Hometown Reunion

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened sixteen years ago. I really don’t.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, looked down at his boots and then up at her again. “We’ll talk about other things, then.”

  “What things?”

  “Anything. How you adopted your little girl.” He said that gently. She almost smiled. But then he added in a low growl, “Or why the hell you married Nick.”

  As if he had any right to judge her choices. He’d left. What was it to him?

  Folding her arms across her middle to keep from slamming her door in his face, she sternly reminded herself that it made zero sense to be so mad at him right now. They were nothing to each other. A memory. A love that wasn’t strong enough, a love that didn’t last.

  So why did her heart throb painfully every time she saw him?

  Dear Reader,

  Most of us never forget our first crush, our first kiss...our first love. Rancher Jobeth Bravo never has.

  Right after high school, Jobeth’s first love, Hunter Bartley, left their hometown of Medicine Creek, Wyoming, to make a better life for himself. He wanted Jo to go with him, but she loved Medicine Creek and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  Years later, she is long over him—or at least, that’s what she told herself when her dad asked her if she would be okay with Hunter staying at the family ranch for a while. Turns out his successful home-improvement show is filming several episodes in town.

  Jobeth reassured her dad that having her high school boyfriend living fifty feet from her front door would be no problem at all for her. What else could she say? But now he’s right there on the ranch with her. And Jobeth is having to face the fact that she’s not nearly as over Hunter Bartley as she thought.

  Some of you may remember way back to the first Bravo family story, The Nine-Month Marriage, which came out in the late nineties. Jobeth was six years old then. She appeared in several Bravo books after that and I’ve had a lot of requests for her story. I kept meaning to get around to giving her the happy-ever-after she always deserved. At last, here it is.

  And whether you’re a fan of the Bravo family or a newcomer to the series, I hope this story sweeps you away and keeps you turning pages from the first chapter to the last.

  Happy reading, everyone,

  Christine

  Hometown Reunion

  Christine Rimmer

  Christine Rimmer came to her profession the long way around. She tried everything from acting to teaching to telephone sales. Now she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly. She insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine lives with her family in Oregon. Visit her at christinerimmer.com.

  Books by Christine Rimmer

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Bravo Family Ties

  Hometown Reunion

  Wild Rose Sisters

  The Father of Her Sons

  First Comes Baby…

  The Christmas Cottage

  The Bravos of Valentine Bay

  Switched at Birth

  A Husband She Couldn’t Forget

  The Right Reason to Marry

  Their Secret Summer Family

  Home for the Baby’s Sake

  A Temporary Christmas Arrangement

  The Last One Home

  Montana Mavericks: Brothers & Broncos

  Summer Nights with the Maverick

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  This one’s for Norma Carroll and her eighteen-year-old gray tabby cat, DC. Norma says DC is “kind of grumpy” and “carries socks around like he hunted them down and killed them.”

  When Norma’s youngest child found him, DC was a kitten and barely weaned. At the sight of him, Norma’s husband declared, “I don’t want a damn cat.” The remark reminded Norma of an old movie, a comedy mystery from back in 1965—and thus DC was named after the sleuthing Siamese in That Darn Cat!

  Thank you, Norma, for sharing DC with me and allowing me to use his name and likeness to create the heroine’s gray tabby in this book.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Excerpt for Winning Her Fortune by Heatherly Bell

  Chapter One

  From the second-floor window of her sister’s office at the Medicine Creek Clarion, Jobeth Bravo had an unobstructed view of the entrance to the Statesman Hotel.

  As her little girl cooed happily in her arms, Jobeth stared at that entrance and thought of the past and wished she could change it somehow. Change it or let it go—forget it had ever happened. Wake up tomorrow morning, stretch and yawn and smile, and look forward to the coming day without the faintest remembrance of Hunter Bartley in her mind or her heart.

  Starr, Jobeth’s sister, glanced up from her desktop monitor. “Get away from that window.” Starr frowned at the monitor again. “Hmm.” Her fingers, swift and sure, went to work at her keyboard. As she typed some more on her next editorial, she muttered, “You are obsessed.”

  Jobeth didn’t budge. She cuddled nine-month-old Paisley a little bit closer and continued to stare fixedly at the hotel across the street.

  The Statesman was currently filled with reality-TV people from Hollywood. The TV people were in town to film several episodes of the hit home-improvement show Rebuilt by Bartley. No, Jobeth couldn’t see a single one of those TV people right now. But she knew they were in there—not Hunter Bartley, though. The star of the show was bunking elsewhere.

  “Da-ga-wa...” Paisley tried to stick a plump finger up Jobeth’s nose.

  “No, you don’t.” Jobeth caught her tiny hand. Paisley giggled as Jobeth said glumly, “I don’t think I want to go home. Not for four months at least.” Filming was expected to take that long. Rebuilt by Bartley would be renovating a bunch of different buildings in town. The whole thing was a very big deal, a series-within-the-series called Hunter Comes Home.

  Starr beat out another burst of words on her keyboard and then remarked, “Please. It’s not like he’s going to be living in your house with you.”

  Jobeth nuzzled Paisley’s dark baby curls and grumbled, “Close enough.”

  Due to the Hollywood invasion, as Jobeth chose to think of it, the Statesman Hotel had no vacancies. Also, Cottonwood Grove, the mobile home park at the south end of town, was chockablock with fancy trailers filled with members of the production crew. Still, there were other places to stay in town. Medicine Creek enjoyed a brisk tourist trade in the warmer months. The tourists needed places to stay. There were other hotels and a growing number of Vrbo and Airbnb rentals around town. And yet, her dad had offered to put Hunter up at the ranch and Hunter had said he would love that.

  Why would he do that? As the star of the show, wouldn’t he get first pick of available lodging? Why say yes to a bedroom in the Rising Sun Ranch house with a bath down the hall? The questions kept playing on a loop in her head.

  Really. Why?

  At least Jobeth had her own house—a house she loved that she’d built six years ago. Too bad that house was fifty yards from the main house.

  “He’ll be around.” She continued staring out the win
dow as she rocked her baby girl from side to side. “I’ll be running into him. It’s unavoidable.”

  The wheels on Starr’s desk chair creaked as Jo’s stunningly beautiful forty-two-year-old sister rose to her feet. “You should have just told Dad no when he asked you if having Hunter around would bother you.” Starr Bravo Tisdale was not only the owner and editor in chief of the Clarion now, but she was also eight months along with her third child, a surprise baby. With a groan, she rubbed at her lower back. And then, her giant belly leading the way, she joined Jobeth and Paisley at the window.

  Jobeth shook her head. “It’s been sixteen years. I’ve been married. He’s been married. We were kids. It’s not a big deal. I know this. I told Dad this.”

  “Awph!” Paisley leaned toward her aunt, chubby arms outstretched.

  Starr caught her and gathered her close. “Then why are you so completely freaked out right now?”

  Jo glared out the window. “I’m fully aware that I’m being ridiculous.”

  Starr responded gently, “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course, you didn’t. I did. I really thought I could handle this.” Hunter Bartley and the entire cast and crew of his popular show had arrived in town yesterday. “It’s just that all of a sudden it’s actually happening and I truly do not want to face him. He’ll be at the ranch and I’m bound to run into him.”

  “It will be all right.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Come on, Jo. It’s just that you haven’t seen him yet. Once you get past that first sight of him again you’ll realize it’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah?” Jobeth didn’t say it, but she was thinking of Beau, Starr’s husband. Starr had known Beau before he got sentenced to a couple of years at the state honor farm way back when. Beau had broken Starr’s heart and seeing him again after he got out had been a very big deal for her. All that was decades ago. Now, Starr’s heart was fully mended...by the man who’d once broken it. But Starr had to remember how it had felt to see his face again after the way he’d hurt her before.

  “Okay.” Starr shifted Paisley to one arm so that she could wrap the other around Jo. “I might be sugarcoating the situation just a little...”

  “You think?”

  “I’m only saying, you will be fine. You feel what you feel, Jo. Remember to breathe and don’t beat yourself up.”

  “All these years...” Jobeth looked out the window at the brick facade of the old hotel. A fit-looking guy with a high-dollar haircut wearing tight jeans, dress boots and a leather jacket emerged from beneath the striped awning that framed the hotel entrance. Not Hunter, she thought as the stranger set off down Main Street. Not Hunter, but obviously someone who works on the show. She rubbed at the back of her neck in an effort to ease the tension that had gathered there.

  Paisley let out another string of nonsense syllables and Starr chuckled at the sound.

  Jobeth hardly heard them. She watched until the guy in the leather jacket disappeared from sight. “I never tried to find out how Hunter was, what he might be doing. Anytime I was the least bit tempted, I reminded myself to move on, let it go, leave the past alone.” With a sigh, she confessed, “But now? Starr, I’m losing it.” She met her sister’s eyes. “The past few weeks, I’ve started stalking him online. What is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing, Jo. Nothing is wrong with you...”

  “So why do I feel like such a hopeless fool?”

  “Come here.” Starr pulled Jobeth closer, into an awkward hug that included both Starr’s giant stomach and a giggling Paisley cradled between them. “You loved him, really loved him,” Starr whispered. “Love is not a crime.”

  “Maybe not. But still, I feel like I did everything wrong and I’m about to come face-to-face with all the ways I messed up.”

  * * *

  The morning cloud cover had cleared a couple of hours ago. The sky was baby blue. The day’s high promised to reach a downright balmy sixty degrees.

  Feeling pretty damn good about everything, Hunter Bartley drove his leased Ram 2500 into town with the windows down.

  The pine-scented air blew in around him and the truck sailed over the rutted ranch road, hardly bouncing at all. On his way to a series of last-minute preproduction meetings in town, Hunter had the Bighorn Mountains in the rearview mirror and his hometown of Medicine Creek up ahead.

  So far, being back where he came from wasn’t half-bad, which thoroughly surprised him. Sixteen years ago, when he’d loaded his tools and the rest of his worldly possessions into his battered Ford Maverick and headed south, he couldn’t wait to get the hell away from here. He’d needed to leave Medicine Creek behind and find a bigger life, one where he wouldn’t forever be the poor, motherless kid with the loser father.

  A low laugh escaped him. The past was just that. Gone.

  These days, life was good. The rented truck had a great sound system and Chris Stapleton was currently singing “Starting Over” in that whiskey-and-gun-smoke voice of his. Hunter liked that song, so he ordered his Google assistant to turn up the volume. On the low, grassy hills to either side of the road, Rising Sun cattle lifted their heads to stare as he went by, his windows wide open, the music blaring good and loud.

  He was singing along, beating out rhythm on the steering wheel, thinking about Jobeth, about all the years between then and now, wondering when he would finally see her again. Sooner or later, it would happen. For the next few months he would be spending his nights on the ranch where she lived.

  As he topped the next rise, he spotted a cow in the center of the dirt road, directly in his path. “What the...?”

  He stomped the brake. Tires spit up a rain of dust and gravel, and he jerked to a stop several yards from the animal.

  You’d think the truck barreling toward her would have encouraged her to get out of the way. No such luck. “Google, turn the music down.” Chris Stapleton faded to a low, husky rumble and Hunter stuck his head out his open window. “Git along, now! Go!”

  The big red cow was not impressed. She stared and chewed.

  He put the pickup in gear again and rolled forward nice and slow, figuring that would get her moving.

  Nope. Tail flicking, she held her ground. He honked. She didn’t budge, not unless you counted her tail and her left ear—the one with the tag on it. Both were twitching.

  He laid on the horn.

  The ear kept flicking and the cow kept chewing. Slowly, she turned her head his way. Now her big brown eyes were locked with his through the windshield.

  Alrighty, then. A little extra encouragement was called for. After putting the pickup in Park, he climbed out and approached the cow. Stubborn to a fault, she remained in the center of the road.

  At least she seemed like a calm one—maybe too calm. She let him get up close and personal without budging an inch.

  She didn’t even move when he caught her ear and peered at the tag. “So, RS-241, you are quite the rebel, I see.” The bulging eyes regarded him with the wisdom of the ages. “Got nothing to say for yourself?”

  Apparently not. He was about to give her a slap on the rump in hopes that would finally get her off the road when a second crew cab rolled to a stop on the far side of the cow. A woman in old jeans and a plaid shirt got out.

  It took his stunned brain several seconds to register that the woman was Jobeth.

  Damn, she looked good—slim and strong as ever, with that straight taffy-colored hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Those blue eyes were wide and solemn.

  Older, yeah. But still the same Jo, with sweet, pale freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and over both cheeks. The same Jo...

  He had no doubt she still lived to get up before dawn on a frigid spring morning and go searching for newborn calves that had failed to get upright and latch on. Once or twice, back when they were together, he’d ridden out with her. She’
d let him drive...

  He remembered those times like they’d happened last week.

  When she found a dying calf, she would hoist it into the cab on the passenger side and turn the heater on full blast to start warming the animal up. He would drive her and the calf to one of the barns, where she’d put the poor thing under a heat lamp. Once it came to life and struggled to its feet, they would load it in the pickup all over again and return it to where the bewildered mama waited.

  “Hello, Hunter.” She regarded him solemnly across the red back of the unmoving cow.

  So weird. Otherworldly, even. This close in the early afternoon sun, he could see the faint beginnings of laugh lines bracketing her soft mouth and the first hint of crow’s feet around those unforgettable aquamarine eyes. The signs of the passing years were barely discernable, but still, they kind of broke his heart all over again.

  Because damn. It had been way too long.

  He tipped the brim of his Dodgers cap. “Jobeth. Good to see you.” And it was. Very good.

  Her gaze scanned his face. “Got a problem?”

  “Well, RS-241 here won’t get out of the road.”

  She pulled a phone from her pocket and made a quick call. “Hi. It’s me.” She explained about the red cow and rattled off their approximate location. “Send one of the hands for her? Great. Thanks.” As she stuck the phone back in her pocket, she turned to him again. “I’ll just get her off the road and you can be on your way.”

  Completely enthralled, he watched her retreating backside as she jogged to her pickup. Returning with a length of rope, she fashioned a lead and slipped it over the cow’s head. The cow followed without resistance as she led the animal to the shoulder, where she tied her to a fence post.

  About then, Hunter started to worry she would simply climb back in her truck, swing around him and his vehicle and drive away. He jogged to meet her as she left the tied-up cow.

  What to say to her? He had no idea. He just needed to get her to stick around a little longer. He wanted to look at her for a while, to listen to her voice. It seemed like yesterday that he’d left her behind...and yet, like forever, too.