The Short, Hot Summer Read online

  “That’s fifteen years off, at least,” he said, knowing it was true. “Probably more. My father is the kind of man who will work until he just can’t work anymore. He has plenty of time to groom someone else to take over, someone who’s more interested in the position than I am.”

  “But the merger…”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of all that,” he assured her. “I won’t shirk my responsibilities there.” He pulled her closer, pressing his forehead lightly to hers. “But I won’t shirk them here, either. Once the merger is complete…” He shrugged, unconcerned. “I think I deserve a vacation. It’s been years since I’ve taken one. What better place to have one than Butternut, Alabama, birthplace of Danny Jim Robinson, soon to be tourist attraction? I kind of like it here,” he added. “In fact, I like it so much, I might just look for work here.”

  Mamie gaped at him. “You’re a businessman, Preston,” she finally pointed out. “What’re you gonna do here in Butternut?”

  He smiled. “Go into business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  He draped his arms over her shoulders and pulled her closer still. “Well, I hear the planning commission here has great things in store for Butternut.”

  She nodded, smiling, then wrapped her arms around his waist. “That’s true enough”.

  “And, being a businessman, I happen to be very good at planning,” he said. “I have lots of ideas.”

  “I did sorta notice that about you early on,” she told him. “But I haven’t noticed any of your ideas being particularly businesslike. If you know what I mean.”

  He grinned suggestively. “That’s because you’ve only been witness to the ideas I have about you. And those have been anything but businesslike.”

  “I did sorta notice that, too.”

  “Well, then, Miss Mamie, I suggest we consider a merger.”

  He could tell she found the proposal very interesting. But all she said was, “Oh?”

  He nodded. “Yes, and it’s a very un-businesslike merger, too.”

  Rather hopefully, she asked, “When do you plan on scheduling this merger?”

  He tilted his wrist toward himself and idly noted the time, then hastily unfastened his watch and tossed the expensive timepiece over his shoulder. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. For now, I’d like to just see how things develop.”

  Mamie nodded, smiling. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

  Preston smiled back. It did sound like a good plan. He hastily completed his agenda for the next, oh…sixty or seventy years. Yes, this time, he thought, it was definitely a schedule he could keep.

  About the Author

  Elizabeth Bevarly is the New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of more than seventy novels and novellas. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, with more than twenty-million copies sold worldwide. An honors graduate of the University of Louisville, she has called home such exotic locales as San Juan, Puerto Rico and Haddonfield, New Jersey, but now writes full-time in her native Kentucky. When she's not writing, she's binge-watching documentaries on Netflix, experimenting with soup recipes, or dancing to Electro Swing while no one is watching. Her spirit animal is a rabid badger. (It's a long story.)

  Also by Elizabeth Bevarly

  The Wedding

  Love is in the air for recent grads Emma and Taylor, but as they quickly learn, finding each other was the easy part! Between joining old money with new, balancing meddling mothers, and confronting the secrets that threaten to pull them apart, the young couple discovers that there is so much more to a wedding than just the vows.

  This humorous and heartwarming tale from New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Bevarly explores all the ways love can go right...and wrong!