Secret under the Stars: Lucky Stars Series Book 3 Read online

  “Who told you about my marriage?”

  He hesitated, then said, “The real question should be why didn’t you tell me about your marriage? Or about living in France. And writing books. And...and...and everything else. Jeez, Marcy, I flat out asked what you’d been up to for the last fifteen years. Why didn’t you tell me any of that stuff?”

  She’d actually asked herself that very question after she and Max parted ways the afternoon before. Everyone in Endicott must know what she’d been doing since college. Her name and face had been plastered in every rag in the grocery store checkout lines, and on every splashy celebrity website on the internet. Gossip was the national pastime of her hometown. She’d been amazed yesterday when Max had clearly not known any of it.

  Maybe that was why she hadn’t filled him in. Because for those few moments with him, she hadn’t been Marcella Robillard, disgraced socialite and literary deadbeat who’d written bestselling novels, traveled all over the world and dated some of the most desirable men on the planet before going down in flames. She’d just been Marcy Hanlon from Endicott.

  Dear Reader,

  I love gardening. Unfortunately, I’m terrible at it and far more likely to kill anything I put into the ground than grow it. So I was delighted when landscaper Max Travers walked into my brain and said, “Hey, I hear you like lobelias...” (They were my grandmother’s favorite flower.)

  Even better is having his high school crush, Marcy Hanlon, come back to their small town, since I’ve been married to my high school crush for more than thirty-five years. Best of all, though, she was kind of crushing on him back then, too.

  But although love will find a way, sometimes it takes a few detours. There will be secrets and wishes and mix-ups along the way, not to mention a bit of uncertainty. But wish-granting Comet Bob will save the day, as always. He just might want to have a little fun of his own first.

  Happy reading!

  Elizabeth

  Secret under the Stars

  Elizabeth Bevarly

  Elizabeth Bevarly is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of more than seventy books, novellas and screenplays. Although she has called places like San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Haddonfield, New Jersey, home, she’s now happily settled back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son. When she’s not writing, she’s binge-watching documentaries on Netflix, spending too much time on Reddit or making soup out of whatever she finds in the freezer. Visit her at elizabethbevarly.com for news about current and upcoming projects; book, music and film recommendations; recipes; and lots of other fun stuff.

  Books by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Lucky Stars

  Be Careful What You Wish For

  Her Good-Luck Charm

  Harlequin Desire

  Taming the Prince

  Taming the Beastly M.D.

  Married to His Business

  The Billionaire Gets His Way

  My Fair Billionaire

  Caught in the Billionaire’s Embrace

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  For David.

  Here’s to high school crushes.

  Thanks for forty-four years of wonderfulness. :)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Excerpt from A Snowbound Christmas Cowboy by Sasha Summers

  Prologue

  “Not again.”

  “Dude. How many times has it happened?”

  “This week? At least ten.”

  “Nah. It’s been ten times this weekend alone.”

  “Good point. And every time it happens, he looks like he’s gonna hurl.”

  Fifteen-year-old Max Travers barely heard his best friends’ exchange. He was too caught up getting lost in the vision on the other side of the pool. Marcy Hanlon. The most beautiful, most charming, most graceful, most excellent... He stifled a sigh. The smartest, kindest, greatest, loveliest... He stifled a second sigh. The most...awesomest human being on the planet. In a hot-pink bikini. Slathering suntan lotion on her ivory shoulders while she chatted with her two best friends at the Endicott Country Club on a bright September afternoon.

  Brilliant. She was absolutely brilliant. Radiant, even. Luminous. Max had read that word in a book for English class last week, and after looking it up, all he could think was that it described Marcy perfectly. ’Cause she for sure brought light into every second he was around her, and everything in his life was drab and dull when she wasn’t there.

  Which was usually. Other than a few scattered times at the pool during the season, he rarely saw her anywhere but school—and there, they only had two classes together this term—and every Saturday, when he went to her folks’ house to take care of their garden while his boss, Mr. Bartok, tended the rest of their perfectly manicured estate. And those Saturdays would be coming to an end in a few weeks. Yeah, he could squeeze in an extra month or so freelancing for the Hanlons, but that would be it. Mr. Hanlon hated Max’s guts—because, among other things, he probably knew Max had a thing for his daughter—but the old man was smart enough to realize that no one in Indiana could keep his dahlias going longer than Max Travers could, and no one could get them to bloom earlier in this zone. Once the dahlias were done, though, Max could kiss goodbye any chance of seeing Marcy outside of Biology or Algebra II.

  “You should go talk to her,” his friend Chance said from his left side. “Ask her what she’s doing later.”

  “Yeah,” his other friend, Felix, agreed from his right. “She’s with Claire and Amanda. Maybe we can get all three of them to meet us at Deb’s Diner for burgers.”

  Oh, sure. He might as well try to talk to the Queen of Sheba—or Makeda, as his Ethiopian mother had called her in the stories she used to tell Max at bedtime when he was a kid. The Hanlons probably had as much wealth as Makeda and King Solomon combined. No way would they let Max near their daughter. As it was, her three older brothers had been staring daggers at him and Chance and Felix ever since they entered the pool area, thanks to the three of them being working-class scum. The only reason the friends were even allowed at the pool was because it was a perk of their summer jobs—Max worked as a greenkeeper for the club, Felix bused tables in the restaurant and Chance was a lifeguard. But the Hanlon brothers’ contempt for Max specifically—and Mr. and Mrs. Hanlon’s contempt, for that matter—went deeper than the economic divide, he knew. There was just way too much melanin on his mother’s side of the family.

  “I’m not gonna go talk to her,” he told his friends, never taking his eyes off Marcy. “Holy crow, that’s just an invitation to get pounded by Remy and Percy and Mads.”

  “Pshaw,” Chance huffed theatrically. “Remington and Percival and Maddenford Hanlon wouldn’t last two minutes with the likes of us.”

  “Yeah,” Felix agreed. “And who the hell gives their kids names like that? Seriously. That’s just an invitation for them to get pounded by their classmates.”

  Hah, Max thought. Felix wished. Marcy’s brothers had all lettered in football and wrestling. He and his two friends would be little more than oily spots in the grass when the Hanlons got through with them.

>   “At least Marcy’s got a name that doesn’t take all day to write out,” Chance said.

  “At least Marcy doesn’t think she’s better than everyone else in town,” Felix added. “Though how she turned out that way, coming from a family like hers, I’ll never know.”

  It was definitely one of Endicott, Indiana’s greatest mysteries, Max had to admit. Her father, Lionel Remington Hanlon IV, was, no question, the richest guy in Endicott. He was almost certainly the richest guy in southern Indiana. Hell, he was probably one of the richest—maybe even the richest—guy in the whole state. The Hanlons lived in a huge house atop a huge hill just outside of Endicott, one that had been built when the town was just a wayside port on the Ohio. It was surrounded by ten acres, all of it—save the garden—rolling green knobs that overlooked the river. They had a tennis court, an in-ground pool and a stable with three horses. Max had never been allowed to enter the house, but he’d heard there was a bowling alley and movie theater in the basement, along with a huge wine cellar.

  And, of course, there was the garden, a half acre that Max both loved and hated tending. Loved because Mr. Hanlon insisted on having some of the most exotic, expensive plants he could find, many of which weren’t even suited to Indiana’s capricious climate. Hated for the same reason. Every year, Max planted and cared for them as long as the weather would allow, then had to watch them shrivel and die when fall set in, never to return. Then he’d have to pull out their formerly glorious carcasses and turn them into mulch for next year’s assortment. It was a crime the way that guy just discarded some of the most beautiful, most perfect things in the world because he didn’t have the time or concern for them. He only wanted them as showpieces to flaunt his wealth.

  Max looked at Marcy again. She was chatting happily with her friends, not sparing so much as a glance for Max. He didn’t take it personally. She wasn’t sparing a glance for any other guy, either. Even though there wasn’t a guy in Endicott who wouldn’t walk over hot coals for her. Felix was right—she was nothing like the rest of her family. They’d sat next to each other in Natural Science for a whole term last year, and they’d been partnered for a week to do a research paper on The Scarlet Letter in English. Max had thought the story was pretty tedious and the characters kind of annoying, but Marcy had loved it. Thanks to her enthusiasm, they’d gotten an A on it. And thanks to her being so kind and so smart and so beautiful and so excellent and so perfect, Max had fallen hopelessly in—

  “Well, if we’re not going to the diner later,” Felix said, jarring him back to the present, “then let’s hit the club restaurant. They still have some Bob cookies leftover.”

  Max smiled at the mention of Comet Bob, Endicott, Indiana’s sole claim to fame. The comet had been returning to the planet every fifteen years for centuries, always making his closest pass in the skies above their small town. No one knew why. At this point, no one cared why. But the residents of Endicott had come to claim Bob as their own.

  Legend had it that anyone born in a year the comet visited—which Max and Chance and Felix had been—could make a wish the next time Bob came around, and then see that wish granted on his third visit, when the wisher was thirty. Max hadn’t been immune to the whimsy surrounding the legend of the wishes. In fact, he’d embraced it. All three of them had. A few nights ago, when Bob was directly overhead, he and his friends had sent wishes skyward. Chance had wished for a million dollars. Felix had wished for something interesting to happen in their sleepy little town. But Max...

  Max had wished for the most noble thing in the world. True love. He’d wished Marcy Hanlon would see him as something other than the guy who took care of her family’s lawn.

  “So who wants a cookie?” Felix asked. “They’re not giving them to club members, since they’re not so fresh anymore, but we wretched refuse can help ourselves. Who’s up for a kitchen raid?”

  He and Chance were off like a shot, but Max couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. Because Marcy had glanced over long enough to catch Max looking at her, and now she was looking back. Then she lifted a hand to offer him a quick wave. And then—then—Marcy smiled at him. The most perfect smile Max had ever seen.

  But then her brother Remy called her name, and her other brothers came to join her. The looks they gave Max were nothing short of menacing. He didn’t care. In fifteen years, none of it would matter. Because in fifteen years, Marcy Hanlon would be out from under her family’s thumb, and Bob would be granting his wish.

  And Max would be right here in Endicott, waiting for it to happen.

  Chapter One

  He had been hoping she’d come back to town for the festival this year. He’d been begging Bob—even before the comet appeared on the horizon a couple of weeks ago—to bring her back to Endicott and fulfill the wish he made when he was fifteen. He’d been bolstering himself for weeks, maybe months, so that he wouldn’t revert to the tongue-tied, starry-eyed kid he’d been every time he tried to talk to her when they were in high school. He had given himself a dozen pep talks about what a good guy he’d grown up to be, had reminded himself she was an adult woman who was no longer ruled by her family’s edicts. He had told himself a million times that the social and economic divide between the two of them when they were kids was meaningless now that they were adults. And he had assured himself that in spite of her being the most incredible, most perfect human being to ever live, with all those obstacles gone, he now stood a chance.

  But even having prepared himself so thoroughly for Marcy Hanlon’s return to Endicott, Indiana, after fifteen years, Max Travers was in no way prepared for Marcy Hanlon’s return to Endicott, Indiana, after fifteen years. He might as well have been a high-school sophomore again, the way he became paralyzed the second he saw her. Even though she was half a block down and on the other side of Water Street, looking in the display window of Barton’s Bookstore on a luminous Sunday afternoon in September. But here he was, stopped dead in his tracks, feeling like he’d walked through a time portal.

  And Marcy didn’t even look much like Marcy anymore. Shoulder-length auburn curls had replaced the stick-straight, strawberry-blond mass that cascaded to the middle of her back when they were teenagers. The alabaster skin she’d had to slather with SPF 50 then was now a sun-kissed gold. A flowing tunic and wide-legged pants the color of summer sage draped her body in place of the ripped skinny jeans and crop tops she used to wear, and gigantic designer sunglasses covered her eyes—eyes he remembered were the pale, perfect blue of a Himalayan poppy.

  But even with all the changes in her and the distance between them, Max knew it was Marcy. He knew by the way she had her weight shifted onto her left foot while her right was tipped upward, toes pointing toward the sky. He knew by how she had one hand cupping the back of her neck, a gesture he’d recognized back then was a product of anxiety. He knew by the confident posture that completely contradicted that anxiety, because Marcy Hanlon had always thought she had to uphold the Hanlon aura of perfect family harmony, even though perfect, never mind harmonious, was the last thing the Hanlons had ever been—save for Marcy, of course, since she herself was already perfect in every way.

  And he knew by the sizzle of heat that sparked through him, making him feel as if every cell in his body was about to explode. She’d had that effect on him whenever the two of them came within a football field’s length of each other. It was just some weird awareness of her he’d always had, even if he couldn’t see her, that told him Marcy Hanlon was there. There was some strange, irrefutable link between them, as if they’d been matched at the dawn of eternity and tethered together with some cosmic thread that defied all outside efforts to slice through it.

  Oh, yeah. Max was definitely feeling the teen angst again. He should probably go right home and scrawl down some slushy “Ode to Marcy,” as he had done on a fairly regular basis when he was a kid. He’d really been hoping he’d moved beyond the cringe years, but he supposed they never
left a person entirely.

  Because the way he was standing here now really wasn’t that much different from the last time he’d seen her, waving to him from the rear window of her father’s Escalade as the Hanlons passed him on this very street, tailing a flotilla of moving vans carrying everything they owned. It had been the week after their last day of sophomore year, and the realization that Max might not ever see her again had settled into the pit of his stomach like a lump of ice. That impression had only been hammered home when her mother, seated beside her, realized who Marcy was waving to and jerked her daughter around to face the front of the car. Mrs. Hanlon had then thrown Max the most malevolent look he’d ever had thrown his way. And the Hanlons—all of them but Marcy—had thrown him some pretty malevolent looks when he was a kid.

  Now he watched as she strode into the bookstore, vanishing from his sight the same way she had that day fifteen years ago. Back then, there had been nothing Max could do about her disappearance. He could no more have followed her than he could stop a sunflower from turning with the sun. Besides, what was he supposed to have said to her back then if he could have followed her? Provided her family would even let him get near her? Anything beyond “Oh, hey, Marcy, wassup?” had rarely ever left his mouth when they weren’t in class together. Today, though...

  Oh, who was he kidding? He was no more confident in his ability to be suave around Marcy now than he had been then. He should just do what he’d always done when faced with an opportunity to talk to her outside their school environment—turn tail and run.

  No, he told himself. No way. He’d been waiting a long time for this day. This was the year Bob was going to make his wish come true. The comet had already granted the wishes of his two best friends, Chance and Felix. The three boys had all been born in a year of the comet, they’d all made their wishes on Bob’s next return and now, for his third pass, the big ice ball was making good on those wishes. Chance had learned just this morning that he would be getting his million dollars in the not-too-distant future, and Felix had gotten his “something interesting” a couple of months ago in the arrival of his mysterious next-door neighbor. Why shouldn’t Max be rewarded, too? All he’d wished was that Marcy would see him as something other than the kid who took care of her parents’ lawn. Yeah, okay, as the now-owner of the landscaping company he used to work for, he still took care of people’s lawns. But there was a lot more to him these days than that.