Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) Read online

  “Anna DeStefano is a treasure!”

  — Teresa Medeiros

  New York Times–bestselling author

  “Fans of this series, Echoes of the Heart, are going to love this one.”

  — My Book Addiction,

  for His Darling Bride

  “Anna DeStefano is a rare talent.”

  — Brenda Novak,

  New York Times bestselling author

  “A completely captivating story.”

  — The Reading Café,

  for Let Me Love You Again

  “One of the most powerful novellas I’ve ever had the fortune to read and review.”

  — Fresh Fiction,

  for Here in My Heart

  “A beautiful story showing how love can overcome all obstacles”

  — 4.8 Amazon STARS out of 5,

  for Christmas on Bellevue Lane

  “You won’t want to put it down.”

  — Night Owl Reviews,

  for Love on Mimosa Lane

  “One of the best books I’ve read all year.”

  — Kristan Higgins,

  New York Times–bestselling author,

  for Three Days on Mimosa Lane

  “Celebrates the resilience of not only the holiday spirit, but the human spirit as well.”

  — USA Today,

  for Christmas on Mimosa Lane

  Echoes of the Heart Series

  Here in My Heart: A Novella

  Let Me Love You Again

  Christmas on Bellevue Lane: A Novella

  His Darling Bride

  Seasons of the Heart Series

  Christmas on Mimosa Lane

  Three Days on Mimosa Lane

  Love on Mimosa Lane

  Daughter Series

  The Unknown Daughter

  The Runaway Daughter

  The Perfect Daughter

  Atlanta Heroes Series

  Because of a Boy

  To Protect the Child

  To Save a Family

  The Firefighter’s Secret Baby

  Other Contemporary Romance

  A Sweetbrook Family

  All American Father

  The Prodigal’s Return

  Romantic Suspense

  Shattered Witness

  Daughter Series

  Atlanta Heroes Series

  Science Fiction/Fantasy

  Secret Legacy

  Dark Legacy

  Other Novellas/Anthologies

  “Weekend Meltdown” in Winter Heat

  “Baby Steps” in Mother of the Year

  “A Small-Town Sheriff” (Daughter series)*

  Praise for Anna DeStefano

  Also by Anna DeStefano

  WAITING FOR YOUR LOVE

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Read ALL the Echoes of the Heart stories!

  Excerpt from His Darling Bride

  Excerpt from Let Me Love You Again

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Anna DeStefano

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author/publisher.

  Published by Anna DeStefano

  www.annawrites.com

  ASIN-B01CPO5KIK

  Cover design and ePub formatting by Dayna Linton

  Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin, FoxPrint Editorial

  “Happy Independence Day,” Clair Summerville toasted.

  It was outrageously warm outside. And refreshingly silent, apart from the sizzle-pop-BOOM! of the pyrotechnics being set off down by Chandler Lake. Fireworks preened across the sky. She raised her beer to the indigo night, toasting her first solo July Fourth since high school.

  Not that she minded the solo part. Not a bit. In fact, she should have called things quits with Don Lovette sooner.

  Like two weeks ago, when he’d moseyed up to her at Bethany Darling and Mike Taylor’s housewarming party. It had been too early to tempt fate again. Or her mother’s well-intentioned meddling into Clair’s love life. Not when Clair had only just the night before parted company in the friendliest of ways with Travis Bryant—after her mother had cornered him at Grapes and Beans and sweetly but unabashedly lobbied him to make an honest woman out of Clair.

  Travis. A guy who was even less interested than Clair was in cultivating forever. So she’d happily backpedaled away from him…and straight into Don’s orbit. Why had she assumed that relationship wouldn’t end in disaster, too?

  Everyone had been having fun tonight at her friend Nicole’s Fourth of July potluck, despite the meteorologist’s prediction of rain. Then Don had mentioned running into Clair’s mother yesterday. He’d tried not to look panic-stricken as he’d related his and Barbara Summerville’s bizarre conversation. But before Clair’s eyes, his easy-come, easy-go manner had done a complete one-eighty. He’d all but broken out in hives. She’d finally put them both out of his misery by saying that maybe things between them weren’t working out.

  Her mother had officially cut the final tendril of dignity tethering the woman to reality.

  And tomorrow Clair was due to endure another wave of Babs’ bless-your-heart running commentary on what Clair should be doing with her personal life. And should not be doing about the monumental decisions looming in her business world.

  Shuddering, she added her empty Stella bottle to the growing nest of its hollowed-out friends. Then she opened a fresh beer and tipped it back, reveling in imported tanginess.

  She’d left her friends behind over an hour ago to play their third round of Cards Against Humanity. Escaping in Bethany’s truck, she’d headed for her favorite alone spot in Chandlerville, Georgia, at the edge of a family friend’s farm. The bluff’s greenish-yellow, waist-high meadow grass swayed beneath a full moon. From her vantage point, cozied up under a light quilt, she could pretend the fireworks cascading through the starry sky were for her alone.

  She should be celebrating, and not just because sulking was a waste of time. Her life was great, satisfying, fulfilling. ALL PAWS, her pet-grooming and pet-concierge business, was thriving. So what if she’d fallen short of the relationship milestones her mother had conditioned her daughters to achieve, since Clair and Rachael were in diapers?

  Clair had no interest in nabbing herself a nice young man of her mother’s choosing. Or in securing a marriage she could pretend was the be-all, end-all of her life’s dreams—even if it meant settling the way her mother had. Clair’s busy life, if not always as nice as Barbara Summerville would like it to be, suited Clair just fine.

  Except that after another breakup from yet another guy she should have been sadder to see go, she was a little tipsy. And drinking the night away had never been her thing.

  Staring into the steadily increasing drizzle, she accepted that she was fast becoming a mirror image of the soggy doberman pinscher snoozing beside her.

  “We’re wild and free single ladies, Tilda,” she announced to her companion, while the tailgate of Bethany’s truck left divots in Clair’s backside. “Living the good life.”

/>   She shifted her weight, shoved drooping blond bangs away from her face, and drank more of the final beer she’d nabbed from the party. Matilda, a regular client’s pampered princess, raised her head. Soulful, knowing eyes blinked at Clair. Then Tilda yawned and resettled her chin onto her paws to watch the fireworks that would be called off soon if the rain kept up.

  Clair pinned her skeptical sidekick with an accusing glare. “Why can’t Babs get it through her head? Settling isn’t for me.”

  Not when Clair’s heart belonged to someone who was never going to be hers—her best friend in the world, whom she had no business spinning forever-after fantasies about. That was one disaster that she was determined to steer clear of.

  She finished her Stella and hiccupped. Matilda gave a doberman sigh, confirming that their freedom ride to the meadow had officially become sloppy.

  How was Clair going to get them home now?

  Almost everyone she knew was happily engaged in their holiday plans. In fact, off the top of her head she could think of only one designated driver to call for a rescue. A certain someone whom, if she reached out to him, would most definitely put a crimp in her night’s disaster-aversion plans.

  Matilda stood and shook herself. Gumball-size blops of chilly rain began to fall. She jumped to the ground with a thud and took shelter under the cab. Clair scowled at the next spray of fireworks—likely the last. She sighed, gave in to the inevitable, and rummaged her smartphone from her purse. She thumbed to her Favorites list and its top entry.

  Two rings later the call connected to a mumbled curse.

  “What?” demanded Conrad Lancaster.

  “Feel up to taking a lovely drive into the country?” she prompted.

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m a weak woman, Conny. I usually know my limits, but I seem to have barreled over them tonight.”

  “Like Houdini over Niagara? What did your mother do this time?”

  “She told Don she thought he and I would make beautiful babies together.” Clair’s Stella-induced pity party shifted into high gear. “‘I had no idea you were on the baby track,’ he said to me tonight. Me. Some guy was looking at me as if I were picturing us driving around town in a SUV filled with Don-and-Clair-Forever doppelgängers.”

  Conrad grunted. “At which point you pitched a tantrum in the middle of Nic’s party?”

  “Hardly. Folks were heading to McC’s Tavern next, to pregame before taking in the fireworks at the park. I didn’t want to put a damper on the night. Especially for poor, shell-shocked Don.”

  “Another guy you set your sights on because you knew he’d run far and fast at the first hint of either one of you getting serious.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So you went for exfil one,” Conrad mumbled, mostly asleep still.

  “Was there any other choice?” Clair had years ago gotten used to Conny’s military combat jargon as he tracked her relationship status. “Polite public extraction was the perfect tactic. Don nearly fell to his knees in gratitude.” And hadn’t that been a high self-esteem moment. Thanks, Mom. “He could have at least acted like he was sorry to see me go.”

  “Darlin’”—Conrad’s deep chuckle rumpled up her insides the way no other man could—“if you want to be more than an instant afterthought when you ditch the next poor bastard who falls at your gorgeous feet, you’ll have to let a guy mean more to you than a way to convince your mother that you’re still looking for the one. Especially when she seems determined to see a ring on your finger before the summer’s out.”

  Clair used her free hand to swipe wringing-wet hair behind her ears. “You make her sound positively predatory.”

  “You’re a gentle, loving woman, Clair Bear. But your mother’s gone off her rocker. And if you wanted support tonight, you should have drunk-dialed another man from deep sleep.”

  She squinted blearily at her watch. Its oversize face swam into focus. “It’s barely ten o’clock.”

  “And I just came off my third double in five days. Which you would have remembered if your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad evening hadn’t gotten the best of you.”

  “Right.” Conrad’s work schedule was crazed, and he was a single father, a widower, whose number one priority outside the ER was keeping his son’s life as calm and normal as possible. “Sorry.”

  She sneezed and eased off the tailgate. A sizzle of lightning cut across the churning sky. Thunder clapped, making her jump and lose her footing. She slid to the ground with a shriek, mud swooshing over every exposed inch of her. A coating of sludge slimed its way inside her red-white-and-blue, tie-dyed miniskirt.

  “Eww…”

  “Everything okay?” Conrad asked.

  She dragged herself to her feet. “Never better.”

  She trudged through the wet grass, opened the truck’s passenger door, and whistled for Matilda. The doberman slithered from her hiding place and nimbly launched herself inside, mud and wet dog smell and all. Bethany, an artist to her core, wouldn’t blink at a little superficial grime. But Clair nevertheless made a mental note to have her friend’s perky ride detailed before returning it.

  “I’m sorry, Conny,” she apologized again. “I’ll call someone else to pour me into bed. But be a pall, okay? Stay on the line a little longer. Help me clear my head?”

  “Where are you?” He sounded more alert. The sexy roughness was fading from his voice.

  “The Millers’ field.” She slid behind the wheel and slammed the driver’s door shut, exhausted and soaked and not smelling any better than Tilda. “Up on the bluff.”

  “In a thunderstorm?”

  She took stock of her ruined Independence Day ensemble. “The way I look, not even lightning would get close enough to hurt me.”

  “I’m sure you’re a knockout.”

  “Says the man who can’t keep his eyes open.”

  “You’ve been Chandlerville’s resident goddess,” he mumbled over a yawn, “since boys in elementary school pulled your pigtails to get your attention. Stop fishing for compliments.”

  She wasn’t. Not from him. That had never been what she and Conny were about, no matter how much more than best friends she wanted now.

  “All I’m fishing for,” she said, staying within the boundaries that had protected their friendship since they were children, “is enough sober brain cells to get me home.”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Enough.” She heard him—pictured him—sitting up in bed.

  “Since when do you get sloppy over a guy? Bachelor number whatever.”

  “Don.”

  “Whom you only latched onto to put the kibosh on your mother’s meddling. Why not tell Babs straight out that the married, domestic perfection she’s lobbying for isn’t for you?”

  Clair’s mind flashed to Barbara’s would-be future for her. Quaint and cozy. Dinner simmering on the stove after Clair picked up the kids from carpool. Her handsome, successful husband rushing through the door after a long day at work, claiming a kiss from his perfectly coiffed wife.

  She rested her head on the steering wheel, picturing Conrad in the staring role.

  “Aren’t you due to walk the plank tomorrow,” he asked, “at your mother’s shindig?”

  “What would Independence Day weekend be without a Summerville family barbecue? I’m doomed.”

  “Especially now that you don’t have Don as your plus-one shield.”

  “That’s not why I was dating him.”

  “Of course not.”

  She squared her shoulders. “I’ll be fine. By morning my Stella-induced psychosis will fade, and neither of us will remember a word of this.”

  “I’ll remember.” Conrad’s concern caressed her. His never-fail compassion for her situation was a pillow she wanted to snuggle up to. “So will you. Stop letting what your mother thinks about your life be your compass.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then stop overthinking what you think about your life ev
ery time you’re alone and you’re not working your butt off and there’s nothing and no one to distract you. Or, if you’re that unhappy with things lately, do something to fix whatever’s wrong. I’m not sure what’s been going on the last few weeks, mostly because you’ve been avoiding me. But—”

  “I’m not unhappy,” she insisted.

  But she had been avoiding him. And she felt like a rat because of it. Sooner rather than later, she’d have to tell him why. But not tonight.

  “Nothing’s going on,” she insisted.

  “Of course not.”

  She stared out into the pouring rain that had definitely put a premature end to the fireworks.

  Unhappy was too simple an emotion to describe the sense that she was drowning. Her life was on the precipice of irrevocably changing for the better. But instead of being excited by her prospects, she felt lost. Each time she spoke with Conrad, it was all she could do not to blurt out the crazy notion that he could share the new world opening up for her. That it could be a fresh start for both of them. That maybe she was ready to build her life around him, the way her mother had always told her she’d want to when she finally found the right guy.

  Meanwhile the last thing Conrad needed disrupting his recently settled world, after years of fighting not to lose everything he valued most, was for Clair to pull the rug out from under their friendship. Which was exactly what she’d be doing if she messed with the good thing they’d always had. Especially when she had no way of knowing where they’d land on the other side. Look at what had happened with Travis and Don, and all the guys she’d dated before them.

  “Don’t scold me,” she said into her smartphone. “I could take that right now from anyone but you.”