure attached to my Settlement Fund application promised that it was the height of beauty, of tranquility, of rustic decadence.

The pictures I’d seen online delivered on those counts, but that wasn’t why the knots in the pit of my stomach tightened with every minute it took to get there. Because what I really needed, more than a comfortable chair and more than rustic decadence, was a fresh start.

That, though, wasn’t going to be easy. As I’d discovered days ago when I’d first seen a repeat of a newscast about it, the Fortune Springs Settlement Initiative was a scholarship or bursary fund of sorts, where the town—which apparently had a female population deficit—planned to select a few young women every year to come to their town, live in one of their houses for free, and get paid to (hopefully) stick around and start businesses or families.

The deadline for applications was a full month ago. But I hadn’t seen the news story or the website’s promises—full room and board for a year, a job or a small business loan and a living stipend—until it was too late. The minute I’d seen it, though, I printed out the application and filled it out, then recklessly caught the first bus heading west. I could only hope that, since this was their pilot year, they might have some space for me.

After all, who besides someone like me was going to come out here to the middle of nowhere in search of a new life? Only the truly desperate. Maybe no one was as desperate as me. Maybe no one else had showed up.

I had to hold on to that hope. It was my only chance. A long shot, really, more than a chance, but I had to take it. Or rather, I had to try. I wasn’t going back to Savannah, Georgia, and I wasn’t going back to him.

Virginia Bessel, get yourself together.

A shiver shook my shoulders, a miracle considering the sweltering heat of the bus. Thankfully, the driver’s voice over the crackling loudspeaker pulled me away from cold, dark thoughts.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our next stop will be Fortune Springs. Please collect all your belongings. Next stop—Fortune Springs.”

Most of my fellow travelers had gotten off the bus at the bustling Denver station, which left the aisles clear for me to shoulder my backpack and make my way to the front. I didn’t need to pull anything down from the overhead racks, nor would I need to collect any belongings from the lower storage compartments once the bus crawled to a stop.

Everything I owned, I now carried on my back.

If any of the remaining passengers noticed this—or my teenage runaway getup of a hooded sweatshirt, ripped jeans, and broken-sole tennis shoes—none of them mentioned it. No one even looked up.

As the bus pulled to the curb, I kept my head low and considered thanking the bus driver. He looked tired. Run-down. He looked almost as bad as I felt. Thanking him would be the right thing to do, the kind of thing I would have done back in Savannah. But it was also the kind of needlessly polite gesture that was out of place in a crowd like this, which might have left an impression. The last thing I wanted was to leave an impression, to be identifiable in any way.

All of this—the cross-country road trip, the new life in a small town, the fact that I’d tossed my cell phone in a garbage can in Tupelo—was about disappearing. Not about being seen. I bit my tongue and waited for the bus to come to a complete stop before descending the stairs, taking the first steps into my new life.

Whatever I’d been expecting that new life to look like, what greeted me when I reached solid ground was not it. For one thing, the Fortune Springs stop was not in the middle of town, like the station in Denver, and not even on a main street, like several of the other small towns we’d swung through on our great journey across the country. Nope. This bus stop found me on the side of the highway.

I gripped the one good handle of my backpack as I scanned the horizon. No one in sight. Nothing but the surrounding scenery, the sight of which slightly improved my mood despite myself. Snow-peaked mountains and endless sky. Rich, clay soil and shockingly green grass. And just there, in the distance, I could just see the beginnings of a small town down below. The walk would be at least a mile. Maybe more.

Over my shoulder, I glanced at the retreating bus. Nothing for it now. I just had to get walking. At least I’d packed light.

Setting off, one foot in front of the other, my mind returned into familiar, defensive patterns. I had always tried to be one of those “look on the bright side” kind of people because, in my experience, if you didn’t at least try to see the good in everything, all of the bad would swallow you whole. And at the very least, if seeing the good didn’t solve your problems, at least it would distract you for a few minutes.

With every step, I tried to come up with something new, a positive on which to focus my energy. Out here, the air was fresh and clear, as if the Rocky Mountains had scrubbed the very oxygen particles themselves clean. That was a good thing. And my shoes. Old Converse sneakers were good for long walks. And the walk itself. All downhill. That was pretty good news, wasn’t it?

Sure, I was walking towards an uncertain future where I might be quickly turned away. There was no guarantee that the days-long journey and all the risks I’d taken to get here would be worth it. But for now, for the moment, I was alone with my thoughts beneath a cool, clear, blue sky, walking towards a precious small town that looked picturesque even from a distance.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this independent. The last time I’d had such a say in my own future. That, alone, was enough to keep my footsteps light and my nerves from eating me alive.

About an hour and a serious misjudgment about the length of the walk later, I still wasn’t regretting my decision to come to this middle of nowhere, hole in the wall town. I was just questioning the wisdom of not doing my research regarding where the bus would drop me once I’d gotten here. By the time I properly broached the first streets of the little neighborhoods on the outskirts of town, my shoes closed too tight around my swollen feet, and the cool spring air collected in droplets at my crown.

I was seriously regretting my bus-side wish of an opportunity to stretch my legs. Next time, I’d need to be more careful what I wished for.

Still, not all the aches screaming out from various corners of my body could distract me from the quaint charm of Fortune Springs, Colorado. As I approached from the east, the distant, endless sky was brought to an abrupt halt by the interruption of towering, tree-dense mountains. Their snowcaps drew my eyes heavenward, then I followed the defined ski runs back down towards the town nestled at their base.

Almost in a trance, I moved forward now without even considering the pain in my shoes or the shortness of my own breath.

I’d never seen this much sky. This much nature. Not in my whole life. With that one look, I knew I loved it—the jewel-blue of the sky, the rich greens and browns of the mountains and the trees, the way the town seemed to have grown out of the earth like some kind of naturally occurring thing.

No. I stopped myself. That was a dangerous prospect, deciding I liked it here. Especially considering I wasn’t going to stay. My plan had an expiration date. Despite the Settlement Initiative’s hope that people who got the bursary would stay in town after their required year, I wasn’t going to even wait until the ink dried on the final check they gave me. I would stay here one year. Long enough to fulfill my promise, get my money, and get out.

I wasn’t the home-and-family type. I didn’t want anyone pinning me down, didn’t want to feel that I had to belong to anyone or anything. I’d done that before. Let myself be owned by another person. And the results had driven me here. I wasn’t keen on repeating the experience again. Not now. Not ever.

But if the views of the town from the outside had been enough to make me get all poetic about the transcendental effects of the natural world, then the town itself, as I got deeper and deeper into its labyrinthine web of streets, was almost enough to get me to wax Hallmark poetic about the virtues of small-town life. Almost. As I walked the streets, trying to follow the natural flow of the houses towards some kind of main street—every small town had a main street, didn’t they?—several folks assessed me with skeptical eyes, but waved and said “good morning” all the same. I did my best to let my own reply (a wave and a small smile) walk the line between polite and inconspicuous. I didn’t want to make any enemies on my first few minutes in town, but I didn’t want to make much of an impression, either.

Besides the friendly, if surprised, townsfolk though, it was the architecture of the town, the atmosphere of the whole place that got under my skin and stayed there. On the outskirts of Fortune Springs, the houses lined the streets with modern, rustic elegance, but the closer I got to the heart of town, the older those buildings grew. Sure, it had two whole traffic lights and wired electricity and everything else you’d expect from a modern town, but the buildings were constructed in that classic, Western settlement style. Some dark, timber structures soaked up all the light of the street, while some of the brightly colored shops and hotspots reflected it, nearly blinding in the afternoon sunshine.

It was all so beautiful. So simple. So painfully quaint and so obvious that the entire town had been built by love and determination. It was part real-life fairy tale and part Hollywood Old West backlot. The muscle buried in the left side of my chest tweaked painfully as I tried to school her enthusiasm back into cool indifference.

This place was a means to an end. It couldn’t be anything more. I couldn’t let it be.

At the center of town, my eyes fell down to the printed-out pamphlet about the Settlement Initiative I still held in my hand. I glanced in every direction, searching for the white-painted building in the photographs—the supposed head of the operation. The streets around me bustled with afternoon activity as people wandered from shop to shop and held their animated conversations, but no matter where I turned, I couldn’t see any house that looked even remotely like the one in the brochure.

Or anyone who might be willing to help me.

The last thing I wanted to do was barge up to someone mid-conversation and demand directions. But with no phone, no map, and very little time left on my aching feet before they completely collapsed, I decided it was a risk I’d have to take.

At the junction of two streets—one called State Street and one called Commerce—I stood for a long moment, scanning the passing crowds for someone to approach. I needed someone sensible. Someone easy to talk to and easy to get away from. Someone who probably wouldn’t remember me once this conversation concluded.

That’s when I saw an older woman—70s, silver-haired and thick-spectacled—loading up groceries into the front seat of her car, which was parked in one of the painted spots just down the street. Bingo. Striding forward, I pushed the hood from my head and did my best to sound polite and harmless.

“Um, excuse me—?”

But I had been too quiet, too timid. Without turning, the woman slid into the front seat of her car, and at that exact moment, a man turned away from her trunk, apparently thinning I’d been addressing him.

My breath caught, and not just from the usual panic-mode my body flew into whenever a man gave me his full and undivided attention. This wasn’t just a man. This was a monster of a man. Tall and broad and strong in ways I didn’t know existed outside the pages of magazines, he towered over even my relatively tall frame, casting a long shadow over the sidewalk that only got longer with every casual step he took towards me. Sandy blond hair swooped across his forehead, and I had the strange urge to reach up and push it away from his face so I could get a better look at his blue-green sea glass eyes.

Of course, I would never do that. Not just because of the fear that had been my body’s natural response, but because of his body. I tried not to think too much about it, but it was impossible to entirely ignore, really. The too-tight Fortune Springs Fire Department T-shirt wrapped around his muscles to great effect, and I had to wonder if that really was the largest T-shirt they sold, or if he preferred to show off the muscles that made up his towering form.

Something inside of me shuddered at the sight of him. There didn’t seem to be a hint of danger lurking in the strong muscles of his forearms or the slightly crooked set of his lips, but I didn’t exactly trust my own judgment when it came to things like that. The last one hadn’t seemed dangerous either.

“Yeah, can I help you?”

My throat tightened. This wasn’t the kind of attention I needed right now. From someone so direct and dangerous-looking. “Oh, um—sorry. I was just wondering if you know where the Harbin House is?”

I turned the pamphlet in my hands so he could see the picture. Partly in case he needed a visual reference, and partly to re-establish the distance between us and keep him away from me. The expression he had been wearing, an easygoing look of indifference, hardened instantly, and when his blue eyes returned to mine, the glass in them had been replaced by steel.

“The Bride House?”

Was that a note of disappointment I heard in his voice? Not that it mattered anyway. He’d gotten the houses mixed up. I tried to correct him, gently as I could.

“I’m actually looking for something called the Harbin House—”

“I know what you said.”

Maybe so, but that didn’t answer my question.

“Are you, uh, new in town? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you around here before.”

There were unspoken gaps in his question, like he was hoping for an answer he knew he wasn’t going to get. I shrugged and returned the pamphlet to my pocket.

“I’m new. Just going to turn in my application.”

A snort. I flinched at the sound. “Calla’ll be glad to see you, then.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying something I’d regret. My spine went rod-straight.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Let’s just say that there aren’t too many people who would willingly chain themselves to this town. Or the people in it. You want my advice?”

There was something casual and easy about the gentle rhythms of his body as they moved into my space up on the sidewalk. Like he owned the town, like he knew every inch of it better than I ever could. Like I was an interloper, and he was the king sizing up a new subject.

Involuntarily, muscles twitched in my throat and in my legs. Flight response. Not because anything in this man was, on the surface, particularly threatening, but because the last few years of my life had taught me to question my own judgments, my own instincts. I counted to three, drinking in even breaths with every count, and squared my shoulders.

“I don’t know. Do I?”

“I’d say you should get out of here as fast as you can.”

It didn’t sound like a threat. It sounded like a resigned warning. One that I wasn’t going to heed. I needed this. I needed Fortune Springs. No one was going to run me out of town, not even this handsome, intimidating man in the too-tight fireman’s T-shirt.

“Are you trying to scare me off?” His silence was answer enough. I decided to lie. “Just so you know, I’m pretty hard to scare off.”

For a moment, he appraised me. “I can see that about you. You’re going to be trouble around here, aren’t you?”

“No. I just plan to live here. That’s all.”

“Right. You living here is the trouble.”

I hated that cryptic remark. And I hated that it sounded almost sexy from his lips. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought that about a man. Time to get out of here. Gripping my backpack somehow tighter, I approached the question again.

“So, where can I find the Harbin House?”

He pointed west, towards the mountains. I just hadn’t gone far enough. “Down that street. It’s the one that looks like a big wedding cake. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks. For the directions and for your… hospitality.”

Before he could reply—or do anything in reply—I turned on my heel and followed his instructions at the fastest pace I could possibly manage without breaking out into a full-on run.

I wasn’t going to let some slightly arrogant firefighter in a too-tight T-shirt ruin my mood. Or let hope slip through my fingers. I wasn’t going to let him sway me. Not just because I needed this chance, but because I wasn’t going to let him win.

I was so tired of letting men win. For once, I was going to claim my own victory. Small as it might have been.

So, when I finally found the picture from the brochure, sitting in the middle of that very real-life street, I lifted my chin and put on my best smile. The place was exactly how Tight T-shirt Man had described it. . .