The Bachelor's Brighton Valley Bride (Return to Brighton Valley) Read Online Free PDF

she needed was for Mr. Johnson to think she was violating some safety regulation on top of everything else. “Never mind. Just stomp your shoes before we go inside.”
    It was bad enough she had both her kids at work with her this afternoon, but with her mom and Ted on their dream vacation of a yearlong RV trip across America, Megan was left without many childcare options until summer camp started at the Wexler YMCA next week.
    She held the door open for her blonde daughter, who’d once again left her backpack in the car—no doubt on purpose. “After you meet Mr. Johnson, the new worker I told you about, you need to go back to the car and get your homework. You have to practice your spelling tonight. It’s the last test of the year.”
    Lisa rolled her eyes, transporting Megan back to a time when she used to do the same thing to her own mother. Oh, how she’d hated spelling. And reading. And any other kind of schoolwork that had to do with written words that seemed to jump all over the page.
    She really couldn’t blame her daughter, who’d inherited the same learning disabilities she’d struggled with in school.
    “Why do I even need to learn how to spell all those boring words anyway? Soccer players only need to know how to run fast and kick the ball.”
    As they entered the back door to the shop, Peyton turned from where he stood perusing the ever-increasing number of backlogged computers that lined the shelves. “Even Mia Hamm had to learn how to spell,” Peyton told Lisa.
    Megan’s stomach nose-dived, and the dull headache that had begun when Tyler’s school had first called her this afternoon sharpened. Not only had Peyton heard Lisa’s complaint, but he’d actually responded to her.
    Great. The man had been in the shop for all of thirty minutes, and he could make a slew of assumptions about her parenting skills. And they hadn’t even talked about the problems facing the store—the computers needing repair and the stacks of old invoices that had yet to be logged.
    He probably suspected that Megan’s son was a computer hacker and her whining daughter hated to read.
    Would he realize that Megan’s problems with the kids sometimes caused her to be nearly as scattered as Don?
    “Who are you? ” Lisa asked him.
    “Lisa!” Megan really had taught her daughter better manners than that. “This is Mr. Johnson. Remember, I told you about him. He’s the man from Geekon Enterprises who’s going to be working at the shop for a while.”
    “Do you know Mia Hamm?” Lisa asked, zeroing in on her all-time favorite women’s soccer player.
    “I’ve actually met her. And she’s a good speller. She needed to be in order to read those playbooks.”
    Lisa’s eyes widened, and her lips parted. “You know her? Really? ”
    Megan had to admit that she was a bit surprised, too. And when she stole a glance at Peyton, she saw a blush creep onto his cheeks.
    Why was that? Was he embarrassed to be caught in a lie? Surely he didn’t actually know the woman. Or did he?
    He glanced away from her and Lisa, as though he wished he could be anywhere but here in the store with them.
    “We’re not actually friends,” he admitted. “I met her at...a charity event. And the spelling thing. I...uh...read that in a magazine somewhere.”
    “Mom,” Lisa said, “is the car unlocked? I have to go get my backpack.”
    “It’s open,” Megan said. Then she watched in amused surprise as her daughter raced outside to get her bag.
    Megan glanced at Peyton. She’d found it odd that he’d said anything to Lisa in the first place, but if it caused the girl to voluntarily want to do her schoolwork, well, then she wasn’t about to complain.
    Her gaze focused in on the accountant who’d probably already taken inventory of the way she ran the back office, as well as the way she handled her children.
    “Thank you,” she said. “That was brilliant.”
    “Yeah, well, even geeks can relate to sports fanatics sometimes.”
    A geek?