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“Love is complicated. When it ends, it’s even more so.”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut, as if looking in instead of out.
She was a soft touch. Hers was a goodness that didn’t come and go, but remained when the going got tough. She was no holiday Christian. It was his guess that she had a big, forgiving heart.
When she opened her eyes, she gave another shoulder shrug. “My sisters tell me that’s part of healing and moving on. But this love thing is painful.”
“It can be,” Chad answered. “So, this guy, he’s the one you were hoping to marry?”
“Not exactly. I was just hoping, is all. And now I’m on a path I didn’t expect.”
“Maybe it’s a better one.”
“Maybe.” She smiled at him, truly smiled.
Just like that his heart clicked, and he was in like with her. How about that?
JILLIAN HART
makes her home in Washington State, where she has lived most of her life. When Jillian is not hard at work on her next story, she loves to read, go to lunch with her friends and spend quiet evenings with her family.
MILLS & BOON
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Her Perfect Man
Jillian Hart
But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.
—Psalms 71:14
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
Epilogue
Questions for Discussion
Chapter One
The phone was ringing inside her apartment, but Rebecca McKaslin stepped out into the late-summer evening anyway. Thank goodness for caller ID. Why was Chris calling? He knew she wouldn’t talk to him ever again—mostly because she’d told him so. How many times would she have to let it ring before he got a clue?
Exasperated, she yanked the door shut and the lock gave a metallic click. See, this was the reason she’d adopted her newly instated No Man policy. Men, they didn’t call when you wanted them to, but when you didn’t want them to call ever, then, voilà, the phone rang off the hook.
Well, she was a free and independent woman these days and she wasn’t even going to let the thought of her ex-boyfriend bug her. It was too bad that he had regrets, because she didn’t, thank you very much. She went to hike her purse strap higher on her shoulder—
Wait. No purse strap.
No purse. How had she forgotten it? It was right there by the door on the little hallway table where the phone had been ringing with Chris’s number flashing away.
No biggie, she told herself and lifted her hand to sort through her keys.
Wait. No keys. She stared at her empty hand. Had she left her key ring inside, too? Oh, probably. Talk about being an airhead, Rebecca. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to turn into her sister Ava who, as adorable as she was, forgot everything.
Okay, this was a major problem. How was she going to drive the car? Pick up the pizza? Get to her sister’s house in time to babysit?
Good going, Rebecca. Way to start off the evening. She folded a stray lock of brown hair out of her eyes. She tried the doorknob just in case it wasn’t really locked and that click had been a figment of her imagination.
Nope. The knob didn’t turn. Wasn’t that just her luck? If she had her purse, she would have her cell phone and so a quick call to someone in her family would fix this in a jiffy. If it wasn’t after five o’clock on a Friday, she could bother her neighbor Ephraim, but he was off at a church function.
So who did that leave? Asking a neighbor she didn’t know to borrow a phone? She hadn’t lived in this complex long. She didn’t know her neighbors, other than Ephraim, but she was going to have to start knocking on doors. As she was shy, that was not something she was looking forward to. Although judging by the quiet stillness of the complex, most of them probably wouldn’t be home.
On a brighter note, the phone inside her apartment had stopped ringing. Was Chris finally giving up? Getting a hint? Finding a clue?
A girl could always hope. Because she was done with dudes for good—or at least the next decade. Prince Charming could come walking around the corner and she would be Fort Knox. Her affections impenetrable. Her No Man policy was unshakable.
“You need any help?” A man’s voice came out of nowhere right behind her.
Her heart jumped hard enough to make it to the moon and back. She turned around and clutched the porch rail to steady herself. There was a drop-dead handsome guy standing on her walkway—and not just everyday ordinary handsome, either. But twenty on a scale of ten. Really wow. She had to be dreaming, right? She blinked, but nope, the gorgeous guy was still standing there as real as could be.
He
