Last Chance Beauty Queen Read Online Free PDF

He’d be shocked and awed and appalled.
    “Crikey, that’s different,” his Lordship said when Last Chance’s water tower finally came into view on the horizon.
    Oh good. Caroline could hardly contain her joy. She was sure Hugh deBracy was getting the message loud and clear, with just one gander at the water tower’s striped watermelon paint job.
    “I see your town takes watermelons seriously,” deBracy said.
    “Watermelons are important to our town,” Caroline replied in her best straight man voice.
    “I would have thought soybeans were more important, judging by the acres of them we’ve passed.”
    Caroline cast her gaze over the endless fields of beans on either side of the road. He recognized soybeans when he saw them? That was a surprise. Most city folk wouldn’t know a soybean from a corn stalk.
    “Well, it’s true,” she said, “soybeans are the cash crop around here, they aren’t nearly as colorful or flavorful as watermelons. And besides, no one ever took a soybean to Washington and made history.”
    “Sorry?”
    “In 1933, Josiah Rhodes, one of my distant cousins, took a two-hundred-and-ten-pound watermelon up to Washington and presented it to President Roosevelt himself, in person. Had his picture taken with the president and everything. Since that was one of the most historic things ever to happen to our town, our leaders commemorated the event with a parade. And before anyone could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ the parade became a week-long celebration of pink and green. The water tower wasn’t repainted that way until the 1950s.”
    “Oh, I see. It’s all rather like the Harvest Festival in Woolham. Only in that case, it was a very large turnip, and the king in question was Henry the Seventh. Wehaven’t painted our water tower like a turnip, though, I must say.”
    “Henry the Seventh?” Holy smokes, he wasn’t even fazed for one second by the water tower or the watermelon story.
    “Hm. Yes, I believe it was Henry the Seventh. It was centuries ago. We Brits have very long memories.”
    “I guess. Do you have turnip queens?” She couldn’t resist asking.
    He played it utterly straight and answered her. “No, we usually trot out the old Celtic gods, I’m afraid. It gets the vicar into a right grumpy mood. And since my Aunt Petunia helps organize the annual celebration, I’m afraid I get an earful every Sunday in October until Samhain comes and goes.”
    Caroline stared at him for a long moment. He didn’t exactly fit the stereotype, did he? What would happen if he wasn’t put off by the town’s quirkiness?
    Of course he was going to be put off. Once he met Daddy and visited Golfing for God, he would realize just exactly what he was up against. He looked like a rational kind of guy. He would come around—eventually.
    And if Golfing for God didn’t do the trick, she would have to put Momma’s plan into action and organize an expedition to the mosquito-and-gator-ridden parts of the swamp. Maybe he would tip the canoe, and there would be a feeding frenzy.
    The soybean fields gave way to sixties-style ranch houses built back into stands of tall pines. Eventually the pines thinned, and the speed limit plummeted. The houses started to sprout porches and yards with old shade trees. Then, almost without warning, the speed limit hitfifteen, and they motored into the incorporated town of Last Chance, South Carolina, its two city blocks decorated end to end in pink and green.
    On the right stood Bill’s Grease Pit, the local auto repair place sporting a vinyl banner welcoming tourists to the festival. Down the street on the left, the front windows of Lovett’s Hardware had been draped with watermelon bunting. Across the street, the Cut ’n Curl had a hand-appliquéd watermelon flag flying. Of course, the Cut ’n Curl was permanently painted pink and green on both the outside and the inside. Caroline knew this personally because she’d helped her mother paint the place.
    She hadn’t been