Here With Me

But he was more than that…

He was ponytail-pulling, ice down your shirt teasing, throw you in the lake screaming…

Strong, tanned arms and bright green eyes over a heart-stopping, naughty grin…

Did I mention his tight end?

I gave him my first real kiss, my heart, my everything.

I said I’d wait for him…

I’m still waiting, because Taron Rhodes is still the man of my dreams,

And I have a secret that has his bright green eyes.

Noel LaGrange stole my heart when she was only eighteen—pushing me off a flatbed and calling me a city slicker.

Her brother Sawyer would kick my ass if he knew how many times we made out that summer, how close we got.

Everything changed when Sawyer and I joined the military.

We were honorably discharged, but I didn’t go to her.

Instead, I went back to the city… where no amount of money, no amount of pills can heal this wound.

Only her whiskey eyes and dark hair, her slim arms and her sweet scent, give me hope.

I broke her heart just as surely as I broke mine, but I’m going back to make it right.

If she’s still waiting…

(WAIT FOR ME is a STAND-ALONE small-town, second-chance romance. No cheating. No cliffhangers.)

Prologue

Noel

My momma was too beautiful to die.

At least, that’s what everybody said.

Penelope Jean Harris was the scion of our town’s founder and prettiest girl in three parishes. She was head majorette in high school and homecoming queen and prom queen and every other queen. She was Peach Princess, Teen Dixie Peach, and Miss Dixie Gem. She would’ve gone on to be Miss Louisiana if my daddy hadn’t made her a Mrs.

I was eleven—that strange age between too big to play in the creek in only my panties and too little to sleep without the closet light on. I loved Dolly Parton and butterflies and picking peaches straight off my daddy’s trees and eating them, jumping in the lake and running after jackrabbits with my little brother Leon.

In the summer the trees were rich green, and the sweet scent of peach juice filled the air. In the winter they were sparse, bony hands, reaching palms up to heaven. Branches like fingers spread, grasping for hope.

Momma’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners whenever she looked at me or my brothers or my daddy. Her sweet smile was warm sunshine when I got cold.

She would wrap me in her arms and sing an old sad song when I was sleepy or cranky or “out of sorts,” which is how she’d put it. I pictured “sorts” as ivory dominoes I could line up and knock down or slap off the table, across the room. I’d pull her silky brown hair around me like a cape and close my eyes and breathe…

Then she was gone.

She went for a walk one crisp winter evening along the narrow, dirt road that runs past our orchard out to the old house on the hill. Frost was in the air; bonfires were burning. The man driving the truck said she came out of nowhere.

He never saw her.

She never saw him.