Last Chance Beauty Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

me, this uppity English baron will not love our town the way we do.”
    “Do you actually love Last Chance?” Rachel asked.
    “Sure, why do you ask?”
    “I don’t know, Rocky. You don’t come home much.”
    There was a long pause on the other end of the phone before Rocky said, “I’m really busy with my job, Rachel. I don’t have that much time to come home. And besides, I’m not the one who moved back to Last Chance. We’d see a lot more of each other if you’d stayed in Columbia.”
    Rocky and Rachel were practically like sisters. They had grown up together, gone to college together, and started careers in Columbia together. But three years ago, Rachel had decided to move back to Last Chance.
    Rachel had only one regret about that decision—her best friend didn’t understand, and probably never would. Rachel decided not to poke that wound again. She was happy Rocky was coming home. It had been a long time since they’d seen one another.
    “So when are you coming?” Rachel asked.
    “I’m driving down with the baron this afternoon, late. I thought you and I could have dinner at the Pig Place and catch up on things. And then maybe you can help me brainstorm a few ideas for how to scare his Lordship away from Last Chance and my daddy’s land.”
    “Uh, maybe you don’t want to scare him away.”
    “What? Of course I do.”
    “Well, maybe that’s a dumb idea. I’m just saying. The economy around here kind of sucks. We could use some foreign investment.”
    “Not if it means bulldozing Golfing for God.”
    “I realize that. But what about someplace else in Allenberg County?”
    “Rachel, is something wrong?”
    Rachel hauled in a big breath. “Yeah, but I can’t talk about it now. I’ll see you tonight.”

CHAPTER
3
    H ugh deBracy wore one of those Irish tweed caps that made him look utterly exotic in the land of ball-cap good ol’ boys. He also looked right at home behind the wheel of the silver Mustang convertible. Somehow Caroline should have known his Lordship would show up driving something like this.
    He might even have succeeded in conveying a certain
savoir faire
, except for the fact that the South Carolina humidity had turned his hair into an unruly mass of curls that his oh-so-cool tweed cap couldn’t constrain. He was cute, in a shy, sexy, duke-ish kind of way—exactly like Mr. Darcy.
    And he maneuvered that Mustang with all the cool skill of Darcy on horseback, too. Quite impressive.
    But he was still a big problem.
    And her best idea for solving this problem was to hope that he’d take one look at her hometown and see it as a big joke.
    And that bothered her. A lot.
    She may have kept her background a secret from her Columbia friends and work associates, but she didn’t see her town as a joke.
    Baron Woolham would, of course, snob that he was. And she would use his snobbery to help him see reason and save her daddy’s land.
    So she played up the quirkiness of her hometown during her briefing, giving him an uncensored description of the tangled web of relationships between the members of the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for God, the Ladies Auxiliary, the Garden Club, and Nita Wills’s Book Club.
    Halfway through her discussion of the enmity between Lillian Bray, chair of the Auxiliary, and Hettie Marshall, chair of the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for God, it occurred to her that she might have a fighting chance to make him see reason if she could get the Last Chance church ladies to collectively scare the bejesus out of him.
    Maybe Miriam Randall would come up with some kind of matrimonial fortune for him that would send him packing. His lordship would not be amused by Miriam Randall. Caroline was sure of it.
    And even if Miriam failed to scare him, Caroline could always count on the greased watermelon race, or the seed-spitting contest, or the demolition derby. Those events were a whole heap of fun, but she doubted that his high and mightiness would see it that way.