Midnight in Legend, TN

Midnight in Legend, TN
by Magdalena Scott
Amazon Top 100 Paid Bestseller -- Fiction Anthologies


A Ladies of Legend Novella (ebook)

Available: Turquoise Morning Press Bookstore
Multi-format ebook . Kindle . Nook 

Midnight Shelby is starting over. She’s leaving her ex-husband and the big city, big corporate life behind her. But she doesn’t know where she’s going until she happens upon an amazing website advertising real estate in Legend, Tennessee, a place she didn’t know existed. The virtual tour of a large two-story big brick building—a former bar—on the main street of the small town makes her fall in love. With the building, and with the potential for a new life.

She has no idea she’ll also fall in love with the realtor who sells her the property.

Martin McClain was born and raised in the Legend area. His family has lived there for genera-tions, and he feels a duty to preserve it. Part of the reason is his thirteen-year-old son Daniel. The web site Daniel created has been good for business, but although Martin is a real estate agent by trade, he’s wary of newcomers’ motivations. With good reasons—one of them being Daniel’s absent mother.

For love of Legend, and with an eye toward Daniel’s future, Midnight and Martin begin to work together, and learn that in spite of their different starting points, their destination is the same: Home.

Chapter One

“Mayberry…at last.” Midnight Shelby sighed with relief as she climbed out of her gleam-ing, silver Mitsubishi Spyder and stretched her aching body. It had been a long drive today and the day before. But a long drive in a convertible was not a hardship. Especially when that very sexy convertible had been purchased with some of the settlement money her jerk of an ex-husband had grudgingly forked over.

After twenty years of marriage he’d expected her to accept a crumpled note on the kitch-en table as his final farewell. And she nearly had, in order to get it over with. Then sanity re-turned and she hired an excellent attorney who proceeded to make Jeff’s life a living hell, as he’d done to Midnight for much of their marriage. It had finally come down to her tough attorney in stilettos out-haranguing his tough attorney in penny loafers.

Ah, the thrill of victory!

But the twenty years of feeling defeated were hard to forget.

Midnight reached back into the car and picked up the little voodoo doll she’d purchased at a roadside stand. One could find nearly anything at roadside stands in the mountains of Ten-nessee, she’d been surprised to learn. She had avoided the hand-painted offers of bear wrestling and various other oddities, but hadn’t been able to pass up the stand whose purple sign cried out: MEN ARE SCUM! in hot pink letters. Midnight had paid fifteen dollars for the foot-tall white cloth voodoo doll and complimentary three-inch straight pin with “pearl” tip. The dolls came in red, yellow, black, and white, and one could purchase markers to individualize them. A plain white one did her just fine.

Because it didn’t only symbolize her ex-husband, but also the man who’d gotten her fired from the job she’d had—and loved—ever since college. Her co-worker had tried to “comfort” her, in a very physical way, after her divorce. She’d refused. So he had retaliated by pulling strings with upper management. Suddenly Midnight was drawing unemployment checks.

In fact, the doll symbolized men in general to her right now.

She jabbed the pin into the doll a few times where the penis would have been. Some of the stuffing dropped out, as she had worked on that particular area repeatedly since making the purchase a few hours ago.
She sighed again, relaxing a bit. That did feel good.

She tossed the doll back onto the smoky gray leather passenger seat and checked her watch. Just five o’clock. She was early, as usual. She looked around at downtown Legend, a town boasting a population of about six thousand people, according to her realtor’s office. She noted the few people walking along the sidewalk or from car to store, vehicles heading north and south on the unimaginatively named Main Street. In her two days of driving, she’d seen a lot of small towns, some county seats complete with courthouse squares, and some with a single main thoroughfare, very like this one. Before that, small towns existed for her only on television. Mayberry was her favorite, from all those years ago when she’d watched The Andy Griffith Show as a child. It had seemed an idyllic place to live. That’s why when Midnight Shelby’s life had fallen apart, she’d decided to move from big city, big corporate life to the real world—Mayberry—or rather, Legend, Tennessee. She’d found her new town via the Internet. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known it existed. Even with a good magnifying glass, it was barely visible on the atlas.

Midnight noticed a tall, dark-haired man and a teenager—from the build and hair color, obviously his son—having a discussion in front of a building on the next block. The motion of the red and white barber pole indicated the place was open.

It was obvious that the boy didn’t want anything to do with it. He could have been the poster child for Surly Teenager Syndrome. Finally he relented—she could see it as his shoulders sagged—and entered the shop. His father turned fully in Midnight’s direction and she tried not to notice how extremely handsome he was. Strong facial features that would have done a Greek statue proud, broad shoulders... Hmm. In spite of herself, she wondered about the rest of him. How would that stand up to the Greek statue test?

Disgusted with the turn of her thoughts, she reached back into the car for the doll again. She might need to go back to the roadside stand. Maybe buy another voodoo doll and pick up a plate for the front of her car as well. Twenty-five dollars to proclaim MENRSCUM everywhere she drove.

As she felt the doll in her hand, she also noticed the tall, dark man was walking toward her. She quickly stuffed the doll under the seat, jabbing her own finger with the pin as she did so. The immediate stab of pain helped focus her attention on reality instead of retribution. Squeezing a dark red drop of blood from the wound and quickly sucking it clean, she straightened and tucked a stray lock of silky black hair behind her ear. In the city, one didn’t meet strangers’ eyes. But this man looked directly at her, or rather, from her to the convertible and back to her, and she could hardly avoid his eyes without being rude. Snooty. Citified. Not a good beginning in her new hometown.

Midnight pasted what she hoped was a friendly smile onto her face, willing him to pass by. A small, bent, gray-haired couple came along from the other direction, also checking out her car and herself. Midnight used the smile on them. They smiled in return and spoke a word of greeting. Okay, now Mr. Greek Statue. She turned the smile his way, watched as his brow fur-rowed a little. He walked over and stuck out his hand expecting to shake hers.

“Miz Shelby, right? Martin McClain. I wondered if you might have a change of heart and not come.”

Oh, great. My realtor is Mr. Greek Statue.

With an attitude.

She took a good look. Nice tan. Pale blue, long-sleeved polo shirt with a narrow navy stripe, navy Dockers. Very dark brown hair, straight, and a little mullet-ish in the back, dark chocolate eyes, extremely handsome rectangular kind of face. A neatly trimmed goatee. Lips….

“Yes. Right. Good to meet you, Mr. McClain.” Still making an effort at the smile, but with more difficulty, Midnight shook Martin McClain’s hand firmly—and as briefly as possible.

Immediately, she put both of her hands into the back pockets of her designer low-rise jeans. Her intention was to have her hands out of the way. She didn’t want to touch him again, even by accident. Touching a man was not something she was ready to do, and that included a simple handshake. Martin McClain’s gaze drifted to her snug white t-shirt, which now, with her arms in that awkward pose, seemed too snug. Too sexy. She took her hands out of the pockets and crossed her arms over her chest, and immediately realized a drop of blood from the pin-wound had stained the shirt.

“Oh, great!” She stomped her black ankle boot on the pavement.

“Your…um, your shirt is bleeding,” he said, his eyes flicking to the red spot, then quickly away toward the street.

She looked up at him. From her five foot eight plus three-inch stiletto heels, it was still up. He was probably six foot two or three, she guessed. Tall, dark, handsome.

And just an idiot man. Your shirt is bleeding?

“Mr. McClain, is this the building? Can we go inside? Is the water turned on?” As she asked the questions, she scooped up her designer handbag and walked across the sidewalk from her car to the large oak-and-glass front door of her new building. The first building of any sort she had ever owned.

He followed, taking several rings of keys from his right front pants pocket. “Here we go,” he said, holding the one marked “M. Shelby” out to her. She extended her open hand and he dropped the keys into it. Heavy. It felt good.

“It’s the large brass one there for the front door.”

Midnight inserted it and the lock turned easily. She stepped inside, followed by the real-tor, who reached behind her—too close—and flipped on the light switch. Large, round, moss-green glass globes suspended by pewter colored rods from a twelve-foot forest green tin ceiling filled the room with subtle light. It was a large, amazing room, full of nostalgia and potential.

Martin walked quickly behind the bar just a few feet to the left of the entry door, and turned on the faucet. Here was a good sign: no rumbling pipes, just immediate water.

“Great, thank you,” Midnight said, checking the water temperature. “But I’ll have to take off my shirt. Otherwise I’ll need to get into the sink myself, I guess. I hadn’t thought.” She turned off the water, tossed her handbag onto the walnut bar top and strode outside, pulling her car keys from her front jeans pocket as she walked. In a moment, she was back with a long-sleeve black t-shirt, and found the women’s bathroom at the back where she changed. She ran cold water over the area till the spot was gone.

Then she headed to the front of the building again, her stilettos making a gratifying no-nonsense sound on the hardwood floor.

“Nothing like making a lasting first impression. I don’t usually bleed from just a hand-shake.”

“You… what?” He looked down at his own hands, searching for a way he might have punctured her finger.
“Just kidding. I stuck it on a pin as you walked up. But not kidding about the first impression.” She looked up and around her at the bar. “Like this place. When I saw the virtual tour on your website, I knew I had to have it. Absolutely gorgeous.”

“It is a special place. Lots of history, lots of memories here. It’s a shame the family doesn’t want to keep it. I hate to see them sell out.”

“Especially to a newcomer, I’ll bet.”

“I didn’t say that.” There was that frown again, the two vertical lines between his dark brows marring an otherwise perfect face.

“No, you didn’t say it. Not in so many words. But of course, you’d rather someone local had purchased it and decided to continue the bar business as it always was. Right?” Men were so predictable. As long as you didn’t mess with their sports teams, their bars, or their underwear drawers, pretty much anything else was fair game.

Martin McClain heaved a heavy sigh, much as she had seen his son do a few minutes ear-lier. Except this sigh strained the front of his golf shirt a bit, in an interesting sort of way.

“Welcome to Legend, Tennessee, Miz Shelby. No reason for you and me to start off bad-ly. We got along fine on the phone, now, didn’t we?”

Midnight hated being patronized, and so many men did it without even thinking.

“We got along fine, the deal closed, and here I am, owning this big beautiful building on Main Street, and enjoying status as Legend’s newest citizen. Now, do you have that list for me?”

“List?”

Of course, his wife had been the helpful one all through the process. Betsy is the person she really needed to talk to. “The one I’ve been talking to….”

Midnight’s question sank in.

“Oh, what Betsy was working on for you? Yeah. No. I mean, no, I didn’t get here with it. I left the dang thing on my desk. She told me… well, of course Betsy’s always right. She said I’d forget it. We can go over to the office and get it right now, though. Just take a minute. My office is just a couple blocks from here.”

He headed out the front door and Midnight followed, the sound of her boots’ heels bouncing off the empty bar’s walls and ceiling. She quickly turned off lights and locked the door behind her. I’ll be back, and soon.
“Oh, and you’ll want to park your car in the back,” the realtor was saying when she turned away from the door. “There’s a garage. It’s small, but it should be big enough for a little tiny car like this. I’ll show you.”

“No need for that. I’ll be able to find the back of the building on my own. Now, let’s go to your office and pick up the list. Get in and I’ll drive.”

She saw the look. He didn’t ride while a woman drove. Dear Lord, give me strength. Midnight walked around and got in, started the powerful engine. She saw his eyebrows rise when he heard it. He opened the passenger door and folded his tall frame into the seat, then let the door close with a quiet click.

***

Midnight in Legend, TN is available for purchase at Amazon . Barnes & Noble . All Romance eBooks . Bookstrand