Love Comes Home

By Sylvia Nickels

Love Comes Home is a collection of ten love stories showing that love can be found, lost and found again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sylvia Nickels
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781311670830

Sylvia Nickels

Sylvia Nickels was born and grew up in rural Georgia. She moved to Northeast Tennessee many years ago where she now lives and writes. Several of her stories and books are set in that area.

Book preview

Love Comes Home

by

Mallory Marrs

Copyright 2007

All rights reserved by the author.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All of the stories in this volume are works of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

A Different Drummer Publishing - Smashwords edition

USA

Contents

Wedding at the 3LC

Dancing Shadows

Digging for Love

Dream Date

The Wedding Bus

The Perfect Shoes

Images

To See the World

Comfort with a C

Home to Sweetwater

~~~ ()()() ~~~ ()()() ~~~

...Moira finds love in the hometown she vowed never to set foot in again.

WEDDING AT THE 3LC

Knoxville spread out from its center like a sprawling field of mushrooms. Approaching Cherokee Lake I was finally leaving the city behind. The late August sun, now almost below the horizon, cast long shadows on the shore, but drew a few golden sparkles from the wakes of half a dozen speed boats enjoying a twilight spin far out on the water. Sourwoods on the lower slopes of the Appalachian foothills showed a little color, but there was still a lot of green on most of the trees. It would be another month or more before the leaf peepers would be out in force.

All the way from Pascagoula, I’d kept to the various speed limits on the Interstates, as I usually did. But my foot lightened still more as the wheels of my Dodge Caliber rolled off the miles, farther and farther up what used to be the only route to my destination, Northeast Tennessee. The Madden By-Pass curved back into the highway and the fringes of the seat of Madden County fell behind me. I glanced at the odometer and saw that my speed had dropped to forty-five as other drivers whipped past me, some giving me dirty looks. Port Holston still lay fifty-five miles ahead. At this rate the LaQuinta would have given my room to somebody else by the time I arrived.

Twenty years ago I cut all ties to Port Holston, swore I’d never return in this lifetime. Yet here I was on the last leg of the seven hundred fifty mile journey back to my hometown. Brilliant lights illuminated the bright yellow and red of a McDonald’s just ahead and I decided to stop. I hadn’t stopped since I checked out the new, to me, Tennessee Welcome Center and I’d opted to take US 11W out of Knoxville, instead of I-40/81, so there were no convenient rest areas along the way.

As a thank you I stopped at the counter after using the restroom and bought a cup of coffee. I got in the car and sat sipping the hot liquid. I’d swung off I-40 on impulse when I reached the 11-W/Madden exit. I was still asking myself why I chose to drive through the county where Cleo, my best friend all through school, had grown up. The friend who made it her mission to beguile my father into marrying her three months after my mother died.

We’re in love, Moira. Cleo held her hands out to me, voice soft and wheedling, but her light blue eyes held a calculating look. I suspected she was feeling just a bit doubtful of her ability to trap my father into marriage if I fought hard enough against it. She needn’t have worried. I hadn’t a chance against my beautiful blonde friend and her shapely body which she gave so willingly.

My father tried to persuade me to give my blessing, or at least accept his foolishness. You want me to be happy, don’t you? Lenore is gone and she would -

Don’t you dare mention my mother in the same breath with that whore! I blazed, turned on my heel and walked out of my father’s life. I never saw him again.

I didn’t know when he kicked Cleo out and divorced her after he caught her cheating on him just a year after the marriage. I was out of the country and incommunicado for most of the three years before he died. Aunt Grace, his only sister, finally tracked down my employer and got through to me with the news when I returned to Miami. His will left all his extensive real estate and other holdings to me since I was his only heir. Aunt Grace has more money than she knows what to do with. I left everything in the hands of his financial advisers. My work with a charitable foundation which designs schools in developing countries gave me satisfaction and supplied my minimal needs.

I was in and out of Miami, my home base at the time, for ten more years. After Katrina devastated the Gulf coast I felt I ought to use my design talent to help my own country. I moved to Pascagoula, MS and kept an apartment there as I traveled from community to community doing what I could to help schools become operational again.

I’d just returned home from a site in Pass Christian for a couple days R&R, at the insistence of my boss, when Aunt Grace called. Aunt Grace led her own busy life and never nagged me to come back to Port Holston.

Hi, Auntie. How are you, still hosting scavenger hunts for charity?

Oh, that’s so last decade, Moira. GPS took all the fun out of it. It’s all silent auctions now, which I can’t stand.

I laughed. So what do you do for fun now?

Developments. She replied.

Developments? What kind of developments? Half listening, I flipped through the mail that had accumulated while I was in Pass Christian. Ads, a couple of bills, invitation to a party now past.

Real estate, business and housing developments. It’s very exciting.

I dropped the mail. Exciting? You’re kidding, Aunt Grace. In Port Holston?

Oh, yes. And that’s why I’m calling.

Calling me about your business developments?

Well, my part’s done with that. You remember Gordon and I owned some property together down near the river.

I remember.

Gordon deeded our joint property to me before he died, but kept his large tract which included the house.

The financial adviser told me about that.

A young developer, well, he’s a lot younger than me, about your age, has designed a wonderful multi-use district for all our property along the river. Shopping, housing, parks. It’s beautiful, Moira.

I’m sure. But ...

Silence hummed on the line as Aunt Grace hesitated. You’re still wondering what you have to do with it all?

Ummm, yes. It wasn’t like Aunt Grace to be coy like this. She usually came right to the point in her conversations. No beating about the bush.

It’s been empty for fifteen years. Gordon restored it to last a lifetime and you’ve kept the house in repair, I know, but time does take a toll. As part of this development it would be the crown jewel of River Colony.

I dropped to my one armchair in front of my one second story window, staring outside. The tranquil Gulf lay across Highway 90, but I was seeing the Holston River from my bedroom window over seven hundred miles North and thirty years ago. Even though I hadn’t returned to my childhood home in twenty years