Falling for Trouble

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Prologue

Peggy checked the clock one more time.

She really was pathetic. Not pathetic, she told herself. A woman of routine. She’d retired last spring from her forty-two years at Halikarnassus Middle School—did she really expect herself to undo decades of routine in a year?

Still, she would like to know what it was like to sleep in.

She looked down at Starr, her ragamuffin little poodle who was another part of the reason she couldn’t sleep in. You and your old-lady bladder, she scolded, without much heat. Starr barely lifted her head from the cushion on the kitchen chair that was closest to Peggy’s.

Peggy had a whole list of things to do, none of which were particularly setting her world on fire. She had promised to make some zucchini bread for her pregnant neighbor, she needed more laundry detergent, she had to make appointments for both herself and Starr at their respective groomers.

She was just biding her time.

She wondered if Joanna was up yet. She was in LA, so it was unlikely—more likely that she hadn’t gone to bed yet. Raising that wild granddaughter of hers had earned every gray hair Peggy meticulously covered up. Peggy still had a hard time thinking of Joanna as an adult, capable of living on her own. Not that Joanna was incompetent, she was just . . . stubborn. Sometimes too stubborn to do the right thing.

Peggy never should have let that girl take guitar lessons.

Oh, sure, it channeled her rebelliousness into something more creative, but now her only grandchild was living across the country pursuing a career that did not come with a 401(k). A rock musician. If Joanna’s mom could see Joanna, well, she’d probably blame Peggy for getting her guitar lessons in the first place.

Peggy reached for her phone—a smartphone, thank you very much—and debated sending Joanna a text. Last night had been a big night for her. Her band, Bunny Slippers, was opening for . . . well, Peggy couldn’t remember. Something to do with pennies? It wasn’t really her style of music. Of course, neither was Bunny Slippers, but those songs kind of grew on a gal. They were all about kick-ass females, as Joanna would say. None of that sappy love garbage.

Which was so very Joanna. That made Peggy even more proud, that her baby was making it big being nothing but herself. Peggy was nervous when Joanna started talking about signing to a major record label—she had visions of shady, predatory A&R men taking advantage of an all-girl rock group. She knew this was sexist, but she couldn’t help it. Joanna was her baby girl; she’d always be protective of her. But their new manager seemed to have the band’s best interests at heart, and he got them on this tour with the Penny . . . somethings. What were they called?

Oh yes, the Penny Lickers.

Absurd.

But very, very popular.

Peggy really wanted to call Joanna to see how the first show had gone. She’d just send the text, and if Joanna was up, she’d call her back. If not, Peggy’d talk to her after her thrilling day of postretirement errands.

She looked up at the clock again.

Finally.

Come on, Starr. Time for a walk!

No matter how brightly Peggy said that, Starr always attempted to bolt when the leash came out. She was fast for an old lady, but so was Peggy, and she had ten pounds of squirmy fluff in her arms and leashed in no time. They were running a little late. Peggy hoped she hadn’t missed him.

This is so very wrong, she said to herself as she shut the front door behind her, which was the same thing she told herself every morning. She waved to Doris, next door, who was watering her flowers, and to Carla across the street, who was at her mailbox, which was a little obvious.

Still, she couldn’t blame the woman.

Peggy coaxed Starr down the steps and onto the short path through her front yard, once again amazed at the torque the ten-pound dog could produce when she was faced with something she did not want to do. Starr was just deigning to slowly climb down the stairs when he turned the corner.

It was wrong, surely, to build her morning around the daily opportunity to ogle the new library director in his running shorts. She would never stand for this kind of behavior from a man toward a woman. And yet, every morning, she joined the other women in the neighborhood to wave and smile at Liam Byrd.

Sometimes he stopped to chat, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet while they talked about books or about Joanna. Liam was quite the music aficionado. He knew more about the music she grew up with than she did, and he was always asking after Joanna’s career. He told her that he had bought the newest Bunny Slippers album. He said he liked it, although his face told her otherwise. Such a nice young man.

Lately, he hadn’t been stopping, just waving and jogging on. Poor boy was stressed. The town council was giving him headaches about his budget. Peggy’d like to give the town council a headache. But then she’d watch Liam run on, and she found it hard to be mad at anyone for a good while after that.

Today looked like it was going to be just a waver, which was just as well, because Peggy’s phone was vibrating in her pocket. She reached for it while offering Liam her brightest smile. Then Starr apparently decided she did want to go on a walk after all, because she started barking and following Liam (not that Peggy could blame her). Except that in her stubbornness, Starr had wrapped herself around Peggy’s legs, and Peggy’s attention was divided between her phone and Liam’s shorts, which left nothing for her balance, so when Starr took off, Peggy didn’t stand a chance.

She went down.

Hard.

Oh, Lord.

Peggy opened her eyes to see the cloudless spring sky, then Liam’s flushed face.

Peggy? Peggy, are you all right?

She was fine, she wanted to tell him. Just embarrassed. But she found she couldn’t catch her breath, and she thought she might be having a heart attack but it wasn’t her chest that hurt, it was her leg. Oh, Lord, she’d never felt such pain before in her life, not even when she gave birth to Joanna’s father. Liam’s sweet, concerned face swam in front of hers, and she heard Starr barking and someone talking about an ambulance, which she hoped was not for her because she was fine; it was just a little breath-stealing, paralyzing pain in her leg; there was no need to make such a fuss.

Peggy? Stay with me, okay? The ambulance is coming, Liam said, and he was such a dear. She really should stop objectifying him like that. She should tell Doris and Carla to back off, too. Especially when he was being so nice to her, even if she didn’t really need it. She wanted to tell him that, and to get on her feet to go into the house and ice her leg and maybe find something to drown her shame in. She started to do that, but as she tried to sit up, her leg moved and the look on Liam’s face told her that she had said out loud the curse words she was thinking. Then his face started to darken, and so did the sky, and then she didn’t feel a thing.

Chapter One

Jo? Joey Green?

And that, in one frustrating nickname, was the reason why Joanna Green never came back to Halikarnassus. The fact that it was a nosy little town with one bar and few people worth drinking with, she could deal with. It was more the fact that everyone in town seemed obsessed with the Joanna she had been in high school—a screwup and a hell-raiser and a general bad influence. She hadn’t been home in years, and that one nickname made it abundantly clear that no one was going to try to get to know Joanna the Adult.

Not that Joanna the adult was any less of a screwup. Hell, that was why she was standing in the airport, waiting in baggage claim for the suitcase holding all of her worldly possessions (with the exception of her guitar, which she would never, in a million years, trust to baggage handlers).

Coming home as an abject failure with your tail between your legs was one thing, Joanna thought. Having to explain that failure to a bunch of people who didn’t expect anything more from you was a new level of humiliation she wasn’t sure she could deal with. Just keep an eye out for your suitcase, she told herself. You don’t have to talk to anyone. You just need to grab your bag, convince a cab to take you all the way to Halikarnassus, and hope that Granny is home to lend you cab fare.

Totally an adult.

I thought it was you!

Joanna could no longer ignore the persistent nostalgia at her elbow. A young woman in an enormous gray scarf was looking at her expectantly. Joanna tried to place her . . . she looked vaguely familiar . . .

Oh my gosh, you don’t remember me. Skyler Carrington? Scarf Girl gave her a hopeful look.

Holy crap, Skyler? I thought you were like . . . The last time Joanna had seen Skyler, Joanna was getting in big trouble for making her cry because she wouldn’t let her play with her very expensive guitar. Skyler had been what, five? Seven? She was ten years younger than Joanna, a fact that had caused Trina, Joanna’s best friend and Skyler’s big sister, a minor adolescent breakdown because they now knew where babies came from and she didn’t want to think about her parents doing that. Of course, once Skyler was born, Trina was ruthlessly protective of her sister, who was, frankly, a brat.

Skyler had been three. Or five. Or whatever. That was a long time ago. She was probably much less bratty now. And wasn’t that why Joanna had avoided coming home? Because she knew people would only see her as she had been back then? Pot and black kettle and all that.

Back then Joanna was a foul-mouthed, rebellious, broke teenager. Now she was . . . well, she wasn’t a teenager.

God, how depressing. She’d left town to shake off the image everybody had of her, only to find that the reason they had that image was because it was who she was.

Except that now she was old. And Skyler Carrington was as tall as she was.

And Skyler Carrington was leaning forward to give Joanna a hug. Trina’s not going to believe this! What are you doing here?

Just, uh . . . Skyler Carrington didn’t need to know the whole sad, sordid story, and it made Joanna feel a little better that news of her epic failure had not reached Halikarnassus yet. At least, not the airport two hours from Halikarnassus. Just visiting.

Granny! How is Granny?

Good, fine. She hoped, anyway. She hadn’t spoken to Granny in a few days, despite Granny’s best efforts. But Joanna knew she would just want to hear all the details of the big concert, as she called it, and Joanna wasn’t ready to go there yet. Or ever. Granny probably wouldn’t ask any questions when Joanna showed up unannounced on her doorstep, right?

God, she wasn’t just a failure. She was a delusional failure.

And Skyler was looking at her expectantly. What are you doing here? Joanna asked. Love the scarf.

Oh my God, I just finished a semester in France. I’m, like, so not used to speaking English! And everyone here is so . . . American!

You’ll get that, what with being in America, Joanna suggested.

I’m just having, like, culture shock. Literally everything in France is, like, so much better. I can’t even with this. Skyler waved her hand around.

Joanna couldn’t even with the baggage claim, either. She also couldn’t with this kid having adventures in France while Joanna had been working hard, making music, then throwing it all away in one stupid night. Skyler had probably done more in her teenage life than Joanna had in her . . . more than teenage life. They both talked big; this kid had actually done big things.

Fortunately, the baggage carousel started to move and, as if the gracious gods of Joanna’s hometown shame were looking down upon her struggle to keep it together in a conversation with her old friend’s formerly bratty toddler little sister, her suitcase came out first.

Well, this is me. Nice to see you.

Skyler reached forward to help Joanna with her suitcase. Are you going to be home for a while? Trina is going to die when I tell her I saw you.

Joanna pretended not to hear. She just waved and lost herself in the crowd, dragging all of her worldly possessions behind her.

* * *

You okay back there?

Liam looked in the rearview mirror long enough to see Peggy weakly wave a hand at him, then turned back to the road. He was not entirely comfortable driving her car, but his ancient Sentra didn’t have a very roomy backseat, and when Doris had called to instruct him to pick Peggy up from the hospital, those instructions included figuring out a way to enable Peggy to elevate her leg on the drive home.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he, of all of Peggy’s friends in Halikarnassus, was chosen to pick her up from the hospital.

Not that he thought of saying no. Not even for a second. He’d been there when Peggy fell, and he still felt responsible for her broken leg, despite everyone’s reassurances to the contrary. It wasn’t his fault her dog was crazy and her phone rang. But she always came out of the house to wave and chat with him when he went on his morning run. If he didn’t run, she wouldn’t have come out.

So picking her up from the hospital was literally the least he could do.

Then he discovered that Doris intended for him to drive Peggy’s car.

And he understood why the responsibility had fallen to him.

Nobody wanted to drive Peggy’s car. It ran fine, great, even, especially considering its age. But it was massive. It was the kind of old-person car his grandparents used to drive. It didn’t suit Peggy at all. She was old, sure, but not, like, old old. Not like grandparents old.

Although, he supposed, she was grandparents old, since she had a granddaughter who wasn’t that much younger than he was.

The mysterious Joanna Green, whose music he knew from his post-college punk days. The girl could wail on the guitar. She could beat a lick into submission and get up for more. He was half in love with her the first time he heard her play with the Slutty Brontes, a kick-ass post-punk riot grrl group that made him want to break things, in a good way. He was heartbroken—way more than he should have been—when they split up. But then she formed Bunny Slippers and they were . . . well, they were loud. But it was kind of like when he found out Dave Grohl had been the drummer for Nirvana. Sure, the Foo Fighters were great, but they weren’t Nirvana.

Liam couldn’t believe that he now lived in the town she grew up in, that he was friends with her grandmother, and that he waived overdue fines for people who knew her back when she was just starting out.

Not that anyone else was that impressed with her talents or her success. The general opinion about Joanna Green in Halikarnassus was that she was nothing but trouble, and an inadequate granddaughter to boot.

He wondered if she knew about Peggy’s broken leg. Last he’d heard (not that he stalked her, but the mayor’s wife had an inexplicable habit of keeping him informed of Joanna’s movements), her band had signed with a major label and was touring with the Penny Lickers.

This made him love her a little less.

Which probably wasn’t fair. He knew he was a music snob, and he shouldn’t begrudge anyone for making a living. But the Penny Lickers? Widely acknowledged to be the twenty-first century’s most boring rock band?

Is there a reason you’re driving so slowly?

Peggy was half sitting, her head held up by a stack of pillows and a matching set elevating her broken leg. Liam had managed to wrangle the seat belt around her, but still. He wanted to be careful.

Also, he wasn’t entirely sure where the outside of the car ended, and he was deathly afraid of taking out an innocent side mirror.

Just being careful, he said with a smile.

You and your careful, Peggy teased. At least she was teasing him. She must not be in too much pain if she could still tease him.

Then he heard a snore from the backseat, and he was reminded of the copious amounts of painkiller the hospital had given her.

Oh, Peggy, he said, and she snored in response.

As he continued his crawl to her house, pulling over occasionally to let other cars pass, he admitted his selfish hope that Peggy would be well enough to attend the next town council meeting. She, like a lot of the older Halikarnassians, didn’t have a very high opinion of their mayor, Hal Klomberg Jr. His father had been mayor for years before he finally retired, and though everyone voted for Hal Jr. thinking he’d fulfill his promises to follow in his father’s footsteps, nobody seemed to appreciate the job he was doing.

Liam hadn’t lived in Halikarnassus for most of that—he’d moved to town after the election but before Mayor Klomberg Jr. decided a course of fiscal responsibility was the only way to get the town out of the financial mess it was in. As far as anyone knew, the town wasn’t in a mess. Sure, the economy wasn’t great, but Halikarnassus had never depended on manufacturing like so many of the towns around them.

It seemed Mayor Jr. had a fetish for cutting budgets.

The library was next on his list.

Or it had been, until Peggy and her self-appointed White-Haired Old Ladies stepped into the fight.

The last council meeting . . . that was a classic, he told his sleeping passenger. Although I’m glad Councilman Weber cut off your time. While I’m sure everyone would have enjoyed watching you take Mayor Klomberg over your knee, I’m pretty sure you would have been arrested.

Of course, if she’d been in jail, she wouldn’t have been rushing outside to greet him, and she wouldn’t have broken her leg.

We’re in a mess, Peggy. He needed his staunchest defender. Mayor Klomberg’s plan was to cut the library’s budget in half. Half. It wasn’t an exorbitant budget to begin with, but Liam had dutifully worked on a plan to deal with the eventuality. It involved cutting hours and giving up on new books and, worse, firing a lot of people who’d worked at the library for a long time.

Damn Junior, Peggy muttered.

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t as asleep as he’d assumed. It was just as well, he thought as he slowly, carefully, pulled into her driveway. He had bigger things to worry about than library budgets. Like how he was going to get Peggy inside.

Chapter Two

Joanna sat in the backseat of the Carringtons’ car, between the triumphantly returned Francophile Skyler and the Great Dane, Max. Max needed to stick his head out the window, Mrs. Carrington explained when she ushered Joanna into the middle seat. Seeing the amount of slobber flying past the window took some of the sting out of sitting in what felt like a built-in booster seat. Riding with her knees under her chin was a small price to pay for a free—and slobber-free—ride from the airport.

Between the highway wind, the blaring French pop music, and the shouted conversation among the three Carringtons, Joanna was having a hard time focusing on anything other than holding onto the front seat as Mr. Carrington switched lanes with reckless abandon. She remembered that about him now. If there was a way to drive faster, he would take it, no matter how green his middle-seat passengers got.

Of course, her greenness wasn’t just from the bad driving.

I can’t get over how sweet it is that you’re coming home to take care of Peggy, Mrs. Carrington said from the comfort of the front seat.

Joanna squeezed her hands together. The truth was, she had had no idea that Granny had been in the hospital, which made her feel like a monster. Joanna had seen the missed call from Granny’s cell when she was at LAX. She hadn’t felt up to talking to her, explaining to her that due to her stupendous badness, she had destroyed the first good thing to come from her musical career. She knew she’d have to do that eventually, but Joanna foolishly thought doing it in person would be easier.

No, she hadn’t. She just wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

She’d spent her last dime on the baggage fees that came with her one-way ticket. Her plan was to show up on Granny’s doorstep with a big surprise! and a plea for cab fare. She totally took it for granted that Granny would be there. Granny was good like that.

Now, even though Granny had foiled Joanna’s plan, she still provided a convenient explanation for why Joanna was back. Not at all because her career had blown up in her stupid face. Nope, she was home to