Engaging Deception (The Joplin Chronicles Book #3) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Regina Jennings

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

174 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A lively competition draws her into her rival's blueprints--and maybe even his heart.Olive Kentworth has spent her life hiding her interest in architecture, even though she pores over architectural books and sketches buildings. When she accepts a job on a home expansion, it's only because her cousin Amos agrees to pose as the builder. To further hide her involvement, Olive takes a position as a nanny--not knowing that she'll be working for her idol, Joplin's leading architect, widower Maxfield Scott.Maxfield is intrigued by his new nanny--she makes his home and his life bearable again. His work, on the other hand, is a disaster. An untrained builder is remodeling a completed project of his. What's worse, Maxfield's current client wants changes to his plans because of that builder's work.As the architectural one-upmanship heats up, Olive's involvement becomes harder to hide. Will the relationship between her and Maxfield survive, or will they both miss out on building something for their future?

Sujets

Historical romance

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	13 décembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493439089
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0408€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Half Title Page
Books by Regina Jennings
T HE J OPLIN C HRONICLES
Courting Misfortune
Proposing Mischief
Engaging Deception
T HE F ORT R ENO S ERIES
Holding the Fort
The Lieutenant’s Bargain
The Major’s Daughter
O ZARK M OUNTAIN R OMANCE S ERIES
A Most Inconvenient Marriage
At Love’s Bidding
For the Record
L ADIES OF C ALDWELL C OUNTY
Sixty Acres and a Bride
Love in the Balance
Caught in the Middle
N OVELLAS
An Unforeseen Match (from the collection A Match Made in Texas )
Her Dearly Unintended (from the collection With This Ring? )
Bound and Determined (from the collection Hearts Entwined )
Intrigue a la Mode (from the collection Serving Up Love )
Broken Limbs, Mended Hearts (from the collection The Kissing Tree )
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2022 by Regina Jennings
Published by Bethany House Publishers
Minneapolis, Minnesota
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3908-9
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Poem in chapter 13 is from William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure .
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design by Dan Thornberg, Design Source Creative Services
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedication
To Lori, the co-founder of our mutual admiration society, the genius behind our mutually assured destruction compact, and the best second double-cousin a girl could hope to have. (I expect a dedication in return.)
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Regina Jennings
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
The Kentworth Family
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
A Note from the Author
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
The Kentworth Family
CHAPTER 1

Oh, the indignities of death.
Olive Kentworth dipped her horsehair brush into the jar of water and scrubbed the cold granite of the tombstone. Her mother had been gone for nearly a year, but Olive was still plagued by the emptiness in her days, in her home, in her heart. She tried to keep busy, and today that meant coming to the cemetery to wash away the bird droppings that marred her mother’s gravestone. After rearranging her skirt to better pad her knees, she scrubbed with vigor. If only the birds would stop eating the mulberries. The purple was nearly impossible to erase, but she couldn’t abide the idea that her mother’s headstone looked untended. Not when she’d tended her so well in life.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Maisie called from the far side of the shortleaf pine that shaded the family plot.
“Shh . . .” Olive said. “You’re in a graveyard. You shouldn’t be so buoyant.”
But Maisie was striding toward her, swinging a berry basket high with a hatchet tucked into her waistband. Her cousin Maisie was buoyant wherever she went, just like Olive was cautious.
“Aunt Myra was an admirer of my spirit. She wouldn’t mind.” Maisie spotted a hard-shelled bug climbing up the tombstone and flicked it away. “What would bother her is her daughter spending too much time alone at her grave.”
“Of course I’m alone. Mother’s gone. Who else am I supposed to take care of?” Olive started in on another blotch of purple.
“Take care of yourself.” Maisie said it like it was a reasonable course of action.
“I do take care of myself.” Olive glared at her over the gravestone. “I have a lot of things planned. In fact, Willow invited me to go traveling with her and Graham to see the country.”
“Welp, are you going?”
Olive dropped her gaze back to her work. “I would if it wasn’t for Father. It’s too soon to leave him alone.”
“You spent the last eight years looking after your mother. Now you’re going to look after your father?” Maisie set her basket down with force. “I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re hiding from life, Olive, and that’s why I’m here. I’m going to break you free.”
Putting one hand to her side, Maisie extracted the hatchet from her waistband. This wasn’t done easily, with the handle getting twisted in her skirt and requiring tugging and squirming to free it. Olive had time to pick up her jar and take a step back, as one could never be sure what her farm cousins were capable of. When Maisie grabbed the finial atop the grave marker and propped her foot against it, Olive gasped.
“Get down from there.” She looked around, afraid someone in Fairview Cemetery would observe Maisie’s outrageous behavior. “This isn’t the place for climbing.”
“I’ve come to free you, and that’s what I’m going to do.” Standing on Myra Kentworth’s grave and stretching to her full height, Maisie caught the branch of the pine above her. With skill, she pulled it closer, then began hacking at it. “This tree looks mighty pretty, but you ain’t going to keep the tombstone clean as long as the birds can sit above it.”
“We chose this site because of the shade,” Olive protested. “It’s a pretty spot.”
“Ain’t nothing pretty about those bird droppings. The only thing worse is a smart girl like you hiding her light under a bushel.” Maisie grunted with each strike. The bend in the branch showed that it was nearly cut through. Maisie dropped her hatchet, took the branch in both hands, and worked it until it snapped. She tossed the branch down, then hopped to the ground. “Olive Kentworth, your ma is dead, but you ain’t. It’s time to get to moving.”
Leave it to Maisie to boil down all life’s problems to a matter of will. “Moving for the sake of moving without any purpose or intent is futility. Maybe Granny Laura will put me on the board of some rich miner. Then my life would meet your qualifications.” Newlywed Maisie couldn’t expect everyone to up and marry a complete stranger, could she?
“I don’t recommend doing what I did, but how about Willow? She would’ve never met Graham if she’d stayed home and not been a Harvey Girl. Or Calista? She went and became a Pinkerton agent. Look what come of that.”
Olive did not possess Calista’s love of adventure or her sister Willow’s steely determination. Olive wanted to be safe at home with her drafting pencils, architect books, and her birdhouses. The challenges she sought were figuring out a floor plan or how to support a balcony. Something the other Kentworths didn’t understand. They expected everyone to be brave and outgoing. Olive was a disappointment.
But she’d come to do a job, and she was going to finish it. Despite Maisie’s groan of disapproval, Olive knelt and resumed scrubbing.
“You can’t ignore me forever.” Maisie snacked on some blackberries from her basket. “I think we should enlist Calista’s help. She’s always matching up jobs with the people who need them. Don’t you reckon she can do the same for you?”
“What if I don’t want a job?” Olive asked. “What if I’d be happier at home?” Or what if she didn’t have a choice, because no one would trust a woman in architecture?
There were two buildings in Joplin that bore her designs though not her name—the Lighthouse Center for Miners and the visitors’ center at the Crystal Cave. Because of her bedside vigil, she’d been unable to spend much time at the construction sites when they were built. Instead, Maisie’s brother Amos had been her representative. In fact, Amos, with his gift for gab, had convinced everyone that he was the designer behind the plans. Which was fine with Olive. She wasn’t looking for credit.
“You stop it, Olive. You used to be the most courageous one of us. You were so brave that you tossed everything aside to take care of your ma. That took gumption. But now you’re stuck in a rut.” Maisie twisted her mouth to the side as she sized Olive up. “If you want to stay cozy at home, we can go that route. Calista will get you gussied up while I corral a herd of eligible bachelors for your inspection. Either way, we aim to get you some prospects before suppertime.”
If Olive wasn’t kneeling by her mother’s grave, she would’ve laughed. Her with a herd of eligible bachelors? She touched her messy blond hair pulled into an uneven knot and tried to imagine what Calista would have to do to get her up to snuff. But it didn’t matter. Maisie wouldn’t understand. Olive’s insistence that she enjoyed solitude was mocked, her guarantee that she wouldn’t regret staying home rejected, and her demand that Maisie mind her own business ignored.
As Maisie continued on with her arguments and plans, one thing was becoming clear—according to her family, the only unacceptable thing was for Olive to remain as she was.

Olive was home from the cemetery with plenty of time to clean up and make her father’s dinner.
Time, she had plenty.
Early on, when her mother required tending, passing the time had been difficult. As she listened to her mother’s wracking cough, trying to keep up a brave face so her mother wouldn’t see how much her illness troubled her daughters, the hands of the clock seemed permanently set in place. When her sister, Willow, took her turn to spell her, Olive felt like a prisoner released from her sentence.
But over the months, time became something that slipped by unnoticed. Olive found herself acclimated to the bedside watch. W