Now and Then and Always Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR MELISSA TAGG

  Now and Then and Always

  “Powerful. I’ve always loved Melissa Tagg’s stories, but this one is something special. Lyrical, yes. Enchanting, of course. But her story about a broken man meeting an equally broken woman and their journey to healing touched unexpected places in my heart. An absolutely beautiful, compelling read.”

  -Susan May Warren, USA Today bestselling, RITA Award-winning author of the Montana Marshalls series

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  "Charming! Set in an old bed and breakfast in need of love, Now and Then and Always delights the reader with mystery and romance. Tagg continues to set herself apart as a classic romance storyteller."

  -Rachel Hauck, New York Times bestselling author

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  “Melissa Tagg is the kind of writer who makes me fall in love with story every single time I read one of her novels. In Now and Then and Always she does it again. Tagg’s writing draws you into the pages—into the Storyworld she creates in such a powerful way, threaded through with humor, romance and, yes, mystery. I closed the book happy and satisfied—except that I wished the story hadn’t ended.”

  -Beth K. Vogt, Christy Award-winning author

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  “With her trademark wit and stunning word pictures, Melissa Tagg has penned a romance that drew me in from the very first sentence. Now and Then and Always is a heartbreakingly beautiful romance sprinkled with characters who felt more like friends. Truly, a story that will capture your heart.”

  -Courtney Walsh, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

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  “Now and Then and Always is a beautiful story of an old house that brings people together to find healing and wholeness in their brokenness and the family they never expected. Tagg’s well-written novel is the perfect blend of smiles, tears, and happily-ever-after with a touch of intrigue. The characters linger long after the pages have been turned and The Everwood makes me wish it was real so I could have my own life-changing experience.”

  -Lisa Jordan, Carol Award-winning author for Love Inspired

  Walker Family Series

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  “Tagg crafts a beautiful romance filled with humor, mystery, and heartfelt emotion . . . Tagg’s moving story beautifully explores themes of redemption and the nature of home.”

  -Publisher’s Weekly, for All This Time

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  “Bear and Raegan are endearing and intriguing characters, and readers can't help but fall in love with them. Tagg excels at fleshing out the hints we've been given throughout the series and developing them into layered, authentic backstories...A doozy of a first kiss is completely worth the wait, and even a little suspense is skillfully worked into the plot—in case pulses weren't already racing. (They were.)"

  -RT Book Reviews, 4½ Stars TOP PICK! for All This Time

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  "With her inimitable style, Melissa Tagg has penned a gem of a story, one that will delight longtime fans and entrance new ones. Replete with swoon-worthy moments, unwrapping Bear's complicated history and discovering Raegan's hidden struggles make this a love story that resonates on a deeper level."

  -RelzReviewz.com, for From the Start

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  “With profound truths on one page and laugh-out-loud hilarity on the next, Like Never Before quickly becomes one of those novels I didn’t want to end. Melissa Tagg has penned a delightful story that took hold of my heart and didn’t let go. Superbly well done!”

  -Katie Ganshert, bestselling, award-winning author

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  “In Like Never Before, readers are invited to revisit the much-loved Walker clan that delivers on the promise that even if lost once, love can be found again. In true Melissa Tagg style, the dialogue is smart and the romance is real and raw in all the right places. This series is witty storytelling at its best.”

  -Kristy Cambron, bestselling, award-winning author

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  “Tagg (Made To Last; Here To Stay) writes heartfelt and humorous gentle romances with a wisp of faith woven throughout. Fans of her previous two books will want this one. And devotees of Rachel Hauck and Robin Lee Hatcher will embrace a promising new author.”

  -Library Journal, for From the Start

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  "Tagg excels at creating wholesome romances featuring strong young career women, gentle humor, and an unobtrusive but heartfelt infusion of faith."

  -Booklist, for From the Start

  © 2019 by Melissa Tagg

  Larkspur Press

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, etc.—without the prior written permission of the author. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Cover design: © Jenny Zemanek/Seedlings Design Studio

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  Connect with Melissa at www.melissatagg.com and stay in touch by signing up for her always fun and never spammy e-newsletter!

  To the readers who keep returning to Maple Valley with me. Ten stories in, I still ♡ this town.

  * * *

  But I ♡ you even more.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. One day earlier

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  4. Lenora

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  9. Lenora

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  13. Lenora

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  16. Lenora

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  19. Lenora

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  23. Lenora

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  From the Start

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  It was just a house. Just a weathered old house in a hidden grove, shuttered and still under the shadowed reach of pale moonlight through listless clouds. It shouldn’t beckon him so, prying him from the truck and that wrinkled magazine page from his pocket. The one with the white creases from his folding and unfolding and folding and . . .

  Marshall Hawkins took a frayed breath, inhaling the musty scent of damp soil, exhaling memories that never quite dissolved, and, fingers numb, unfolded the paper. Not that he had to look to know what he'd see. Two stories, gaping windows, gleaming siding, and a towering elm tree out front. All under splashy letters advertising some construction company. He slid his thumb over the Victorian’s deep-blue door at the center of the faded ad.

  Just a house.

  Except the image on the gloss-print now stared at him in real life too. An aged version, to be sure, with peeling wood and a sagging porch, naked, gnarled vines climbing one side. And this front door was brown. Still. It was uncanny. Like looking at a decades-old photograph of a woman in her youth and then lifting your gaze to see the grandmother she’d become. It could almost be the same house.

  And he could almost hear Laney's voice.

  "It's perfect, Dad. It just needs a swing."

  A sharp wind snagged the page and his grip tightened. A raindrop, or maybe a lone tear, landed on the paper. And the thudding in his head—the reaso
n he'd pulled off the highway in the first place, followed a winding rural road until he came upon this copse and the house it secreted—turned to thunder.

  This wasn’t like the other headaches. And even if it were, he’d surrendered every last prescription bottle to his sister this morning. He’d swallowed a few measly aspirin earlier, probably right around the time he’d crossed the border into Iowa. But the throbbing had only worsened.

  The pain squeezed until Marshall’s knees landed in soggy grass and his vision fogged, Laney’s house blurring in front of him.

  But it’s not. It’s not Laney’s house. Because Laney’s not . . .

  The page between his loosening fingers whipped in the wind as the house faded from view. The last thing he saw before he gave in to the darkness was a metal sign staked to the ground underneath a bowing tree, letters stenciled—The Everwood.

  1

  One day earlier

  The knock came midmorning—bellowing through the first floor of the Everwood Bed & Breakfast, rattling the rickety bones of the sluggish house and jarring Mara from sleep.

  In her cocoon of throw pillows and a tangled herringbone blanket, in this cozy den where not so long ago she’d learned to live again, Mara blinked against a slant of sunlight from the picture window.

  Was Lenora finally back? Or perhaps it was a guest.

  Please, anyone but Garrett Lyman.

  Another knock echoed. Or maybe that was just her heart, pulsing back and forth between hope and fear.

  But no, no reason for fear. It couldn’t be Garrett. It’d been ten months. Surely he’d stopped looking by now.

  She made herself breathe and stretched her neck, gaze lifting to the water spots dappling the cedar planks of the den’s pitched ceiling then down to the frayed oval rug that covered a hundred nicks and grooves in the hardwood floor.

  As for the hope of Lenora—also a no-go. Lenora wouldn’t knock. As the owner of the Everwood, though absent these last five weeks, she’d have her own keys.

  A guest then. A real, live, paying guest. The first one this month. So maybe there was reason to hope after all.

  That is, if Mara could pull off her role. Step into Lenora’s shoes and play the welcoming hostess. Pillows toppled to the floor as she lurched to her feet, the last, lingering fog of her momentary alarm lifting to make room for a nervous laugh. How many knocks had she just dawdled through?

  She had to stop spending whole nights curled on the couch, waking up with cramped muscles that made her feel far older than thirty. And though she’d fallen asleep still wearing a presentable wraparound sweater, her snowflake-print leggings didn’t exactly say professional innkeeper.

  No time to worry about that now. She scrambled from the room. Aged floorboards creaked as she hurried through the sprawling dining room, its tarnished chandelier wobbling overhead, and the formal sitting room, long and spacious. Its antique furniture might be worn, but every piece was dusted and polished—from the twin trestle tables and lamps with rose glass shades to the wooden legs of the tufted green chaise lounge.

  One thing about the Everwood—there was always another room to tidy, another tasseled rug to straighten, another mirror to Windex. How had Lenora ever thought to run this place on her own?

  Mara passed between the mahogany pillars that led into the lobby as another knock echoed in the quiet.

  She stopped, catching her breath and summoning her composure. She could do this. Smile like Lenora would and give a bright, “Welcome to the Everwood.” Rattle off nightly rates and breakfast hours . . . keep her promise.

  “I think you may love this raggedy old B&B even more than I do, dear Mara. Take care of it for me, won’t you?”

  With a nod of resolve, she twisted the front door’s lock. For Lenora. “Welcome to the—”

  “Took you long enough, young lady.” A tall woman with silver hair piled high, suitcase in one hand and cane in the other, blustered in. “Please tell me this is not your usual modus operandi. Leaving old women out on porches on damp March mornings. Step aside, girl, step aside.”

  Mara backed up, bumping into the check-in desk. “I’m so sorry. I was at the other end of the house and . . .” She pasted on a stretchy grin and tried again. “Welcome to the Everwood.”

  Horn-rimmed glasses slid down the woman’s narrow nose until she nudged them back up with her cane. “What kind of bed and breakfast keeps its front door locked?”

  The kind that too often went whole weeks without guests. Whose owner had left on a trip more than a month ago and still hadn’t returned.

  And whose longtime boarder turned temporary caretaker had grown a little too jumpy in her extended isolation. Funny how loud and dramatic the nighttime sounds of a ramshackle house seemed when no one else was around to hear them—wind in the chimney, leaves scuttling over the porch, the way that ancient elm tree out front moaned on gusty days.

  It was why Mara had taken to spending her evenings cozied up in the den at the back of the place—the part of the house meant to be the owner’s private living quarters. The den felt homey, made her think of peaceful nights in front of the fire with Lenora, cups of tea, and the gradual unveiling of a whole new life.

  No more nannying. No more existing on the periphery of others’ families. No more wishing she had someplace to go on holidays or wondering what it’d be like to settle somewhere for more than a few years at a time.

  No more Garrett Lyman.

  She hadn’t meant to stay long at the Everwood when she’d first arrived late last summer. Had only known of its existence thanks to a brochure in a rest stop along I-80. But in Lenora she’d found a friend and in the Everwood a safe harbor. And as each week drifted into the next, she’d felt it more and more—she belonged here.

  “We don’t get many visitors this time of year,” Mara finally answered the woman. Not that she had been here at this time last year to know for sure.

  No, last spring she’d been back in Illinois, still naively believing a little suburb south of Chicago was far enough away from Garrett for peace of mind.

  She shoved the thought aside and skirted around the check-in desk. Paisley wallpaper made the space feel cloistered. Tall windows helped with that on sunny days, but today the sky was all rolling shadows. “My name is Mara, by the way. Can I get you checked in, Ms.—”

  “Mrs. S.B. Jenkins.” Her suitcase thumped onto the floor. “You seem quite young.”

  “Uh . . . thank you?”

  Mrs. S.B. Jenkins sniffed. “I mean, too young to run a reputable bed and breakfast. If you make me check in by signing my name using my finger on one of those fancy touchscreen things . . .”

  Was that an actual shudder? Mara clamped down on a laugh. “No worries, Mrs. Jenkins. We’re quite traditional around here.” Old-school was the term she’d used when joking with Lenora, who shared this woman’s apparent aversion to technology. The computer at the check-in desk, the software they used to track reservations—both outdated. The Wi-Fi barely functioned. Lenora didn’t even own a cell phone.

  If she did, Mara could’ve tracked her down by now and asked her when she was coming back and what to do about the stack of bills piling up in that basket on the corner of the desk.

  She could’ve quelled her growing fear that maybe Lenora wasn’t coming back at all. That she’d been abandoned all over again.

  No. Not Lenora. Mara pressed the computer’s power button. “Now, how long are you planning to stay?”

  “Oh no you don’t. I’m not committing to anything without a tour first. I have a book to finish writing, you see, and I need to make sure this is the adequate atmosphere.”

  “All right. I’d be happy to show you around.”

  With any luck, she’d have Mrs. Jenkins settled in a guestroom within an hour. Then Mara could scrounge through the pantry, make sure she had enough staples on hand to provide tomorrow’s breakfast. At some point she’d probably have to venture into Maple Valley for groceries. She’d done that twice already during L
enora’s absence, and both times she’d managed to avoid conversation with any locals.

  “We’ll start downstairs. The Everwood is full of personality, as you’ll see. The owner is actually an award-winning travel photographer. Some of her original works are hanging in the hallway upstairs.”

  “So you aren’t the owner.” Mrs. Jenkins arched one gray eyebrow. “I’d like to meet this award-winning photographer. Where is she?”

  Oh, what Mara wouldn’t give to know.

  “We missed a room.”

  At Mrs. Jenkins’s rasped words, Mara paused in the second floor hallway, hand on the decorative banister cap at the top of the open staircase.

  It hadn’t taken more than twenty minutes to lead Mrs. Jenkins through the house. First they’d strolled through the entire ground floor, including the only updated room in the whole house—the kitchen with slate gray appliances, bright white cupboards, and a modern subway tile backsplash. Mrs. Jenkins had clucked in approval.

  Upstairs they’d peeked inside nearly every room that lined the narrow corridor. All but one—the first door at the top of the staircase.