Mr. Right Goes Wrong Read online

  No More Mr. Nice Guy

  Like a bad-choice-making boomerang, Mazy Gulliver has returned to her mom’s tiny house in Brandt Mountain. But this time, she’s got her teenage son, Tru, in tow and no intention of messing up ever again.

  Mazy’s so determined to rebuild her life she hardly minds being the new loan collector, or even working for Tad, her ex (and Tru’s dad, which—awkward). She’s not here to make friends—or fall in love.

  Sweet, dependable Eli Latham has loved Mazy since they got pretend married in second grade. But after being ignored and/or burned by Mazy for two decades, Eli’s got a new strategy. Mazy likes bad boys, so a bad boy is what he’ll be. How hard can it be to act like a jerk?

  Until now, Eli could’ve taken SOB lessons from Tad. But suddenly Tad is playing Mr. Nice Guy. What gives? Not for the first time, men are making Mazy crazy, though she’s determined to do what’s right for her and Tru. But breaking old habits is hard, and if she really wants things to change she’ll have to face her biggest adversary: herself.

  Praise for the novels of

  Pamela Morsi

  “In this nearly perfect snapshot of a close-knit, gossipy, rural town at wheat-harvest time, former librarian Morsi once again proves that she is one of romance’s top authors.”

  —Booklist on Love Overdue

  “As charming and sunny as the summer days it describes, Morsi’s librarian romance crafts the staple elements of the genre with verve and a sure hand…. [A] satisfying beach read with gentle humor and quirky, vivid characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Love Overdue

  “Pamela Morsi is a perennial favorite for good reason…

  She writes the perfect feel-good read.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

  “Pamela Morsi writes with great tenderness and insight.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice

  “Written with charm and style, Pamela Morsi books are filled with endearing characters you won’t forget.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gibson

  Also by Pamela Morsi:

  LOVE OVERDUE

  THE LOVESICK CURE

  THE BENTLEYS BUY A BUICK

  THE BIKINI CAR WASH

  THE SOCIAL CLIMBER OF DAVENPORT HEIGHTS

  (Originally published as DOING GOOD)

  RED’S HOT HONKY-TONK BAR

  LAST DANCE AT JITTERBUG LOUNGE

  BITSY’S BAIT & BBQ

  THE COTTON QUEEN

  BY SUMMER’S END

  SUBURBAN RENEWAL

  LETTING GO

  Pamela Morsi

  Mr. Right Goes Wrong

  For my niece, Kerry, who knows how to pick ’em.

  And my nephew, Steven, who is somebody’s Mr. Right.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  1

  For her seventh birthday, Mazy Gulliver got a Play Bride set that included a white veil, a plastic bouquet and a rhinestone ring. She immediately organized a wedding celebration under the basketball goal where she married Termy Latham, the boy next door. An argument could be made that the incident was merely the first in a long series of hasty, ill-conceived and unwise decisions about men.

  For the most part she’d managed to live over her mistakes. Or at least live with them. But this latest was more than boneheaded heartbreak, it was life-altering.

  Which was exactly why she found herself moving back into her mother’s tiny home in Brandt Mountain, North Carolina. It was a life alteration not particularly welcome.

  Brandt Mountain in early October was already showing some autumn color, which couldn’t quite overcome the steel-gray sky overhead. It was a sharp contrast to the balmy temperatures she’d left in Wilmington. She’d walked on the beach that morning at dawn, just to say goodbye. The place had some very bad memories for her now, but the roar of the ocean wasn’t one of them. There was something about the way the tide could obliterate the footprints in the sand that gave her hope in a new beginning even if it was far from that shore.

  Beside her in this relocation, both literally and figuratively, was her fourteen-year-old son. Tru sat silently, watching Main Street go by through the passenger’s window. He was tall for his age. Tall for the compact rental car. By necessity his knees were folded up and pressing against the glove box. He was undoubtedly uncomfortable. But he said nothing. Mazy tried to kid herself that he was becoming the strong-and-silent type. But she knew more likely it was an aversion to her conversation.

  Maybe there was simply nothing left to say.

  She turned left on Sawmill Road. The narrow street, with its vintage cracked and overgrown sidewalk, was as familiar to her as the memories it evoked. Skipping off to school. Rushing home after a basketball game. Sneaking out in the middle of the night.

  Two long blocks down the hill, set back from the street, was the house she’d grown up in. The paint on the clapboards was faded and peeling, one of the porch posts listed slightly to the right, but otherwise it was the same home of her childhood. The place her parents had called their “little love nest.”

  Mazy hardly pulled into the driveway before spotting her mother. Giddy with excitement, Beth Ann—as Mazy had called her for more than a decade—hurried down from the front porch to greet them.

  “Hello! Hello! Hello!” she called out as she eagerly waved the pressed hanky that she always carried. Mazy thought it might easily have been mistaken as a flag of surrender.

  “You’re here. You’re finally here. It’s been too long since I’ve hugged my boy,” she declared. “Way too long!”

  Whether the boy in question actually heard her words was uncertain. He had not removed his earbuds since Greensboro. But by the time Mazy had gotten out and walked around the car, Tru had unfolded his long legs out of the vehicle and enfolded his arms around his grandmother.

  “Hey, Gram,” he said, smiling at the older woman as if he were actually glad to see her. It was a stark contrast from the angry silent treatment he’d been giving his mother for the past three days. Mazy took a bright spot wherever she could get one.r />
  “You are so tall,” Beth Ann told him. “It almost hurts my neck to look up at you.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “I’m only six-one,” he assured her.

  Next to the tiny woman, he did look gigantic. Mazy was a very medium five-seven, but taller than both her parents. Her son’s height obviously had not come from their side of the family.

  “You need some meat on those long limbs,” Beth Ann told him. “What do you like to eat?”

  “Anything,” Tru replied. “Everything.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve got,” his grandmother promised him.

  Beth Ann offered a weary, long-suffering smile as she came to hug her daughter, as well.

  “You could use a little meat on your bones, too,” she said. “It’s good to have you home.”

  The first statement was probably true. Mazy had lost some weight during the past few stressful months. But there was nothing good about having her home. Her mother was eking through her senior years on a cheerful smile and a pittance of a social security check. Two more mouths to feed would be more than a struggle. It could be a disaster.

  “I should be able to get a job,” Mazy told her.

  Her mother nodded. “There’s always a job for a smart girl who’s willing to work hard.”

  The words had been her father’s. Having her mother quote them now was her attempt to be reassuring, but Mazy feared that the fallacy of the statement was the conviction that she was a “smart girl.” Bright and intelligent did not, apparently, always add up to that definition.

  She opened the car’s trunk and began unloading their pitiful suitcases and cardboard boxes. Apparently their entire lives could be crammed into the measly storage space of a tiny rental car, which didn’t say much for what she’d accomplished over the years. But it wasn’t wise to contemplate all that right now. Mazy had things to do, tasks to perform. Keeping busy wasn’t merely a good idea. It was essential if she were going to shovel her son and herself out of the dirty, dumb ditch she’d managed to dig.

  “Where’s the rest of your things?” her mother asked, coming up behind her.

  “She sold it all,” Tru answered before Mazy had a chance to explain. There was no resentment in his voice, only fatalism. That worried her more than his anger.

  “We owed everybody,” Mazy said by way of explanation. “I couldn’t...I couldn’t just walk away from that.”

  Her mother smiled bravely. “Of course not,” she agreed. “Come on in the house, it’s too chilly to stand out here in your shirtsleeves.”

  With Tru’s help, it only took a couple of trips to carry their belongings inside. Beth Ann’s home was welcomingly warm in the chill of the autumn air. And the smell of her mother’s marinara sauce simmering on the stove brought back memories that were, for Mazy, mostly good. Once upon a time she had been happy here. They had been happy here. Her father had been a lineman for Rural Electric. Her mother did Prayer Partners and Ladies Aid at the church. They had laughed and loved and cherished their only child, a pretty, healthy, clever little girl. They’d held dreams for her that included state college, a promising career and a happy family all her own.

  Mazy had not been able to pull off any of those dreams. But she was determined that she would change. She was determined that Tru would learn to feel safe and settled as she once had. He deserved that.

  She gave her son the back bedroom that had been her own. If he noticed the girlie white bedroom furniture or the frilly edges to the pink-and-lavender bedspread, he made no comment. But then, he wasn’t really speaking to her. He threw himself diagonally across the bed, his giant sneaker-covered feet hanging off the side. His hair, a sandy blond, was a little too long. And his typical summer freckles had yet to fade. His earbuds were in again and he was looking at the device in his hands.

  “You should probably unpack,” she told him.

  He mumbled something unintelligible. Mazy supposed that was an improvement over complete stonewalling. She tried to be annoyed, but she couldn’t manage it. All she wanted was to wrap him in her arms again and tell him that she was sorry. But she’d already done that. She’d done it too many times. After a while she knew it was more for her comfort than for his.

  In her mom’s room Mazy hung her meager collection of business suits in the closet. If she got a job—no, she corrected herself, when she got a job—she’d need clothes.

  “Why do you always wear such drab colors?” her mother asked from the doorway.

  Mazy shrugged. “I’m an accounting clerk,” she answered. “We’re supposed to look boring.”

  “Wearing something brighter always makes me feel more cheerful.”

  Beth Ann’s color wheel was a serious mix of hot pinks and bright yellows.

  “In my last job I wore neon-orange every day―it didn’t cheer me up a bit.”

  Her mother didn’t find anything funny in the joke. “Dinner should be ready in fifteen minutes. I’m sure you must be hungry.”

  In truth, Mazy had no interest in food at all. “Tru will be,” she assured her. “He eats constantly. But I don’t want you to think you have to cook for us.”

  The older woman waved away her objection. “I’m happy to do it. It’s easier to cook for a family than it is for myself.”

  Mazy was pretty sure that wasn’t true, but she didn’t say so.

  “It will be such fun having you home,” her mother added. “Much better than rattling around on my own.”

  The tiny two-bedroom cottage had very little “rattling around” room. With two adult women and a teenager with feet the size of Kentucky, the place was going to be bulging at the seams.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll need to be here,” Mazy admitted. “But Tru and I are determined to cause you as little trouble as we can.”

  “You are no trouble,” Beth Ann replied. “I have missed you so much. And now it will be like our own slumber party.”

  “I’m not going to sleep in here,” Mazy told her, indicating the four-poster double bed that her parents had once shared. “You know how restless I am. I’ll be fine out on the couch.”

  “Are you sure? That thing is awfully old and lumpy.”

  “I love that couch,” Mazy said. “I think Tru was conceived on that couch.”

  “He certainly was not!” she responded with a gasp.

  Mazy laughed lightly. She was teasing, of course, and she thought a bit of humor might be welcome in the situation.

  Her mother shook her head, but couldn’t resist a chuckle as she wagged a threatening finger at her daughter.

  “You are not so grown up, young lady, that I won’t stand you in the corner for a time-out.”

  “Mom, if I thought it would do me any good, I’d volunteer.”

  2

  Eli Latham ran his hand lovingly along a long piece of prime poplar. Then he raised it to eye level and looked down the length of its grain. Poplar was a very undervalued wood. Straight grained, sturdy and lightweight, it was easy to work and could always do the job it was asked to do. But no matter how long you aged it, it always looked kind of green. It didn’t take a stain well, it was almost impossible to pretty it up. The best thing was to paint it or hide it under a veneer.

  That was Eli’s plan. He’d use the poplar for its best qualities and then cover it up with a thin layer of fancier wood. Typically his customers didn’t want veneers, the style had gotten a bad reputation from shoddy work. But the music department at the museum was more interested in the function of their sheet music cabinet and had left the aesthetics to him. The sheer size of it would have made the cost prohibitive in solid wood and the weight would have been impractical. He had come up with a unique design that was both beautiful and serviceable. Both the curator and her patrons would be very satisfied. He was always harder to please than his customers wer
e.

  He stacked the board with the others he’d chosen on a rack shelf that lined the west side of the building. Bringing the wood inside a few days before he began a project allowed it to acclimate to less variable temperatures of being indoors. Cut lumber was no longer living, in the accepted sense of that term, but it continued to expand and contract with heating and cooling. It was one of the earth’s most efficient systems for carbon storage. It was also beautiful. And Eli had a gift for making it even more so.

  “Do you want me to plane that?”

  The question came from his brother, Clark.

  “Nah, let’s let it sit here a couple of days,” he answered.

  Clark should have known that, of course. He was almost four years older than Eli and had been a hand at Latham Furniture longer than he had. But Clark had never had the interest. He’d never had the vision. It was Eli who was the company now and his older brother worked for him.

  “Why don’t you sand the Windsors,” he suggested.

  The six chairs taking up way too much space on the floor were already looking very good covered with the combination of tung and linseed oil. But by using superfine grit to rough them up, the color would penetrate deeper and they could take more coats.

  The eleven-hundred-square-foot building boasted both an abundance of natural light and plenty of overhead electricity. The workshop’s back corner, mostly used as an office now, was built of hewn logs by his great-grandfather, the original Elias Latham. The rest of the building had been raised by his dad and granddad in the 1970s when the company had contracted with a national furniture chain for nice profits and a line of Shaker-style tables. But the chain now bought their Shaker-style from Asia, and Latham Furniture had gone back to handmade custom pieces and a modest living for the craftsmen’s current generation. That suited Eli better, anyway. He didn’t mind making the same piece over and over, if he could strive for perfection or improve it slightly every time. But he could never have been happy with assembly-line production.

  “Man, I’m getting hungry,” Clark commented. “I hate it when we have sandwiches for lunch. It doesn’t stay with me.”