Picket Fence Promises

Picket Fence Promises
Kathryn Springer

Twenty years and several pounds ago…I was Bernice Strum, hairstylist to the stars. Until I fell for–and got pregnant by–Alex Scott, a handsome actor with a career on the rise. But I gave my baby up for adoption and moved across the country to settle in Prichett, Wisconsin. I made friends, started a faith journey, and then one day I got a call from my now-adult daughter that turned my world upside down… and brought Alex back into my life. Now he's here (living in my dream house!) and he wants to pick up where we left off–but how can I trust his picket-fence promises when he's not a believer in anything but himself?

Picket Fence Promises

Kathryn Springer

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This book is affectionately dedicated to

Indiana Jones and the “Thursday Girls.”

For five years, we’ve broken bread together

and shared our hearts and our lives. I can’t

imagine being on this journey with anyone

else—but then, God does have a sense

of humor! Looking forward to our next

adventure down the narrow road…

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Chapter One

There is an old saying that a person’s past will eventually catch up to them. Mine was a bit slow because it didn’t find me until I was forty-five years old. When it did, it didn’t tiptoe up and give me a discreet tap on the shoulder, either. A gentle, Remember me? Of course not. My past rolled down Prichett’s Main Street in broad daylight. In a black stretch limo.

It was a good thing that my two best friends, Elise Penny and Annie Carpenter, were with me or I probably would have hijacked the next pickup truck lumbering down the street and ended up somewhere in Canada.

Annie, who’d been catching snowflakes on her tongue, grabbed my hand and held on. Annie may be twenty years younger than me but what she lacks in age she makes up for in wisdom. She’s the kind of person who always seems to have one ear tilted toward the sky, as if she’s expecting at any moment God is going to whisper something in it. And I’m convinced that He does on a regular basis.

I tried to work up enough saliva so that I could talk, but my mouth had gone as dry as the fields in the middle of July. If you live in Prichett long enough you begin to think in farm metaphors. It started happening to me about three years after I’d moved here, and I look at it as a permanent condition—like crow’s feet…or cellulite.

“It can’t be him.” There it was. My voice. Well, a reasonable facsimile anyway. It must have come out at a slightly higher pitch than normal because a flock of blackbirds in the tree over our heads began to rustle around and protest. “Someone must have rented the limo for an anniversary or something.”

There was no other reason that a limo could be stopping…right in front of the Cut and Curl. Which happened to be the beauty salon that I owned.

“If there was an anniversary, it would have made the marquee,” Elise said. She grabbed my other hand and leaned forward, staring intently at the sleek black vehicle that was now purring alongside the curb.

This was wishful thinking on Elise’s part. Her name had been on the marquee for three months now. The marquee was a sacred relic and it hung off the old theater on Main Street like an arm with a compound fracture, announcing all the news that Mayor Candy Lane decided was noteworthy.

Elise had been a contestant in the Proverbs 31 Pageant and had recently won the state title. So far, she’d set a record for having had her name on the marquee the longest. Because she didn’t like the attention, I knew she was secretly hoping that someone else would have something happen to them that was noteworthy enough for the sign to be changed.

“Not possible,” I muttered, staring at the ground. I was beginning to have memory flashes. You know, those little things buried so deep inside that only a reality explosion will bring them to the surface.