A Second Chance at Love: A Hometown Hero Series Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

know you’re in, I need to talk to him.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “You’re… right, Harrison. You’re not their favourite person.” She shrugged exaggeratedly. “They have terrible judgement, what can I say?”
    He laughed. “I don’t care. They’re still your parents, soon to be my parents-in-law. So let’s front them together.”
    “I love you so much, but I know my parents. If we approach them together, it will get ugly. Let me… just… pave the way. You can come over tonight. Dinner. Okay?”
    He frowned. “I don’t like it, Maddie.”
    “I know, Harrison, but it’s for the best.”
    “If you’re absolutely set on this…”
    “Yeah. Trust me.”
    She had very good reasons for keeping Harrison away from her parents. Not only was he not their favourite person, Kenneth Bartlett passionately disapproved of the relationship between his daughter and the man he described as the ‘bastard son of a white trash slut’. Madeline had grown sick of arguing with her parents about Harrison, and so she’d lied to them. It had been easier to let them think the relationship had run its course than be subjected to their constant criticism and disapproval.
    “Daddy? Where’s mama?” Madeline asked, just a hint of trepidation in her voice as she knocked on her father’s library door.
    He fixed her with his renowned stare; part annoyed, part impatient. “She’s in town for the day. Some church fundraiser.”
    “Right.” Madeline had known that. She pressed her palms together.
    “Can I have a moment?”
    “ May I have a moment,” he corrected automatically, gesturing to the chair in front of him. “You may have two minutes, and that’s it.”
    She nodded. A deep pit of doubt flooded her chest. “Daddy, you know Harrison Samson? The cop from town?”
    His thick Harrison brows bunched together. “Don’t talk to me about that bastard. I don’t want him or his mother mentioned here again.”
    “Daddy, he’s…” She sucked in a nervous breath and pressed her hands against the back of the chair.
    Her unusual hesitation and awkwardness captured Kenneth’s attention, and he laid his pen down firmly on the desk. “He’s what?”
    “We’ve been dating for almost three years now.”
    “You’ve what?” When Kenneth was angry, he appeared at his calmest. In that moment, he was paper still, his voice controlled. Which meant he was furious.
    “Yes. Dating for years. And I love him. And he loves me.”
    “I forbid it,” he said with a shake of his head. “You need to end it, Maddie.”
    “No.” Her blue eyes were determined in her face. “I won’t. I love him, and I want to be with him.”
    He reclined in his chair, and Madeline could see that his neck was flushed pink. A sign of his temper being about to burst. She’d only seen him so enraged once before; when a junior housekeeper had put a red dress of Maddie’s through the wash with Kenneth’s white business shirts. They’d all come out pink and his fury had been unparalleled.
    “I don’t much care what you want, Madeline May. You’re my daughter, and I sure as hell didn’t raise you to waste your time on a fool like Samson.”
    “He’s not a fool,” she defended stonily. “If you spent time getting to know him, you’d see that he’s smart, and he’s kind, and he’s courageous.”
    “But who is he?” Kenneth hissed. “The unwanted son of a woman who couldn’t keep her legs together as a teenager. A teenager who dared have a baby and raise him in squalor.”
    Madeline balled her fists by her side. “What would you have had her do? You campaign on your anti-abortion stance. Are you actually suggesting Diana should have got rid of her pregnancy?”
    “I’m suggesting she should have taken better care in the first place.”
    “She was a child,” Madeline hissed. “She ended up pregnant and alone. Her parents threw her out, and her boyfriend left her. She set up in Whitegate with nothing to her name, and she turned