Free Trouble in Paradise by Robin Lee Hatcher Page A

Everyone she’d met made her feel welcome and a part of the community. With Ty standing at her side, she answered questions about herself, her hometown, her writing.
    “Portland, huh?” This from Walt North, a grizzled cowboy in his early fifties. “I worked there one year. Long time ago. Rains too much. Damp gets in your bones and never goes away.” He shook his head, the action clearly saying, Can’t imagine why anyone would want to live there.
    “Who’s your favorite writer?” Nat Briscoe, next year’s Rainbow High senior class president, asked before Walt could start talking again.
    “Oh, I have lots of favorites.” She took a sip of red fruit punch from the tall plastic tumbler in her hand. After a moment, she said, “Mary Higgins Clark was the first writer to make me think I’d like to write a novel. And there are a number of wonderful Christian suspense novelists who inspire me.”
    “You ever come visit Lauretta when you were a youngster?” asked Hydrangea Zimmerman, a woman in her early seventies with sun-leathered skin and watery blue eyes.
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Well, girl, I think I met you back then. Freckle faced, with your nose peeling from a sunburn. Just knee-high to a grasshopper, you were.” She chuckled. “Not much different from what you are now.”
    “That was me.”
    The wizened old woman, a good two inches shorter than Shayla, leaned forward and, in a conspiratorial whisper, added, “Don’t envy them tall folk. They’re always hitting their heads on one thing or another.”
    “I’ll remember that.”
    “Is this your first book you’re working on?” Geneve Barnett inquired.
    “Yes. But I’ve wanted to try my hand at it for many years.”
    And so the evening went. Only one thing kept it from being perfect—it wasn’t Ian standing at her side.
     
     
    From the darkened balcony at the north end of the Grange Hall, Ian watched as Shayla mingled, talked, laughed. That lilting laughter that made him smile whenever he heard it. And it wasn’t only a smile it brought him. It also lightened his heart, made his insides feel airy, weightless as a cloud.
    So that was the way it was going to be, he thought as he stared down from his lofty sanctuary. He wasn’t going to listen to his own good sense. He wasn’t going to heed the voice of wisdom that told him he would be better off pursuing someone else.
    Anybody else.
    No, he was going to obey the urging of his heart instead. Maybe it wouldn’t lead anywhere. Then again, maybe it would. He might as well find out, one way or the other.
    “Sorry, Ty,” he whispered, “but I’m not honoring any claims you might’ve made on our little mystery writer. All’s fair from this point on.”
    Thirty minutes later, on the drive home to Paradise, Ian hummed softly to himself. But it wasn’t until he pulled into the barnyard, cut the engine and turned off the headlights that he recognized the songrunning through his head. The lyrics included something about taking a chance on love.
    He remained in the cab as he silently repeated those words: Taking a chance on love.
    He’d loved Joanne with everything in him.
    Then he’d let love die.
    And then he’d let Joanne die—or so it seemed to him at the time.
    Could he love a woman that way again? Could that woman be Shayla? And if he did fall for her, would he live to regret it?
    He didn’t know, but it was time to find out.
     
     
    “Thank you, Ty. It was a lovely evening.”
    “For me, too. Maybe we can do it again.”
    “Maybe.”
    She avoided him trying to kiss her on the mouth by placing a hand on his shoulder, then rising on tiptoe to lightly brush his cheek with her lips.
    “Good night,” she said as she opened the door and slipped inside. The moment she flicked on the light, Honey Girl whimpered an excited greeting and scratched at the door of her crate.
    “Ready to go outside, little one?”
    Shayla opened the door to release the puppy. Honey Girl ran circles around her