Chances Are

By Lisa Plumley

"Ms. Plumley's story is endearing and heartwarming, with winning protagonists. This is a story that fuels dreams of great love!" —Rendezvous

An antique perfume bottle hurtles genealogist Haley Madison back to 1890--and into the home of widowed mine owner Matt Chance. Eager to experience the family life she's never known, Haley jumps at the chance to care for Matt's lonely children, and finds herself falling for their father. But when the spring celebration she helped plan threatens to be her goodbye party, Haley must make a drastic choice if she wants her newfound love to last forever.

(this short story was originally published by Kensington Publishing in the anthology Timeless Spring)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Plumley
• Release date: May 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476189161

Lisa Plumley

USA TODAY best-selling author Lisa Plumley has delighted readers worldwide with more than two dozen popular romances. Visit Lisa at www.lisaplumley.com, friend her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lisaplumleybooks, or follow her on Twitter @LisaPlumley today!

Book preview

CHANCES ARE

by

Lisa Plumley

Smashwords Edition

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previously published by Kensington Publishing

in the anthology Timeless Spring

An antique perfume bottle hurtles genealogist Haley Madison back to 1890—and into the home of widowed mine owner Matt Chance. Eager to experience the family life she's never known, Haley jumps at the chance to care for Matt's lonely children, and finds herself falling for their father. But when the spring celebration she helped plan threatens to be her goodbye party, Haley must make a drastic choice if she wants her newfound love to last forever.

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Copyright © 2012 by Lisa Plumley

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, then please respect the hard work of this author by purchasing your own copy. Thank you!

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USA TODAY best-selling author Lisa Plumley has delighted readers worldwide with more than three dozen popular novels. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and editions, and includes contemporary romances, western historical romances, paranormal romances, and a variety of stories in romance anthologies. Her fresh, funny style has been likened to such reader favorites as Rachel Gibson, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, LaVyrle Spencer, and Jennifer Crusie, but her unique characterization is all her own.

To sign up for new-book reminder e-mails, read first-chapter excerpts, catch sneak previews of upcoming books, and more, visit www.lisaplumley.com today.

Lisa also writes cozy mysteries as Colette London. Her Chocolate Whisperer series (featuring chocolate expert—and amateur sleuth!—Hayden Mundy Moore) kicked off with Criminal Confections and now includes Dangerously Dark, The Semisweet Hereafter, and Dead and Ganache, all from Kensington Books.

Visit www.colettelondon.com today to find fantastic chocolate recipes, sign up for new-book reminder e-mails, and catch sneak previews of upcoming books in the Chocolate Whisperer series.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Note from the Author

Email Reminders

What People Are Saying...

Series Books by Lisa Plumley

Complete Book List: Lisa Plumley

Cozy Mysteries by Lisa Plumley (writing as Colette London)

Complete Book List: Colette London

CHANCES ARE

by

Lisa Plumley

Chapter One

Early March, present day

For a ghost town, the community of Landslide, Arizona, had a whole lot of people in it.

And every last one of them was outside enjoying the gorgeous, not-a-cloud-in-sight springtime afternoon...right smack in the middle of the street.

Must be spring fever, Haley Madison decided. She stared at the crowds of tourists wandering happily down the two-lane blacktop in front of her Jeep, then eased her grasp on her steering wheel. She wasn't getting anyplace in this melee. Not to the restored Chance mansion she'd glimpsed at the top of the winding street, not to her appointment with the curator who maintained the house, and not to the Podunk restaurant her photographer had recommended for lunch, either.

Worst of all, she would not be getting to the bathroom she'd desperately needed to visit since beginning the two thousand foot ascent into the mountains that Landslide had been carved out of in the late nineteenth century.

Haley bit her lip and scanned the shops lining the street, hoping against the odds to see a nice, familiar, fast food joint—or anyplace else that looked as though it might have an easily accessible public restroom. Instead, she realized that in Landslide, apparently, nothing was easily accessible.

Crowded, yes. That, the place managed quite nicely. Tumbledown, too. Crumbled brick buildings nestled cheek and jowl with clapboard Victorian houses, most of them renovated to house gift shops and restaurants. Other, homelier buildings leaned into the jagged mountainside looming behind them, their windows shuttered with nailed-on plywood. Boulders, yellow-blooming creosote bushes, and walnut trees with dark gnarled trunks and budded new leaves filled the spaces in between.

There wasn't a single pair of golden arches among them.

Haley scrunched her nose and tried to think of something—anything—besides her need to relieve herself of the gobbler gulp diet soda she'd picked up in the Verde Valley and downed during the long drive up the mountainside. At the time, a nice big caffeine jolt had seemed like a good idea, considering the late night she'd spent with her laptop, Chance family genealogy notes, and the lonesome half of her hotel room bed. Now she just wished she'd searched harder for her usual morning pick-me-up of a double latte—a small one.

Finally the clump of tourists parted, streaming toward the sidewalks on either side like fanny-pack-toting trout. Haley nosed her Jeep forward. Behind her, the driver of the yellow Volkswagen beetle that had chugged noisily up the mountain in her wake accelerated, too. She eyed it curiously in the rear view mirror. Since leaving her hotel room this morning, she'd seen at least eight such vehicles, all of them headed toward Landslide.

Obviously, they knew something about the town that she did not.

Which was saying something, Haley figured as she stepped on the brakes again a short way down the block to let a family cross the street. In the three months since Mrs. Maxwell Chance had hired her to research and write her husband's family history, she'd probably found out just about everything there was to know about Landslide.

The Chance family had founded the town, and their mining interests had allowed it to prosper well into the twentieth century. Everything she'd read had suggested it had become a ghost town, but the determined Mrs. Chance had refused to believe anything her husband's family had touched would dare to be less than prosperous, even a hundred years past its prime.

It looked as though she'd been right.

Rats.

Haley frowned through the windshield at the thriving tourism surrounding her and felt herself growing instantly poorer. Whatever had possessed her to make a bet with Mrs. Chance? The woman couldn't possibly have known, from her estate in Connecticut, what Haley would find in the wilds of Arizona. Yet she'd been sure enough of her husband's famed—and reputably inherited—golden touch to wager the cost of first-class plane fare on it.

Maybe the rich really were different. Haley wouldn't know. At the rate her genealogy service was growing, she wasn't in danger of a sudden transformation herself.

The family in front of her finally reached the sidewalk. The mother, keeping her gaze on the popcorn vendor Haley assumed was their destination, struggled to push her balloon-bedecked baby stroller onto the curb. Before she'd so much as hefted an inch, the father crouched slightly to help her, being careful not to upset the little boy riding on his shoulders.

The child shrieked with delight at the movement and clutched his small, chubby hands harder onto his father's head. Their joined laughter carried clearly on the buttery popcorn-scented breeze, wending its way through Haley's rolled-down window...and going straight into the lonely, shuttered parts of her heart.

The ache she felt should have been familiar by now. A childhood spent the way hers had been should have made her immune to wanting what she knew she'd never have. But somehow Haley couldn't shake the longing. It felt as much a part of her as the sudden prickle of tears she felt welling behind her sunglasses did. She blinked them back, swearing beneath her breath. When would she quit being such a soft touch—especially for lost causes?

The yellow Volkswagen driver blared his horn. The sound jolted her upright, heart pounding. Haley glared into the rear view mirror and was aghast at the line of cars—Volkswagens, all—piled up behind her on the twisty road.

Hey, toots! Mr. Yellow VW leaned out his driver's side window, sporting a brown beret and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Move it or lose it.

I'm already losing it, Haley mumbled to herself. Too much more of this poor-me routine, and she'd never get down to work on the Chance book. Her business was all she had. If that went down the tubes, she didn't know what she'd do.

But she knew what she wasn't going to do. She wasn't going to meet the Chance mansion's curator with red-rimmed eyes, windblown hair, and an urgent need to visit the ladies' room. Some distraction was clearly in order.

Go around. She stuck her arm out the window and waved the line of cars past her. For Mr. Yellow VW's benefit, she pointed toward a nearby parking space in front of a white-steepled building sporting a Heavenly Eats sign. I just needed that parking space.

His expression told her he thought she needed more than a convenient place to park. Revving his engine, he led the motorcade past her and up the steep-sloped hill beyond.

Haley sighed and squeezed her Jeep into the parking space she'd seen. Time to get to work.

By the time Haley pulled into the parking lot outside the hilltop Chance mansion, it was nearly sunset. A few hours spent wandering the streets of Landslide had yielded several pages worth of notes, a number of snapshots, and miles of ambience to be recorded later during her usual laptop-and-Letterman writing routine.

With a satisfied smile, she hauled her bulging tote bag from the Jeep's passenger seat. Juggling it