My Sweet Home Alabama: Honeysuckle Hill

By Erin Knightley

~A Honeysuckle Hill Novella~

Delaney Hart is looking for a fresh start—which means leaving Alabama behind for good. But when her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, she has no choice but to rely on the last person she expected to find in backwater Alabama: Beauregard Rodney, the former friend who months earlier had accused her fiance of cheating on her. The fallout was ugly—especially when she discovered months later that Beau had actually been right.

Back home in Honeysuckle Hill to temporarily fill the void in the family business left by his brother’s overseas deployment, Beau’s got more than enough on his plate. The last thing he needs is little Miss Silver Spoon Delaney making demands on his time. He hasn't forgotten the things she said to him, and would like nothing more than to see her taillights headed out of town, but when a back-ordered part means she’s stuck in his tiny town for two weeks, he has no choice but to put up with her.

Despite their best efforts to ignore the growing attraction between them, sparks start to fly. But with Beau’s life on hold back in Birmingham and Delaney’s new job waiting in Florida, can they ever find a middle ground?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin Knightley
• Release date: Jan 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386940050

Book preview

My Sweet Home Alabama

A Honeysuckle Hill Novella

By Erin Knightley

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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My Sweet Home Alabama

Copyright © 2017 by Erin Knightley

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

Books by Erin Knightley

The SEALED WITH A KISS Series

More Than a Stranger

A Taste for Scandal

Flirting With Fortune

Miss Mistletoe (novella)

The PRELUDE TO A KISS Series

The Baron Next Door

The Earl I Adore

The Duke Can Go to the Devil

The Viscount Risks It All

The ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE Novella Series

Ruined by a Rake

Scandalized by a Scoundrel

Deceived by a Duke

Vexed by a Viscount

Books with James Patterson’s BookShots Flames

Learning to Ride

The Return

Honeysuckle Hill Novella

Sweetest Home Alabama

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

About the Author

Chapter One

This was what happened when you assumed things were looking up after hitting rock bottom.

Delaney Hart shaded her eyes from the blinding rays of the July sun and looked down the long, empty expanse of highway in either direction. It was hotter than Hades and as empty as a school parking lot on Christmas Day.

Crap.

She should have known better than to blindly follow her phone’s GPS directions when it told her to get off the expressway somewhere south of Montgomery. But honestly—how was it possible in today’s world to still have places that weren’t covered by cell service? There were detailed maps of the Mariana Trench out there, for heaven’s sake. There shouldn’t be a freaking black hole over southern Alabama.

Shouldn’t being the operative word.

The last town she’d seen was a good half hour behind her, and it felt as though she were going deeper into no-man’s-land with every mile.  She’d pulled over with the vain hope that stopping would give the phone a chance to locate the tower’s signal, but the place on the screen where the reception bars were supposed to be was still maddeningly blank.

A car rounded the bend a few hundred yards down the road and she briefly considered waving it down. It was a lifted truck of some sort, with gigantic wheels that whined like a jet engine and a front grill that was liberally coated in mud. Perhaps not the best choice of vehicles to flag down in the middle of nowhere.

It whizzed by at top speed, sending a blast of hot, sandy air washing over her and pinging her legs with sharp bits of gravel. Sighing, she slid back onto the black leather seats of the decade-old Mercedes she’d bought less than three weeks ago. It had only been three or four minutes since she’d pulled over, but the sun-heated material practically flambéed the back of her legs.

None of this would have happened in her sleek little SLK, with its butter-soft beige leather interior and state-of-the-art navigation system. Of course, if she still had her old car, then she would still have her old life, and she wouldn’t be driving through backwater Alabama on the way to Florida in the first place.

As soon as that thought surfaced, Delaney resolutely shoved it away. She was determined to stay positive about the move. She was starting over. In a beachfront bungalow, no less. How many people had that chance, anyway? Yes, she’d lost just about everything and everyone she’d known and loved in the past two months, and yes, she would be working for a resort, not visiting it, but she still had her health, her MBA, and a world of opportunity in front of her.

If she could just figure out how to get where she was going.

Okay, she’d go another few miles in hopes of finding a town where she could buy a real, hold-in-your-hands paper map. If she found herself further into creepy banjo music land, she’d turn around and retrace her route back to the expressway, even if she would lose three hours total from the detour. Closing the door, she started the car, put it in gear, and tried to turn the wheel. Nothing happened. Then a light went on in her dash that made her stomach plummet straight to her sand-coated toes.

Ooooh, no.

Sweat popped out on her forehead as she tried again. It moved a little, but it was like trying to turn a rusted bank vault wheel. Obviously something was very, very wrong. Maybe it just needed a good reset. A control, alt, delete of the car world. She turned off the car and sat for a second, her heart kicking in her chest as the seconds stretched out.

Good Lord, what if she couldn’t get it working right? She had no cell service, no friends within a hundred mile radius, and no fancy roadside assistance button. She hadn’t seen a real town in dozens of miles, and she didn’t have the first clue where the hell she even was.

Wiping the sweat from her brow with the short sleeve of her peasant shirt, she sat back and exhaled. Was there a name for what a person hit when they busted through rock bottom? The pit of hell, perhaps? Because Delaney was pretty sure she’d just hit whatever it was.

"Please," she said on a groan as she gripped the key and tried again. The engine turned over just fine, but the light still mocked her from the dashboard, and the wheel was still throwing a fit. At least it was running? Tentatively, she started forward, holding her breath that maybe she could steer if it was moving.

And it worked! Sort of.

It still felt like someone was fighting hard against her efforts to steer, but it wasn’t as bad as when she was sitting still. Increasing her speed, she drove with a death grip on the wheel, her hands locked at ten and two. The rush of wind through the open window felt like air from a hair dryer, but as sweaty as she was, it actually felt good. The car was moving, and that’s all that mattered. She didn’t dare run the AC, the radio, or even the headlights. Stupid as she knew it probably was, she wanted all the car’s energy focused on keeping what little steering ability she had left going until she found a place to ask for help.

With her hands clenched vise-like over the wheel, she barely breathed as the car bumbled its way down the highway. The houses were few and far between, with the space between them measured in miles at first. But then, they started getting closer together. Hope rose inside her like a battle torn flag, and when at last she saw the sign, she nearly cried with relief.

Honeysuckle Hill: Population 2,563 ½. Come and sit a spell, y’all!

Two thousand, five hundred sixty-three and a half? Despite her anxiety about the car, Delaney chuckled. If the town was small enough to count what she guessed was a pregnancy, she could only hope that there’d be a mechanic to help her.

She slowed as she entered the town limits, taking in the large Victorian homes on either side of the tree-lined street. They looked like real-life dollhouses. Some were in disrepair, but most were beautiful, with fun color schemes and lovely landscaping. A ragtag construction crew was eating lunch under a gigantic oak tree in the front lawn of one of the more dilapidated houses while a lumberjack-looking man scowled down at a clipboard. Without even looking up, several of them waved as she drove past.

The gesture made her feel marginally better. She wanted to find a legitimate car place to help her, but at least she knew they were there if she broke down before finding a mechanic. Mentally crossing her fingers, she continued on.

The houses gave way to small stand-alone businesses—a law office to the right and a doctor’s office on the left—before she entered Honeysuckle Hill’s main street, which was helpfully named Main Street. What it lacked in imagination, it at least made up for in quaintness. Brick walkways, strategically placed oak trees, slanted parking spaces—the place was a regular Mayberry wannabe.

And it was small.

The entire street’s offerings consisted of a beauty shop, an appliance sales and repair place—which she didn’t know still existed—a thrift store, diner, antiques shop, a darling little cafe, an ice cream parlor that was all of six feet wide, and an honest to God general store that looked at least a hundred years old.

What Delaney didn’t see was a mechanic shop. As she