Hope Valley Box Set Vol. 1

Prologue

EDEN

Ifell in love with Lincoln Sheppard in an instant.

Okay, well maybe not an instant. It took a solid three minutes, but you get my point.

Anyway, it happened one hot summer day during our neighborhood block party.

I’d never lived in a place where the neighbors threw block parties, so I was beyond excited to attend my first one ever.

I was new to Hope Valley, and being new to a small town as an adult was pretty intimidating when everyone seemed to already know everyone else.

I felt like the new girl sitting alone in the cafeteria, hoping to make friends when all the other kids had already formed their cliques.

But I’d been searching for a place like this all my life, a place where I could belong and build a life for myself, and, most importantly, where I could escape my past and start over fresh as the woman I wanted to be.

The instant I drove through the quaint, idyllic town, I’d fallen in love.

It looked like something out of a TV show, beauty as far as the eye could see.

In the center of town was an awesome square, complete with gazebos, benches, a fountain, and a grassy area that would have been perfect for a small outdoor concert or a movie night on one of those huge inflatable projector screens.

It was surrounded by shops and restaurants and offices, and there was even a hair and nail salon and a massage parlor.

And bonus, the square had its very own clock tower right in the center. A clock tower!

If that hadn’t already sold me, then the panoramic view of hills leading to mountains surrounding the whole town would have done it.

It gave the place the feeling of being in a bubble, closed off from the rest of the ugliness in the world.

There were evergreens and pine trees and oaks, all of them with leaves so deeply colored it looked like a sea of green leading up to the sky.

I knew the moment I stood in the town square, slowly turning in a circle as I tried to take it all in, that I was home.

I’d never had a home before, not in all my life.

Growing up, we’d moved from town to town, trailer park to trailer park.

Just as we settled in one place, my father would cheat someone out of their money with the promise to pay it back that he never came through on.

Or my brother would have a run-in with the law, having robbed someone or vandalized something, as he was prone to do.

Or my mom would sleep with one of my classmates’ dads, sending rumors spreading through the school like wildfire about me and my white trash family.

Word would eventually get back to my father or the man’s wife, all hell would break loose, and we’d be on the road once again.

I never had a chance to make friends, but even if I’d tried, the gossip already running rampant through whichever town we were in painted me with the same brush as the rest of my family.

A brush that wasn’t flattering in the slightest. It wasn’t that it was the wrong brush for my family, it was just the wrong one for me.

I’d learned early on to watch what my parents and brother did very closely, then do the exact opposite.

They were the worst of the worst. They made Honey Boo Boo’s folks look well adjusted.

They were constantly humiliating me with the crap they pulled, and if it wasn’t that, they were riding me for thinking I was better than they were.

I never admitted it out loud, but I was better.

I’d strived from childhood on not to make the same horrible, self-destructive decisions they did.

It was like a mantra for me: If Billy Joe, Josephine, or Shep Brenner would do it, you do not!

I repeated that to myself while staring in the mirror every morning, and before I went to bed each night.

When I stumbled on Hope Valley, Virginia, I knew I’d finally found my place, and I did everything I could to settle in, meet the town folks, and start living the life I always wanted.

So when Wynona from across the street came wandering up the front path of my cute little cottage-style home to knock on my door and ask me to the block party, I’d jumped at the invite.

I decided I was going to make my potato salad, mainly because it was easy to make in bulk, and also because my potato salad was damn good, if I did say so myself.

My mom hadn’t taught me much growing up, but her lack of attention and all-around mothering had turned me into an awesome cook.

It was either that or starve, and I wasn’t about to let that happen, so I scoured through every cookbook I could find at the local libraries, plus absorbed all those cooking shows on the rare occasions we had cable, so I could not only eat but make things I actually liked.

The potato salad was a hit, and it had given me the perfect in to start talking with the other people who lived along the block.

I was in the middle of a conversation with a sweet older couple, the Shillings, when something from the corner of my eye caught my attention. When I turned my head, the Shillings all but disappeared, their voices drowned out as I stared, transfixed by the sight before me.

He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, probably the most beautiful man in all the world. And I should know. Thanks to my family, I’d seen a lot of the world, or at least the country, and not very many of those places were the good parts.

His sandy blond hair was in need of a cut, but nonetheless, it worked on him in a big way.

His features were strong; a chiseled jaw, sharp cheekbones, and masculine nose made up a perfect face that looked like it could break your hand if you attempted to punch it.

Even from a distance I could tell he was tall, so tall, at least a head above me.

And every. Single. Inch of his tall frame was ripped with bulging muscles that could be seen beneath his gloriously faded jeans and worn cotton tee.

He was all man in the best possible way—strong, brawny, and absolutely gorgeous.

But it was his eyes that drew me in the most. The vivid, shimmering greens were like jewels twinkling in the sun, and the beauty of them took my breath away.

The way he was wrestling around with all the neighborhood kids, not only letting them use him as their own personal jungle gym but seemingly enjoying it, made my heart palpitate and parts inside of me that had laid dormant for far too long quiver.

I spent the rest of the party secretly stealing glances his way, feeling a little like a stalker.

As the sun began to set, a woman I didn’t recognize and knew didn’t live in the neighborhood came skipping up to him excitedly and jumped at the last second, giving him no choice but to catch her.

She planted a quick kiss on his lips before lowering back to the ground.

That was when my heart sank, because as I stared I saw him shove his hand in the back pocket of her obscenely tight cutoff jean shorts to cop a feel without being obvious about it, and a few seconds later he guided her up his driveway and into his house two doors down from mine.

According to block gossip, they didn’t come out for the rest of the night.

In spite of trying my best to get over it, I held on to that lust for a good long while.

Jean Shorts Chick was far from the last woman to randomly show at his house for countless hours at a time over the next few of months, and after girl number three, I was starting to notice a trend.

Each woman had legs that went for miles, and they were built like they were born to walk a runway.

They were like Hope Valley’s own personal Victoria’s Secret models.

In other words, the polar opposite of me.

Where they were tall, I was short, like really short.

Where their long, lustrous hair gleamed in the sun, my dull brown locks fell flat.

And not a single one of them had an ounce of fat on their lithe frames.

Meanwhile, I loved my sweets and carbs, and my ample behind and the pudge around my midsection made that obvious.

Based on the type of women he leaned toward and the fact that he looked like a Nordic god, there was one thing I knew as absolute truth.

Lincoln Sheppard was totally and completely out of my league.