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“If I can figure out a way to free up some of your time, will you promise to spend a day with me?”
“Sure, and buy me a winning lottery ticket while you’re at it,” Jodie replied.
Jeff ignored her sarcasm and went back to her initial agreement. “You promise? One full day?”
“My first free day is at least four years away, if you can wait that long—”
“I’m betting within the next two weeks,” he said. And he was serious.
She shook her head in disbelief. “Not unless you’re a miracle worker.”
“I’m a marine. We’re trained to do the impossible. I’ll fulfill my end of the bargain. Be prepared to keep yours.”
Okay, so he’d pledged Jodie the impossible, and he hadn’t a clue how he’d deliver on that promise.
But as he’d said, he was a marine. He’d think of something—anything—to spend some time alone with her.
Dear Reader,
In the words of an ancient Chinese saying, we live in interesting times. Due to tumultuous world events, we appreciate more than ever security, solace, acceptance and love as bulwarks against the troubles of the day. In my series A PLACE TO CALL HOME I’ve created a small town in upstate South Carolina where love and acceptance, along with only the occasional mayhem, abound. For the residents of Pleasant Valley, friends are family, and family is everything.
In One Good Man, book two of the series, Jeff Davidson, the town’s resident bad boy, returns home after serving with the marines. Military service has turned his life around, and he hopes to do the same for delinquent teenage boys by converting his farm into a rehabilitation center. But Jodie Nathan, a single mother with a hell-on-wheels fourteen-year-old daughter, finds Jeff’s plans her worst nightmare—and Jeff the man of her dreams.
I hope you’ll enjoy watching the sparks fly in Jeff and Jodie’s story, and, as we say in the South, y’all come back and visit Pleasant Valley again in book three, Spring in the Valley, in April.
Happy reading!
One Good Man
Charlotte Douglas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The major passions of Charlotte Douglas’s life are her husband—her high school sweetheart to whom she’s been married for over three decades—and writing compelling stories. A national bestselling author, she enjoys filling her books with love of home and family, special places and happy endings. With their two cairn terriers, she and her husband live most of the year on Florida’s central west coast, but spend the warmer months at their North Carolina mountaintop retreat.
No matter what time of year, readers can reach her at [email protected]. She’s always delighted to hear from them.
Contents
Chapter One
Jeff Davidson eased deeper into the shadows of the gift shop. Thanks to his Special Operations experience, the former Marine shifted his six-foot-two, one-hundred-eighty pounds with undetectable stealth. But his military training offered no tactics to deal with the domestic firefight raging a few feet away.
With a stillness usually reserved for covert insertions into enemy territory, he peered through a narrow slit between the handmade quilts, rustic birdhouses and woven willow baskets that covered the shop’s display shelves.
On the other side of the merchandise in the seating area of the café, a slender teenager with a cascade of straight, platinum hair yelled at her mother, her words exploding like a barrage from the muzzle of an M-16. “You are so not with it. Everyone I hang with has her navel pierced.”
Jeff grimaced in silent disapproval. The kid should have her butt kicked, using that whiny, know-it-all tone toward her mom. Not that the girl’s behavior was his business. He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop. He’d come to Mountain Crafts and Café to talk business with Jodie Nathan, the owner, after her restaurant closed. Lingering until the staff left, he’d browsed the shelves of the gift section until she was alone.
But before he could make his presence known, fourteen-year-old Brittany had clattered down the stairs from their apartment over the store and confronted her mother.
“Your friends’ navels are their mothers’ concern, not mine.” The struggle for calm was evident in Jodie’s firm words, and the tired slump of her pretty shoulders suggested she’d waged this battle too many times. “You are my daughter,