Also By Ashley Farley
Hope Springs Series
Dream Big, Stella!
Show Me the Way
Mistletoe and Wedding Bells
Stand Alone
Tangled in Ivy
Lies that Bind
Life on Loan
Only One Life
Home for Wounded Hearts
Nell and Lady
Sweet Tea Tuesdays
Saving Ben
Sweeney Sisters Series
Saturdays at Sweeney’s
Tangle of Strings
Boots and Bedlam
Lowcountry Stranger
Her Sister’s Shoes
Magnolia Series
Beyond the Garden
Magnolia Nights
Scottie’s Adventures
Breaking the Story
Merry Mary
Copyright © 2020 by Ashley Farley
All rights reserved.
Cover design: damonza.com
Editor: Patricia Peters at A Word Affair LLC
Leisure Time Books, a division of AHF Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
About this Story
1. Presley
2. Everett
3. Presley
4. Stella
5. Everett
6. Presley
7. Everett
8. Presley
9. Everett
10. Presley
11. Everett
12. Presley
13. Stella
14. Presley
15. Everett
16. Presley
17. Presley
18. Stella
19. Everett
20. Presley
21. Presley
22. Everett
23. Presley
24. Presley
25. Everett
26. Presley
27. Everett
28. Presley
29. Stella
30. Presley
31. Everett
32. Stella
33. Presley
Other Books in the Series
Also By Ashley Farley
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About this Story
Two lost souls meet by chance in an explosive tale of romance and suspense.
Presley Ingram has often wondered about her birth parents. Yet her 23andMe test kit remains unopened in her bedside table drawer. When she finds an address on a torn envelope in her adoption file upon her adoptive mother’s death, she makes an impulsive decision to travel to the mountains of Virginia in search of answers. In the charming town of Hope Springs, she discovers her dream job as event planner at the prestigious Inn at Hope Springs Farms and the potential for romance with a ruggedly handsome bartender. Presley has an uncanny knack for reading people. While she suspects Everett has a genuine heart, she’s convinced he’s hiding something from his previous life.
Everett Baldwin is on the run from his past. He’s hiding out under an assumed name and working as a bartender while his dreams of becoming a country music star slip away. When opportunity knocks, Everett is forced to face his demons in order to move on with his life. Secrets are revealed and chaos ensues. Will Everett be able to salvage his relationship with the woman of his dreams?
1
Presley
Presley waits in her parked rental car across from the address she found on the torn envelope in her adoption folder. When she discovered the file in her mother’s desk drawer late yesterday afternoon, she booked the next available flight to Virginia. What is she even doing here? She’s not interested in medical history. A genetic testing website could determine if she possesses the dreaded breast cancer gene or whether she’s at risk for Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. But Presley’s test kit, purchased over a year ago from 23andMe, remains unopened in her bedside table drawer back in Nashville.
Kids on bikes and young mothers pushing baby strollers pass by, seemingly oblivious to the stranger in their midst. The neighborhood is Norman Rockwell picturesque, like one might expect in a small town called Hope Springs. Maple trees with brilliant orange leaves line the street. Pansies in yellows and purples border sidewalks leading to small front porches bearing displays of pumpkins and gourds and mums. Most of the houses are two-story brick colonials with well-tended lawns. But the whitewashed brick and Wedgewood-blue front door make number 237 stand out from the rest on Hillside Drive.
Presley drums her fingers against the steering wheel. She’s been here two hours. Should she leave and come back later? She checks the time on the dash. Five forty-three. She’ll stay until six.
What does she want from the people she’s waiting for? Another family? Because her mother . . . her adoptive mother, Renee, died two months ago and left her all alone in the world. That’s not it. Presley isn’t afraid of being alone. She has no siblings. She lost her beloved father to cancer when she was a young child. This inner sense of disconnect has nothing to do with Renee’s death. Presley feels a calling, like there’s someone else in the universe searching for her. She’s not looking to disrupt anyone’s life. She simply wants to know who her people are. To look into the faces of others and see something of herself.
All her life, Presley has been a square peg trying to fit into Renee’s round hole. Renee was an overachiever, a producer with one of Nashville’s top country music record labels. Renee prided herself on being a hard-ass and faulted Presley for being soft. Presley prefers to think of herself as easygoing and good-natured. Renee’s death was permission granted for her to find her round hole.
When a burgundy minivan rounds the corner at the far end of the street, Presley sits up straight in her seat. She glimpses the attractive middle-aged blonde behind the wheel when the van pulls into the driveway at 237. A pair of teenage girls, dressed in athletic shorts and tank tops with field hockey sticks tucked under their arms and backpacks over their shoulders, emerge from the van. Tall and lean with blonde ponytails, they look enough alike to be twins. Could these girls be her half sisters? Their mother, an older version of her daughters, is slower to get out of the car. She holds a phone to her ear and wears a scowl on her face, either angry or upset with the person on the other end.
From a distance, Presley sees no physical resemblance between the three blondes across the street and her own auburn hair and gray eyes. There’s always a chance the torn envelope got stuffed in her adoption folder by accident. But not likely, since her mother’s other files were in meticulous order. According to Zillow, number 237 was last sold seventy years ago. Presley assumes to this woman’s
