Someone Like Her. Janice Johnson Kay
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“I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered.
“About?” Adrian asked as he paused in his task of sorting through the box.
“Misjudging you.”
He met her gaze, his expression unreadable. “Are you so sure yet that you did?”
She nodded. “Pretty sure.”
After a moment of searching her face, he said, “Thank you for that, then.” He stood and held out a hand. “I know you don’t have all afternoon. Shall we move on?”
Lucy stared at his hand, absurdly afraid that if she laid hers in it, she truly would be sorry.
Because touching him might be dangerous to her peace of mind.
Available in May 2010 from Mills & Boon® Special Moments™
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Someone Like Her
BY Janice Kay Johnson
Janice Kay Johnson writes novels about love and family – about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
“EVERY TABLE FULL except the reserved one, and it’s a Tuesday.” Carrying two glasses of iced tea, Mabel paused to grin at Lucy Peterson. “Those new soups are a hit.”
She continued into the crowded dining room of the café. Lucy, who had just finished ringing up a customer, looked around with satisfaction. Mabel was right. Business kept getting better and better.
The bell over the door rang. Lucy’s head turned as her guest slipped in, her carriage confident, her gaze shy. The hat lady.
Last time Lucy had seen her, the day before yesterday, she’d carried herself decorously and yet with regal authority. The pillbox hat had said it all. She was often Queen Elizabeth—the second, she always emphasized. She didn’t actually look much like Queen Elizabeth II, being slender rather than matronly in build, with hair that had been blond when she first appeared in Middleton, perhaps ten years ago. Now her hair was primarily white, as wispy and flyaway as the woman whose head it crowned.
But today, she wore a flower-printed dress and a broad-brimmed hat festooned with flowers. Her face was softer, her carriage more youthful, her gaze vaguer.
This was always the awkward moment. Lucy had to pretend she knew who Middleton’s one and only homeless person was. Calling her by the wrong name seemed so insulting.
Talk in the café hadn’t dimmed at all. Everyone knew the hat lady was a project of Lucy’s. Lucy’s Aunt Marian called, “Your majesty,” and resumed her one-sided conversation with Uncle Sidney, who almost never said a word, and failed entirely to notice the hat lady’s astonished stare.
Lucy went to her and said in a gentle voice, “I’m so glad you could come to lunch today. Your table’s right here, by the window. Did you see the crocus are blooming?”
The hat lady smiled at her, her face crinkling with pleasure. “God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.”
Okay. It was a clue. She still had a British accent, which was mostly a given, although not long ago she’d been Elizabeth Taylor, the accent wholly American. She had an astonishing gift for accents; a few months ago, she’d done a splendid Eliza Doolittle,