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Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author
SHERRYL WOODS
“Sherry Woods writes emotionally satisfying novels…. Truly feel-great reads!”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber
“Compulsively readable…Though the serious issues raised are handled with honesty and integrity, Woods’s novel easily rises above hot-button topics to tell a universal tale of friendship’s redemptive power.”
— Publishers Weekly on Mending Fences
“Woods’s latest entry in her Sweet Magnolias series (after Stealing Home ) is sure to please fans and entice new readers with…flesh-and-blood characters, terrific dialogue and substantial stakes.”
— Publishers Weekly on A Slice of Heaven
“Sherryl Woods is a uniquely gifted writer whose deep understanding of human nature is woven into every page.”
— New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers
“Redolent with Southern small-town atmosphere, this emotionally rich story deals with some serious issues and delivers on a number of levels.”
— Library Journal on A Slice of Heaven
“Sherryl Woods…writes with a very special warmth, wit, charm and intelligence.”
— New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham
“Sweetly satisfying, clever characters and snappy, realistic dialogue…a delightful read.”
— Publishers Weekly on About That Man
“Sherryl Woods gives her characters depth, intensity, and the right amount of humor.”
— Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Ask Anyone
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Sherryl Woods
Dear Friend,
I’m so delighted that the TRINITY HARBOR series is back in print and that you’ve joined us for book two in the series. Trinity Harbor is a town where there are always unexpected things just around the corner, but none more so than what happens to Bobby Spencer in Ask Anyone.
Little does laid-back Bobby know that his life is about to be turned completely upside down by the arrival of Jenna Kennedy, a woman on a mission to prove to everyone that she no longer deserves the label of monumental screwup that has been pinned on her by her family.
Of course, with King Spencer as a father, Bobby knows a whole lot about trying to win parental respect, but his sympathy toward Jenna’s plight may not be enough for him to make the kind of major commitment she’s hoping for.
Once again, Anna-Louise Walton is around to lend a sympathetic ear and to provide the kind of moral guidance that you’d expect from a minister with a huge heart. And of course you’ll get to catch up with Daisy, Walker and Tommy, as well as with Tucker, whose compelling story, Along Came Trouble, is also available now.
So come home with me to Trinity Harbor once more. I promise some laughter, maybe even a few tears and, of course, some wonderful new friends to welcome into your heart.
All best,
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Prologue
H is son was making a spectacle of himself. Robert “King” Spencer had just hung up on the Trinity Harbor mayor, who was outraged not only by what was going on over at Bobby’s this morning, but by just about everything Bobby had done lately. He had a list, and King had been forced to listen to every fool thing on it.
“Fine people ought to be getting ready for church at this hour on a Sunday morning,” Harvey Needham had groused in conclusion. “Instead, they’re over at your son’s gawking like a bunch of tourists at an amusement park. This has to stop, King. The man’s out of control. And I’d like to know what you intend to do about it.”
“Not a blasted thing,” King had told him, and slammed down the phone.
He sighed heavily. It wasn’t as if this was the first time one of his children had stirred things up in Trinity Harbor. His daughter, Daisy, had almost given him a coronary when she’d insisted on letting that stray boy and his uncle into her life last year. The gossipmongers had had a field day, almost costing Daisy her teaching job in the process. Now, thank the Lord, she and Walker Ames were respectably married and Tommy was on good behavior, which meant it was time for King to turn his attention to his younger son and namesake.
Unfortunately, Bobby was proving to be as difficult to control as Daisy had been. King had almost laughed when Harvey had asked him to step in. As if Bobby would pay an iota of attention to anything his daddy had to say! He seemed to have the idea that he was too old to take advice from his father. So far, that hadn’t stopped King from offering it, but he was beginning to think he was wasting his breath.
What his son—both of his sons, for that matter—needed was a good woman in his life. King had been searching high and low for someone who fit his criteria, someone with a little spunk and a lot of class. So far the search had been in vain, but he hadn’t given up. Of course, once he succeeded in finding a likely candidate, there was no guarantee Bobby would cooperate. More likely the opposite.
The sad truth was that Bobby was stubborn as a mule. King had no idea where he got the trait, but it was a blasted nuisance. Any other man would get at least a token amount of respect from his namesake, but not King. When he tried to advise his son, Bobby merely regarded him with tolerant amusement, then went right out and did what he darn well pleased.
The rebellion had started ten years ago, when Bobby went away to college. King had expected him to take business management or maybe even animal husbandry, something that would serve him well when he took over their Black Angus cattle operation at Cedar Hill, the farm the family had owned for generations.
Instead, the doggone fool had gotten his heart broken by his childhood sweetheart, and in an act of pure spite toward his daddy had signed up for cooking classes. As if that weren’t bad enough, he’d topped it by dropping out his sophomore year and heading to France to take some fancy course in preparing gourmet food. When King had put his foot down and refused to pay for the trip, Bobby had gone out and earned the money himself. He’d worked at a fast-food joint over in Richmond for six months, putting every cent toward an airline ticket. King had never been so humiliated in his life…at least not until Bobby had come home with a diamond stud in one ear.
What kind of real man wanted to learn to cook? That was the question that stuck in King’s craw. Wasn’t that why they paid a housekeeper, so they’d never have to set foot in the kitchen except to raid the refrigerator? And if a man had to cook, what was wrong with a damned fine steak prepared on a grill or taking a wooden mallet to a pile of steamed crabs? That was the only kind of food preparation King wanted any part of.
Now Bobby owned the yacht center in town, spent his nights cooking in the club’s restaurant and devoted his daytime hours to trying to drive his daddy into an early grave by upsetting all the town fathers with his big ideas about developing the waterfront. If he had a specific plan in mind, Bobby hadn’t shared it with his father, but it must be a doozy if old Harvey was in such an uproar that he was trying to drag King into the middle of the fray.
Harvey didn’t like turning to King for anything. The fool liked to believe he was his own man, but when push came to shove, who did he ask for help? That’s right, King Spencer, the man whose family had settled Trinity Harbor way back when. Even Harvey was forced to admit that the Spencer name still counted for something in this part of Virginia.
Not that King didn’t relish a good fight from time to time. Nothing made him happier. He just hated having to publicly side with outsiders against a member of his own family.
He had two choices. He could head on over to Bobby’s and add his two cents to the commotion outside, or he could bide his time and say his piece over Sunday dinner. For once in his life, King opted for discretion.
Besides, he didn’t really want a lot of witnesses around when Bobby told him to mind his own damned business.
1
T here was a merry-go-round in his front yard. Okay, not a whole merry-go-round, just one lavishly carved, brightly painted carousel horse, but it was enough to make Bobby Spencer’s jaw drop. He hadn’t seen anything like it since a trip to the Santa Monica Pier years ago on one of the rare occasions when his father had deigned to leave his beloved Virginia.
That white-and-gold horse was also enough to have drawn most of the neighborhood kids out on a steamy Sunday morning to stare at it in fascination. The only thing that seemed to be keeping the curious youngsters from climbing onto that horse was the presence of a beefy uniformed security guard lounging in a rickety lawn chair about two feet away.
He had a merry-go-round horse and an armed man in his front yard. Bobby was pretty sure he’d awakened to stranger scenes in the past twenty-eight years, but he couldn’t remember when. It was almost enough to make him regret moving away from the family estate at Cedar Hill, where the nearest neighbor was half a mile down the road. Of course, then he would have had King to contend with, and that would have been much worse than this innocent little spectacle.
Only after he’d been standing there, slack-jawed, for a full minute, the morning paper absentmindedly clutched in one hand, did he realize that he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, and that any minute now, he was going to become part of the sideshow on his front lawn. Already Sue Kelly and Frannie Yarborough were ogling him with appreciative glances that Bobby might have found flattering if the two spinsters hadn’t been at least seventy and, even worse, the two biggest gossips on the block.
Just when he was about to dart inside to put on something halfway decent and maybe drink enough caffeine to come up with a way out of this crazy situation, a police cruiser rolled to a stop at the edge of the lawn. The county sheriff—his own brother—emerged grinning.
Tucker’s arrival was followed in short order by another cruiser. This time it was Bobby’s brother-in-law, Walker Ames, who got out, cast one look at the scene and, displaying even less restraint, burst out laughing. He and Tucker exchanged an amused look, then strolled toward Bobby, making a pretense of looking somber and official. If he’d been armed, Bobby would have shot ’em both on the spot. No jury on earth—or at least around these parts—would have convicted him.
“Where’s the cotton candy?” Tucker asked, barely containing another grin.
“Very funny,” Bobby snapped, in no mood for his brother’s wit.
“You got a permit for starting up a carnival in a residential area?” Tucker continued, clearly undaunted by Bobby’s sour attitude. “We’ve been overlooking Frannie’s fortune-telling, but this is a little harder to ignore.”
“You don’t have to enjoy this quite so much,” Bobby said.
Tucker’s grin spread. “Sure I do. Best time I’ve had all weekend.”
“So where’d it come from?” Walker asked, his fascinated gaze fixed on the horse with its prancing feet and bejeweled harness. Someone had taken great care with the restoration. It was in like-new condition.
Bobby’s scowl shifted to encompass his brother-in-law. “How should I know?”
“It is in your yard,” Tucker pointed out.
“So are you, but I sure as hell didn’t invite you,” Bobby retorted.
“Seems cranky,” Tucker observed to Walker.
“Downright irritable,” Walker agreed.
Bobby studiously ignored the ribbing. They’d tire of it eventually. Besides, if he was going to get to the bottom of this unexpected gift horse, he needed their help. They might be acting like idiots at the moment, but they both had halfway decent investigative skills, and the authority to go along with it. Without a jolt of coffee, he couldn’t even think.
“Maybe I should call Daddy and get him over here,” his brother said, his expression innocent. “He might have some ideas.”
Bobby frowned at Tucker, who could be an annoying son of a gun on his best days. “You do, and you’re a dead man. Leave Daddy out of this. Besides, I’m sure someone has called him already. People always love to report to King when one of us is causing a scene. Who called you, by the way? Never mind, let me guess. It was the mayor, right?”
Sadly, his nemesis lived just around the corner, close enough to keep an eye on everything that Bobby did. Not that Bobby was prone to wild parties or overnight guests in his restored Victorian house facing the Potomac River, but Harvey was always lurking around, probably hoping for something he could use against Bobby. Bobby had actually caught him outside with a ruler measuring the grass one day, checking to see if Bobby was in violation of the town’s overgrown-lot ordinance.
“Harvey did express some concern that you were desecrating the Sabbath, to say nothing of violating several zoning ordinances,” Tucker admitted. “Though he lacked confidence that I’d handle it with deliberate speed.”
“Which is why I’m here,” Walker explained. “Backup, in case your brother doesn’t follow the letter of the law about arresting the people responsible for public nuisances.”
“This is not my damned nuisance,” Bobby retorted. “Oh, forget it. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going inside to put my pants on before Sue and Frannie faint dead away over there.” The two women were fanning their flushed faces ineffectively, their gazes locked on him as if they hadn’t laid eyes on a partially clothed man in decades. The truth was, they probably hadn’t. He waved, clearly flustering them. He’d no doubt have tuna casseroles waiting on his front porch for the next week because of this. They seemed to think a man on his own was likely to starve, despite the fact that Bobby cooked for a living.
“What do you want me to do about this?” Tucker asked, looking none too eager to do a blessed thing.
“Make it go away, ” Bobby said emphatically. He gestured to encompass the entire scene. “All of it.”
“Don’t you even want to know how that horse got here?” Walker asked, clearly overcome with curiosity himself.
Walker probably wanted all the details to relate to Bobby’s sister, who was bound to have a million and one questions. In fact, Bobby was somewhat surprised Daisy hadn’t beat her husband over here.
Bobby was actually pretty sure he knew what the arrival of the horse was all about. Maybe not the specific person who’d sent it over, but that fancy carved horse was clearly part of someone’s bid to get his attention focused on a proposal for the boardwalk development he was planning. He’d had half a dozen unsolicited calls requesting appointments to make presentations since he’d announced a few weeks ago that he had signed the papers to buy the last parcel of riverfront land he needed. In his only public comment on the acquisition, Bobby had made the mistake of mentioning that he intended to get the project started this fall in the hope that it would be completed by the following summer. Eager developers had been crawling out of the woodwork ever since.
“I’ll leave it to you two crack lawmen to figure out who’s behind this. You have my permission to take the person responsible into custody for trespassing. And with all these other people crawling all over my lawn, that ought to help you meet your arrest quota for the month,” he said, throwing it out as an irresistible challenge. Tucker really hated being accused of having quotas of any kind. “Meantime, I’m getting dressed and making coffee. Join me once you’ve solved the mystery and gotten rid of this circus.”
Unfortunately, he had a suspicion that wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d made it sound. Just as well. He’d have plenty of time to whip up a fluffy omelette and some hash browns before the two of them made it inside. Something told him he was going to need a lot of sustenance to get through the rest of a day that had started out this badly.
Jenna Pennington Kennedy was a royal screwup. Ask anyone, especially her father, who was giving her one last chance to prove herself with this boardwalk-development proposal for Trinity Harbor, Virginia.
Okay, he hadn’t exactly given her the chance. She’d read about the prospect in the Baltimore newspaper and come after it on her own, without saying a single word to her domineering father or her brothers. They would have snatched the opportunity right out from under her, either by going after it themselves or simply by squelching her initiative with hoots of derisive laughter.
Unfortunately, though, her sneakiness seemed to have been for naught. The man she’d been told to contact—the one who owned the riverfront property and was looking to develop it—was steadfastly refusing to see her. His secretary claimed he wasn’t seeing anyone yet, but Jenna suspected it was because she was a female. In the development business, she ran across a lot of macho males who ignored anything a woman had to say unless it pertained to sex. Since sex had been nothing but trouble for Jenna, she had no intention of indulging again, at least not in the foreseeable future. Better to concentrate on things she understood, like riverfront development.
Whatever the real story was behind Bobby Spencer’s refusal to see her, this morning she had taken steps to snag his attention. She’d sent the man an extraordinarily rare carousel horse, part of an elaborate 1916 Allan Herschel carousel with a Wurlitzer organ that had cost her every penny of her savings and the entire trust fund her mother had left her. She’d considered it an investment in her future. Given the current state of the stock market, it probably wasn’t as risky a decision as it seemed.
If all else failed, she assumed she could auction off the carousel—currently under lock and key in a Maryland warehouse—and at least get her money back. If she succeeded, it would become the centerpiece of this project, and Bobby Spencer would pay handsomely for it.
Of course, in an attempt to prove to her father that she could be sensible when necessary, she had also sent along a guard to protect the expensive antique from the sticky fingers of curious kids and the remote possibility that a knowledgeable thief would try to make off with it.
The whole plan had been a stroke of genius, if she did say so herself. Too bad she’d had to keep it from her father. He might have been proud of her, for once.
Jenna sat in her car down the block and happily watched the crowd on Spencer’s lawn growing, despite the halfhearted attempts of two policemen to get it to disperse. Heck, if she’d thought to open a concession stand on the block, she could have sold enough lemonade on this hot July morning to pay the guard’s salary.
She’d give it another half hour, let Bobby Spencer begin to see what a draw an old carousel could be for the town, then she’d seize the moment to demand an appointment to make her complete presentation.
Despite years of being regarded as a second-class citizen in her own family’s company, Jenna had complete confidence in her design for the Trinity Harbor boardwalk. In her favor, she had an abiding nostalgia for all the old-fashioned beach towns she’d ever visited. People could get gaudy seaside entertainment in Ocean City. They could find more elaborate amusement parks just down the road from here at Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens. What a quaint little town like Trinity Harbor required was charm, and nobody understood charm better than a woman who’d spent her whole life with a bunch of men who were clueless on the subject.
But despite her self-confidence about the end result, Jenna resented the fact that she’d had to go to such an extreme just to put herself on Spencer’s radar. What kind of businessman ignored the overtures of an expert? His behavior didn’t bode well for their working relationship, but she was desperate. She’d work with the worst CEO in corporate history for this chance.
More dispiriting, though, than being dismissed by a stranger was having to jump through such elaborate hoops to prove to her father that she understood the business as well as he did and that she deserved to be more than decoration for the front office. If she’d been another son, he would have taken these things as a given. Dennis and Daniel had never had to prove themselves. They just showed up and made a pretense of working. As long as beachfront condos went up and didn’t fall down, her father was content. It annoyed the daylights out of Jenna that he never saw her brothers’ flaws—and never forgot hers.
Not that her father didn’t have more than ample reason to distrust her judgment, she conceded reluctantly, but he bore some of the responsibility for her disastrous elopement himself. Randall Pennington had been an overprotective single dad who’d never had the first inkling about how to raise a daughter. After Jenna’s mother had died, he’d settled on boarding school and tough love for his only daughter, while his sons had stayed at home under his watchful but indulgent eye.
As a result, Jenna had abandonment issues. She also had control issues. Big ones. She’d never had to consult a shrink to figure that out. A couple of episodes of Oprah had done it.
In an act of pure rebellion—and teenage lust—she had married the most irresponsible boy on God’s green earth. To this day, he hadn’t held a job more than the six months it took for boredom to set in. She shouldn’t have been surprised that his attention span for women was no longer.
But to an eighteen-year-old girl who’d lived a sheltered boarding school life, Nick Kennedy had seemed wild and sexy and dangerous. His ability to make her father see red just by walking in the door had been one of his primary attractions.
Nick had also been a helluva kisser, which had led to her second mistake in judgment. She’d gotten pregnant so fast, it must have set some kind of a record. Her only consolation was that it had been after the wedding ceremony, not before. Nick was already straying before their daughter’s birth, which had provided Jenna with her second dose of abandonment issues.
Now she had a precocious nine-year-old who was the spitting image of her daddy in looks and temperament. If Jenna had allowed it, Darcy would be pierced and tattooed in every conceivable spot on her plump little body. Jenna shuddered at the thought of what might happen the next time Darcy went to visit Nick, whom she could twist around her little pinky. Discipline and good sense were not among Nick’s strengths. And in recent years he’d been given a tab at his neighborhood tattoo parlor.
But the final nail in her coffin as far as her father was concerned had been her divorce. He didn’t believe in divorce. Not ever. Mistresses were just fine, apparently. It was an odd set of moral values, in Jenna’s opinion, but there it was. Leaving Nick was another black mark on her record with dear old Dad, even though he hated the guy. Another incomprehensible incongruity, to Jenna’s way of thinking. Trying to keep up with all of them gave her hives, but she did try.
She could have moved out of her father’s house—where a housekeeper was now looking after Darcy—and away from Baltimore, struggled to find some kind of work for which she was qualified and probably lived happily ever after, but Jenna was stubborn. She still craved her father’s approval and her rightful share of the company. Hoping for his love after all these years was probably a wasted effort, but she even harbored hopes of that, which was why she was still living under his roof and accepting the paltry, nonliving wage he used to keep her there.
She had worked for Pennington and Sons for the last seven years, ever since her quickie divorce in Reno. She was bound and determined to make her father regret that he’d only acknowledged the existence and contributions of her two worthless brothers in naming the business. She knew more, worked harder and had more vision than Dennis and Daniel combined, but all she got was a paycheck and the occasional patronizing pat on the head when she saved their sorry butts after they’d overlooked some little detail that could have cost the company a fortune. In fact, she was just about the only person in the firm who actually seemed to read and comprehend the fine print of their contracts.
This Trinity Harbor job was her chance to prove herself creatively, and no male chauvinist jerk was going to deprive her of it. If she had to take Darcy out of her current school come September and move down here so she could get in Bobby Spencer’s face 24/7 until he caved in and gave her the deal, then that’s what she’d do.
And after seeing him on his front lawn in his boxers, his body bronzed and his brown hair bleached by the sun, a rakish diamond glittering in his ear, the prospect promised to be a whole lot more entertaining than she’d envisioned when she’d driven away from Baltimore towing that antique horse in a trailer behind her beat-up Chevy.
She’d been thinking arrogant, crotchety old man, and, instead, she was going to be going toe to toe with a body—a man— so gorgeous he could make her forget her longstanding resolution not to even think about sex again until she hit menopause. Given her history of mistakes in judgment, her luck was not necessarily taking a turn for the better.
