Miracle on Chance Avenue Read Online
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Miracle on Chance Avenue
A Love on Chance Avenue Romance
Jane Porter
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Miracle on Chance Avenue
Copyright © 2017 Jane Porter
The Tule Publishing Group, LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-947636-53-8
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Dedication
For all the wonderful, amazing readers who have taken Marietta, Montana into your hearts. This one is for you!
Table of Contents
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Prologue
She was back.
It had been almost a month since Rory Douglas had last seen her, so long that he’d almost stopped looking for her every night. But now she was back in the stands, this time in Clovis, California, over halfway across the country from the last time he’d spotted her in Santa Fe, and before Santa Fe, it had been Nashville.
She was even more beautiful tonight, her brilliant copper-red hair in a loose side braid, the expression in her brown eyes somber as she watched Kane Wilder dash out of the ring after his electrifying ride.
Rory’s pulse quickened when she turned her head and looked at him, finding him in his chute. Their gazes locked, and Rory didn’t look away, wanting her to know he saw her, and remembered her. Each time, every time. The first time he’d spotted her in the stands had been two and a half years ago in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. It wasn’t a big stadium, and she’d been so beautiful she seemed to glow with light and life. She’d seemed familiar, too, but he wasn’t sure why.
Two and a half years later he still didn’t know anything about her, and yet his gut told him she was there for him, that her appearances at the various tour events these past few years had always been for him.
Or maybe he just wanted her to be there for him.
Maybe his ego needed to believe that beautiful, young things were still attracted to him, despite the fact that he was the oldest man on the American Extreme Bull Rider Tour, earning Rory the nickname Gramps from the other guys.
Rory didn’t mind the nickname. At thirty-eight he was too old to still be competing, and twice the age of the youngest athletes. But competing kept him on the road, and busy, and too tired and sore to think of anything but getting through the next day. He liked the guys on tour, too. Over the years they’d become his family, a tough, practical, uncomplaining family, which suited him just fine because his real family was far more complicated, which was another way of saying painful, and at times, more bitter than sweet.
Every night after Rory chalked his rope, taped up his hands, and stretched, he’d say a prayer as he settled onto the back of his bull.
He didn’t ask God to keep him safe. He didn’t ask for anything for himself, but rather he prayed that the good Lord would keep His hand over his sister McKenna’s head. He prayed that his brother Quinn would one day find a good woman and have a family. And then he’d pray that both of them would know peace after he was gone.
But tonight, just as he was about to climb into the chute, he’d felt that pull, that now familiar, taut, electric tension that told him she was there, the tension that made him lift his gaze and search the stands until he found her.
His mystery woman, a woman he’d come to think of as his angel.
Rory lowered his weight onto Hammerfall’s back and tightened the rope, wrapping it tightly around his hand as calm and resolve settled into his bones. He wouldn’t die tonight, not with her here in the stands. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t the way he wanted to be remembered.
Attention now fixed between the bull’s massive shoulders, Rory nodded his head, indicating he was good to go. And then the chute opened, and Hammerfall charged into the ring, bucking and twisting, and Rory settled back into the pocket, or what he hoped would be the pocket, but inexplicably Hammerfall gyrated the opposite direction, flinging Rory forward while the bull threw his head back. Rory knew a split second before the impact that it wasn’t going to be good, and he found himself praying just before all went black.
Give me a chance, Lord.
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Chapter One
The worst part about being the newest employee was that you had the least amount of seniority, which was why Sadie Mann was standing outside a tiny historic stable turned into stylish small house at the end of Farrell Avenue, shivering in the snow, waiting for the renter to show and pick up the keys at nine thirty at night.
She didn’t mind meeting the guest who’d booked the property as her house wasn’t far and Marietta had virtually no crime, but it was ridiculously cold, and she’d been waiting an awfully long time. There were so many projects she could be working on right now, commissions she still needed to get in the mail if they were to reach her customers before Christmas.
But she’d manage it, she would, she told herself, hunching her shoulders against yet another blast of cold air, the wind as much a part of Marietta as the famed Copper Mountain peak standing sentry behind the town’s historic courthouse.
Yes, it might mean missing the Marietta Stroll tomorrow night, something she’d never missed before, not even when she was flying with Big Sky Air, as it was her annual tradition with her mom, but Mom was gone, having passed away suddenly in September and Sadie had accepted that things were different. She was different. She’d given up her fantasies and daydreams and had turned over a new leaf. Her goal was to be strong, self-sufficient, and practical. And practical was the most challenging of the three.
Being practical had become her mantra since Rory was hurt, and then came her mom’s death, and being practical took on a whole new meaning. With her mom gone, Sadie realized just how foolish she’d been, chasing impossible dreams all these years, with Rory the biggest dream of all.
Getting over Rory wasn’t proving to be easy. Maybe it was because the last time she saw him was at the hospital in Clovis and he’d been a bear, out of his mind with pain, but at least he was alive.
She’d gone to the hospital to make sure he was breathing. She’d gone to make sure he’d survive.
But looking at his poor, battered body, with all those bandages and tubes and tape, she didn’t feel sorry for him, she felt angry.
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