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ORCHARD AT THE EDGE OF TOWN
Apple Valley #3
Shirlee McCoy
Releasing July 28th, 2015
Kensington: Zebra
Apricot Sunshine Devereux-Miller needs to stay lost. Her eccentric aunt's home in Apple Valley is the perfect place to forget her cheating ex-fiancé and get her no-longer-perfect life back under control. Plus, it couldn't hurt to fix up the house and turn its neglected orchard into a thriving business. And if Apricot can keep Deputy Sheriff Simon Baylor's two lively young daughters out of mischief, maybe she can ignore that he’s downright irresistible—and everything she never dreamed she'd find ...
Simon isn't looking to have his heart broken again. He already has his hands full raising his girls. And lately he's thinking way too much about Apricot's take-charge energy and unwitting knack for stirring up trouble. He can't see a single way they could ever be right for each other. Unless they can take a crazy chance on trusting their hearts—and risking the courage to finally find their way home.
MY THOUGHTS:
This is the first book that I have read from this author, but it sure won't be the last. This book was just so good. Amazing characters,romance, and a splash of drama. Not to mention that all the characters names were truly unique. After finding out that her fiance cheated on her Apricot Sunshine Devereux-Miller decides to escape to her Aunt Rose's orchard. Three miles from the orchard her truck breaks down and she doesn't have a cell phone, so she gets out her bike and rides the rest of the way. Once she arrives she's held hostage by a neighbor and the police are called. Simon has twin daughters that he's raising on his own since his wife died. Simon is attracted to April right off the bat, but after having been in a relationship for 5 years, April swears off men. She fights the attraction and wanting to be with Simon. Hard. This wasn't a book with a rushed ending. There was no marriage and no kid talk. There was also no sex scenes, which I found I really enjoyed. This book was so charming that I didn't even realize there were no sex scenes till I finished. A good clean read and well worth the money spent.
EXCERPT:
She
unlocked it and pulled it off the rack, the old 1940s Schwinn as sturdy as any
modern bike, its oversized wicker basket roomy enough to carry groceries from
the farmers’ market she loved to visit on Saturdays.
Used to love to visit.
Now she planned to spend Saturdays
closed away in Rose’s house until she decided what she wanted to do with the
rest of her life. The life that she’d planned to spend with Lionel.
She climbed onto the bike, bunching
the dress up around her thighs, the strap of the dainty little blue purse
Lionel’s mother had loaned her tossed over her shoulder. The key to Rose’s
house was inside. Otherwise she might have been tempted to throw the purse into
the roadside ditch and leave it there.
If only she could do the same with
the past thirty six hours.
Actually, she’d like to do it with
the past five years. Toss them into a ditch, let them be covered by dirt and
time until the only reminder that they’d ever been there was a tiny little lump
of nothing.
Seeing as how she couldn’t do that,
she started pedaling, her legs pumping, the poufy skirt shredding as it caught
under the wheels and in the spokes of the old bike.
All that money down the drain.
All that time.
All that commitment and trust and
faith that things would work out.
Gone!
Just like that.
Hot tears burned behind her eyes,
but she’d be darned if she was going to let them fall. Lionel didn’t deserve
them. What he deserved was to be forgotten, and that was exactly what Apricot
intended to do. She also planned to down a quarter-pound burger and an entire
batch of homemade fries. Two things that she hadn’t eaten since Lionel had
moved in three years ago. He believed in organic whole foods. Raw.
Apparently he did not believe in
fidelity.
“Better to learn that before the
vows than after,” she told herself. A magpie screamed a response. Rose would
have said it was a sign of trouble. Apricot didn’t believe in signs and
portents. She believed in hard work and integrity. She believed in doing her
best and in treating people with respect. She believed in keeping the peace and
compromising.
“And look where that got you,” she
muttered.
This time, the magpie didn’t reply.
She pedaled like mad for ten
minutes, then coasted down a small hill, her lungs burning, her ribs chafed
from the built-in corset. She couldn’t wait to tear the dress off, toss it in
the burn pile, and set a match to it. Couldn’t wait to send her family over to
the condo to kick Lionel’s butt out, either.
Although, knowing them, they’d
already been there, and he’d already been kicked to the curb.
She still wasn’t going back.
Not for a while.
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Shirlee McCoy spent her childhood
making up stories and acting them out with her sister. It wasn’t long before
she discovered Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, her mother’s gothic romances . . .
and became an ardent fan of romantic suspense. She still enjoys losing herself in
a good book. And she still loves making up stories. Shirlee and her husband
live in Washington and have five children.
Readers can visit her website at www.shirleemccoy.com.
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