Kelton's Rules

Kelton's Rules
Peggy Nicholson

THE RULES by Jack KeltonRule #1: Never Marry.Rule #2: If you're stupid enough to ignore Rule 1, never, never marry a divorced woman. She's bound to be smackdab in the middle of the Divorce Crazies….And Jack's talking from experience, with the emotional scars and a kid named Kat to prove it.Abby Lake's Law"A wise woman stands alone. You build your life around a man–and then he leaves, and you have nothing but heartache to show for it."In other words, Abby, just divorced and with custody of son Skyler, has no more interest in anything serious or permanent than Jack does.

“Abby could use some cheering up, so don’t hurry this job, okay? I need a little time.”

“Huh.” Old Whitey leaned over to spit his tobacco in the grass. “Thought she wanted her vehicle repaired so she could lay tracks out of Trueheart. Said something about gettin’ to Sedona.”

“Things have changed,” Jack muttered. Don’t make me say what, old man.

“What?”

Great. Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Well…Abby would be smart to settle here for the winter.” Jack forged on, feeling as if he were trudging head down into a dust storm. “She’s never built anything and she thinks she’ll build an adobe by the fall? Ain’t gonna happen.”

“Gal’s pretty spunky.”

“Yep, but take it from a divorce lawyer, she’s smack-dab in the middle of the Divorce Crazies. She’ll change her mind ten times in the next ten months. Meanwhile, till she’s over this phase, Trueheart’s a safer, saner town to raise her son than Sedona’ll ever be. Last thing Abby needs is to get lost in a power vortex.”

“Hmm.” Whitey chewed thoughtfully, then said, “Sure you know which end of the branding iron you’re grabbing?”

Jack cocked his head. “Meaning?”

“Meanin’ if anybody gets burned around here, it might not be Abby.”

Dear Reader,

In this fifth story in my series about the town of Trueheart, Colorado, Abby Lake is a woman caught up in that wonderful/terrifying phase of life I call the “Divorce Crazies.” I hope you’ve never experienced it yourself, but if you have, you know it’s a time of extreme vulnerability and extreme creativity.

Since (through no fault of her own) her last effort at making a good life failed, Abby’s determined to get it right this time for herself and her young son, Skyler. She’s changing everything—her job, her home, her attitude toward men, love and marriage. She means to grab life and happiness with both hands before they slip away.

To Abby’s wary new neighbor, lawyer Jack Kelton, it seems that Abby “hasn’t a clue what she wants—but she’ll be flying off in all four directions at once, looking for it.”

Jack may have a point. I remember the first year of my own divorce: buying a handyman’s-special house on the East Coast one week (I wasn’t that handy), then flying to California the next to learn if a man I hadn’t seen for fifteen years might be The One. (He wasn’t.) Darting back to my new house to buy forty of everything (paper towels! canned beans! flashlight batteries!) as if I could build a wall with all those supplies between me and the cold scary world.

And so forth for the rest of that crazy year, till at last I met someone who taught me to calm down and smile again. So here I give you Abby Lake, on her way to learning how to smile again in the town of Trueheart, Colorado. As always, hope you enjoy!

Peggy Nicholson

Kelton’s Rules

Peggy Nicholson

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To Ron, for all the times

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER ONE