Getting Lucky (Bethlehem, Band 5) - Softcover

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Marilyn Pappano is the author of nearly forty books with more than four million copies in print. She has made regular appearances on bestseller lists and has received recognition for her work in the form of numerous awards. Though her husband's Navy career took them across the United States, he and Ms. Pappano now live in Oklahoma, on a hill that overlooks her hometown. They have one son.

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A MAN WITH NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

Rebel. Hell-raiser. Seducer in blue jeans. Ben Foster has been called many things -- except father. His twelve-year-old daughter Alanna has never seen him, and he's starting to think that coming to Bethlehem to meet her could be the second biggest mistake of his life. And when he takes a job fixing up businesswoman Lynda Barone's new house, he may be on the brink of making a third: falling in love with a woman as wrong for him as he is for her...except when he takes her in his arms.

A WOMAN WITH EVERYTHING -- BUT LOVE

Lynda couldn't remember the last time she had a date. Eighteen-hour workdays and frequent business trips had really taken a toll on her personal life. She'd been so busy carving out a successful career that she almost didn't notice how lonely she'd become. That is, until Ben Foster strode into her life. Suddenly the sexy Southern handyman was invading her home, her senses, stirring dangerous fantasies of a love Lynda had convinced herself she could live without. Lucky for them, neither is the marrying kind....Or are they? Stranger things have happened in a place where the most unlikely lovers can suddenly get lucky. Even if luck has nothing to do with it...

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with nothing left to lose....

Rebel. Hell-raiser. Seducer in blue jeans. Ben Foster has been called many things except father.

His twelve-year-old daughter Alanna has never seen him, and he s starting to think that coming to Bethlehem to meet her could be the second biggest mistake of his life. And when he takes a job fixing up businesswoman Lynda Barone s new house, he may be on the brink of making a third: falling in love with a woman as wrong for him as he is for her ... except when he takes her in his arms.

A woman with everything but love....

Lynda couldn t remember the last time she had a date. Eighteen-hour workdays and frequent business trips had really taken a toll on her personal life. She d been so busy carving out a successful career that she almost didn t notice how lonely she d become.

That is, until Ben Foster strode into her life. Suddenly the sexy

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As the school bus turned the corner onto Fourth Street, Ben Foster pulled to the curb fifteen feet before the stop sign and shut off the engine. There was something inherently wrong with what he was doing — spying on a bunch of schoolkids in hopes of catching a glimpse of a twelve-year-old girl. It was creepy. Perverse.

And the fact that the girl was his never-before-seen daughter didn’t make it feel any less strange. But what was the alternative? Walk up to the house, knock on the door, and say, “Hey, darlin’, say hello to your long-lost father”?

Maybe sometime, but not today. All he wanted today was to see her.

The bus came to a stop with a squeal of brakes, the doors opened, and a half-dozen kids tumbled out. The two he was interested in looked both ways, then ran across the street in front of the bus. They were both blonde-haired and fair-skinned, both pretty, but it was the older one who held Ben’s attention.

Her hair fell past her shoulders and was pulled back in a fancy braid. She carried her backpack as if it were too heavy, and she moved with the unconscious ease of a girl who wasn’t yet fully aware of her body. She was beautiful. Delicate. Perfect.

He’d learned quite a bit about her in the past few weeks — that she lived here in Bethlehem, New York, in the blue house down the street, with her sister and brother, their aunt, uncle, and cousin. She was in the sixth grade, made A’s and B’s, and had a best friend named Susan. Her aunt Emilie worked at the local inn and had risked prison to keep the kids together when their mother, Berry, got locked up, and her uncle Nathan was a cop. Her name was Alanna Marie Dalton.

And she was his daughter.

Ben had had about thirteen years to get used to the idea of having a daughter, but truthfully he’d rarely spared her a thought. The day Berry had told him she was pregnant, he’d told her good-bye and he’d never seen her again. He’d never seen Alanna, either, and at odd times he suspected that might have been his loss.

It had definitely been his grandmother’s loss. She’d gone to her grave regretting that she’d never been able to meet her only great-grandchild.

His throat tightened at the thought of her. Emmaline Bodine had been the most important woman in his life. She’d taken him in every time his mother had taken off, and she’d done her best to teach him things his parents hadn’t. The fact that she’d failed was his fault, not hers. He’d been too wild, had had too many bad examples to counteract her good one. But she’d never stopped loving him, until the day she died two months ago. If he knew her, she was probably watching over him somewhere up in heaven, waiting, hoping for him to finally, just once in his life, do the right thing.

Whatever that was.

Refocusing his attention, he looked across the street just as the Victorian’s front door closed behind the two girls. He thought about staying there a while longer, in case they came back out, then decided against it. The last thing he needed was some housewife calling the cops on him. Hell, with his luck, it would be Alanna’s uncle who showed up to haul him off to jail.

He started the engine and pulled away from the curb, driving slowly past the Victorian and the house where Alanna lived. He headed back to Main Street, then downtown, making an illegal turn to park in front of the diner he’d noticed earlier. It was late for lunch, early for dinner, which meant he had the place mostly to himself, and that suited him just fine. In small towns like Bethlehem, people tended to pay a lot of attention to strangers. At the moment, he’d just as soon do without that.

He slid into a booth, turned the coffee cup right side up, then gazed out the window. May in New York was more pleasant than back home in Georgia. Summer days in Georgia weren’t fit for anything but stretching out in the shade or under a ceiling fan with an endless supply of ice-cold beer and doing a lot of nothing.

And that summed up his life — a lot of nothing. He’d lived in a lot of places, worked at going-nowhere jobs that required brawn rather than brains, drunk a lot of beer, amused himself with a lot of women. He’d had no ambitions, no thoughts for the future, no strings but Emmaline. He hadn’t amounted to anything, and his grandmother had died knowing that.

The steamy aroma of coffee drew his gaze from the town outside and his thoughts back to the north. “Welcome to Henry’s,” the waitress said, her voice too cheerful by half. “Do you need a few minutes to look over the menu?”

Ben glanced down at the plastic-encased menu with the name — Harry’s Diner — printed across the front. Flipping it open, he scanned the offerings. “I’ll have the pot roast.”

“Good choice. You can’t go wrong with Hank’s pot roast.”

“Hank?”

“He owns Henry’s.” She glanced at the menu and frowned. “Harry’s. I said Harry’s, didn’t I? Of course I did. Henry owns Harry’s. The other waitress is ... Mary? Maude? Marva? And I’m Gloria.”

“Are you sure about that?”

With a flush and a smile, she checked her name tag. “I’m sure. Who are you?”

“Ben Foster.” He couldn’t ignore the hand she offered without being rude, and his grandmother hadn’t raised him to be rude, especially to women of a certain age.

“Welcome to Bethlehem, Ben Foster. You’re not from around here, are you? Not with an accent like that.”

“No, ma’am. I’m from Georgia.”

“And what brings you to this part of New York?”

It was a simple question, and he was going to give a simple lie. There was no reason to feel guilty about it, except that Emmaline had hated his lies. “It looks like a good place to stop a while.”

“Oh, it is. Bethlehem’s the best place on earth to live. Of course, you’ll see that for yourself soon enough. I’d best get your order in to Harold. I’d hate to see a man faint dead away from hunger when the best food in town is just a few steps away.”

Ben watched her go, then turned back to the window with a grin. He wouldn’t go so far as to proclaim Bethlehem the best place on earth — he was rather partial to hot days, the scent of magnolias, kudzu run wild, and lazy Southern drawls — but it wasn’t bad. Solid old buildings surrounded the town square, where kids played in the grass. Shoppers strolled along the sidewalks, and mothers rocked babies on park benches. It was almost too wholesome, clean, and prosperous a scene to believe.

If it was as good as it looked, Alanna was lucky to have ended up there.

As he watched, a car pulled into the space next to his and emphasized his thought about prosperity. The silver Mercedes gleamed so brightly in the afternoon sunlight that it almost hurt to look at it. The woman who drove it damn near gleamed, too, unfolding from the sports car more gracefully than he would have thought possible for an Amazon. She stood at least six feet tall, most of her height taken up by long, long legs of the sort men built erotic fantasies around. Her hair was black, parted in the middle, and fell in a sleek, undisturbed line past her shoulders. Her pale skin looked so fine that his fingers itched to touch it, just to feel for himself if it could possibly be as soft as it looked. But he was no fool. He’d wager that no man with calloused hands had ever touched the woman. In fact, he...