The Lights on Knockbridge Lane, page 1
Praise for Roan Parrish’s Garnet Run series
Best Laid Plans
“This love story is heartrending, swoon-worthy, and extremely well-told.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Parrish once again offers contemporary romance readers a sizzlingly hot yet surprisingly tender love story that is graced with an inclusive cast of characters and the sort of cute felines that inspire viral internet videos.”
—Booklist
“If an HGTV show and a Hallmark movie had a book baby, it would be this heartwarming, reno-heavy tale of rehabilitation, both emotional and structural.”
—The Globe and Mail
Better Than People
“Parrish delivers an irresistible queer romance... This sensitive tale will leave readers with big smiles on their faces.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The cozy, low-angst comfort read I didn’t know I needed... The kind of book you’ll want to hold close and read much like the life that Simon and Jack share in the story: while curled up on the couch with the fire flickering and your dogs close by.”
—Love in Panels
Dear Reader,
I love magic. It doesn’t have to be the huge spells-and-flying-cats type of magic (although that all sounds great). But those moments of synchronicity, the mornings when you just know something good is going to happen, the nights when you and your oldest friend text at the same moment and then talk until dawn. And one of my favorite kinds of magic is the magic of the holidays.
In The Lights on Knockbridge Lane, that holiday magic brings single father Adam Mills and reclusive scientist Wes Mobray together. It gives Adam’s daughter, Gus, a new family. And it teaches the residents of Knockbridge Lane that not every shy recluse who only comes out at night is a vampire. (I mean, I’m sure some of them are, but not Wes. :D)
For me, the magic of the holidays is that each one of us has a chance to see the world through the eyes of wonder, hope, and possibility—and what a better world it would be if we could do so all the time. So, brew some cocoa, curl up in front of the fire, and fall in love with magic right alongside Adam and Wes.
Welcome back to Garnet Run, Wyoming. I hope you’ll stay awhile!
Cozy reading,
<3 Roan
RoanParrish.com
The Lights on Knockbridge Lane
Roan Parrish
Roan Parrish lives in Philadelphia, where she’s gradually attempting to write love stories in every genre. When not writing, she can be found cutting her friends’ hair, meandering through the city while listening to torch songs and melodic death metal, or cooking overly elaborate meals. She loves bonfires, winter beaches, minor chord harmonies, and self-tattooing. One time she may or may not have baked a six-layer chocolate cake and then thrown it out the window in a fit of pique.
Books by Roan Parrish
Harlequin Special Edition
The Lights on Knockbridge Lane
Carina Press
The Garnet Run series
Best Laid Plans
Better Than People
The Middle of Somewhere series
In the Middle of Somewhere
Out of Nowhere
Where We Left Off
Standalones
The Remaking of Corbin Wale
Natural Enemies
Heart of the Steal
Thrall
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Excerpt from Sleigh Bells Ring by RaeAnne Thayne
Excerpt from A Child’s Christmas Wish by Makenna Lee
Chapter One
Adam
Everyone on Knockbridge Lane had a different theory about Westley Mobray. It was the first thing Adam Mills heard about as he introduced himself around last week, when he and August moved in.
The eight-year-old McKinnon twins next door said he was a vampire. Their parents, Darren and Rose McKinnon, scoffed at that, but said he could be a witch. Marisol Gutierrez three doors down insisted she’d seen him skulking around the neighborhood at night, hunting for animals to sacrifice to the devil. A teenager at the end of the street reported that anyone who looked him in the eyes would be hypnotized, and anyone who touched him would turn to stone. Mr. Montgomery on the corner just said freak.
Westley Mobray was never seen before sunset, though mysterious packages arrived on his doorstep often. He never spoke to anyone and never waved hello. And late at night, the windows of his run-down house glowed an eerie green.
At least, that’s what they told Adam.
So when he saw the man in question through the twilit haze of his own front window—with his daughter in tow—he was understandably startled. Especially since he’d thought she was playing quietly in her room.
He’d slammed two coffees to prevent it, but he’d been asleep. The kind of light, unsatisfying sleep he often fell into when he had a moment of quiet. Which was something that didn’t happen that often as the newly single parent of an eight-year-old.
His insomnia had been pretty bad since the divorce, and worse since they moved back to Garnet Run, where he was the only one responsible for Gus.
The knock at the door jerked him out of that strange sleep, and he scrambled for the door, stubbing his toe in the process, so that when he yanked it open he was biting back the kind of words that he tried with varying degrees of success not to say in front of Gus.
He focused on Gus first. She was all in one piece and was even smiling. It was her I did something bad and delightful smile, but a smile was good—at least when on a child who seemed to have been forcibly dragged home by an irate stranger.
“Where is your coat?” is what came out of Adam’s mouth.
Sometimes he tried to remember what it was like when he talked about things like the composition of his next shot, which restaurant’s tiramisu he preferred, or the latest cozy mystery he was reading.
Now he said things like “Where is your coat” and “Don’t take that apart” and “If you don’t stop making that sound I might have to throttle you.” Okay, he didn’t say the last one so much as think it. Often.
“It’s not that cold,” his wonderful, brilliant daughter said, her lips only vaguely blue.
Adam counseled himself to breathe.
Once he’d determined that Gus was all in one piece and frostbite wasn’t imminent, he turned his attention to the man who’d brought her home.
“Um,” he said intelligently.
Westley Mobray was tall and severe, with shaved dark hair and strong dark eyebrows over piercing blue eyes. Those eyes were narrowed slightly, either in anger or—if the neighborhood rumors were to be believed—because he never went outside when there was the slightest bit of light still in the sky, as it would, of course, burn him to ash.
“She broke into my house,” he said. His voice was low and rough with disuse.
“She’s eight.”
Mobray cocked his head as if unsure what that might have to do with Gus’ felonious misdeeds.
Adam sighed.
“Gus, did you break into our neighbor’s house?”
She squinted and screwed up her face in a way that said she absolutely had. Adam and Gus had a strict No Lying policy, which had resulted in Gus developing a keen sense of words and their exact meanings.
“I didn’t break anything,” she settled on finally.
Adam offered up a silent prayer to the universe that his daughter not end up in prison.
“Did you enter without being invited?” he clarified.
And the vampire hits just kept coming.
She bit her lip and nodded.
“You can’t do that, baby. It’s not safe for you and it’s not okay to intrude on other people’s privacy.”
She looked down at her toes, the very image of contrition. Then she peeked up at him with a glint in her big blue eyes.
“But he has lizards,” she said softly.
“Okay, let’s get you inside,” Adam said quickly. Once Gus got going on something that fascinated her—and lizards were the most recent addition to that list—she tended to forget any reason why she shouldn’t abandon all sense (or rules) to pursue it.
Adam passed her behind him and looked up at Westley Mobray.
“I’m real
“She climbed in through my basement window.”
Adam winced. Gus really was remarkably resourceful. And limber.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll talk to her. She just, uh, really likes lizards. It started as a dinosaur thing and now... Anyway. Eight-year-olds.”
The mysterious neighbor didn’t say anything, just continued to look at Adam with a keen, curious gaze.
“I don’t think I’m hypnotized,” Adam muttered. Would you know if you were hypnotized, or was that part of hypnosis?
“Excuse me?” Westley Mobray said.
“Uh, nothing. Thanks for bringing her home. I’m Adam Mills, by the way.” He stuck out his hand. “We just moved here. That’s Gus. August. But she likes Gus.”
Mobray didn’t shake Adam’s hand—so Adam wouldn’t feel his preternatural chill?—so he shoved it in his pocket. But at least there was no chance he’d turn to stone.
“Wes,” said the man who was probably not a vampire or a witch or a Medusa. Freak? Well, the jury was out. But Adam tended to like freaks.
Then he turned and walked away, broad shoulders blocking the last of the day’s light.
Inside, Gus had helped herself to a glass of apple juice and she held up the bottle to Adam angelically, to ask if he wanted some.
He nodded and she poured him some juice. He rummaged around in the disordered cabinets, looking for something to fix for dinner.
“Gus,” he began, assuming the lecture would flow naturally once he opened his mouth.
“Daddy, he has the best basement,” Gus gushed. “Four lizards. One has orange and black on its back and one is red and the other two are brown and he has a snake—I don’t know what kind—and he showed me a huge, hairy spider!”
Adam choked on his juice.
He did not, historically, care for spiders.
“A, um, spider?” he squeaked.
“A turanyulla,” she confirmed.
“Tarantula,” he corrected automatically. “You saw this when you climbed in the window?”
“He showed me the tarantula.” She said the word slowly and carefully. “He put it right in my face!”
Said face was lit with joy. Adam’s stomach dropped.
“He what?”
“I’m sorry I climbed in. It was just so interesting.”
Interesting was Gus’ buzzword. She had discovered, rightfully, that Adam liked when she was interested in things. Now she used it like a shovel to dig herself out of every mess she got in.
“So the, er, tarantula was placed near your, um, face?” His voice broke at the end.
“He thought it would scare me.” She grinned hugely. “But it was so cool.”
“Come,” he wheezed. He grabbed her hand, burst through the door and stalked to the last house on the street. Damn, it was cold.
Wes Mobray’s house certainly did nothing to discourage rumors of his supernatural being. It was a two-story Craftsman cottage, like the one he and Gus were renting. But unlike theirs, which was painted in cheery white and blue, it wore a peeling coat of brown, and every window but two—one that must have been Gus’ basement ingress, and one small upstairs window—was covered from the inside with brown paper.
The whole thing gave the house the look of a crumpled paper bag. A crumpled gothic paper bag.
Adam felt a momentary pang of pity for Wes Mobray. Maligned and gossiped about by neighbors, living in this depressing paper bag of a house... But then he remembered what had brought him over here and he steeled himself to ring the doorbell.
It took ages, but after several more rings and some angry knocking, the door creaked open and Wes Mobray peered out, looking very confused.
“You!” Adam accused with a practiced pointer finger to Wes’ face. “Put a tarantula in my daughter’s face?!”
“She broke into my house,” he said simply.
“I don’t care. You do not shove poisonous, terrifying—” Adam shuddered “—creepy spiders in children’s faces!”
“You’re scared of spiders.”
The man’s infuriatingly handsome face quirked with the hint of a smile. Adam felt parts of himself turn just the tiniest bit to stone. He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full (admittedly not terribly imposing) height.
He looked Westley Mobray dead in his rather beautiful eyes and said firmly and with utter conviction: “Yes. I am terrified of them.”
Chapter Two
Adam
Adam’s younger sibling, River, was a literal angel.
“You,” Adam told them, “are a literal angel.”
They rolled their eyes but looked pleased.
Adam had grown up in Garnet Run, but left for Boulder, Colorado as soon as he turned eighteen. He left partly to escape his parents and partly because Garnet Run felt small and isolated and conservative, and yeah, okay, partly because he met the new boy in town and followed him, thinking they’d be together forever, like in the swoony old Hollywood romances that his grandmother favored.
And they were together, for a while.
But when he and Mason divorced, there was no way Adam could stay in Boulder. No way he could take care of Gus by himself on a freelance photographer’s salary, and no way he could work a full-time job without childcare, which, of course, he couldn’t afford.
River was the main reason he’d decided to move back. They loved Gus and when Adam called them to tell them it was over with Mason, the first thing they said—even before Sorry—was I’m here to help.
It had made Adam cry then and it still made him a little misty now. River was only twenty, but already a lifesaver. It helped that Gus adored them right back.
River had gotten Adam a job at a local hardware store through their friend Rye. And every day, they picked Gus up from school and stayed with her for an hour until Adam got home from work.
He’d tried to pay them the first three days and they’d turned him down flat. Yesterday, they’d told him to stop offering. Today, before he could open his mouth, they clapped their hand over it, and said, “Shh.”
Seriously: angel.
“How’s the kitten biz?” Adam asked.
River’s eyes lit up. They worked as the manager of The Dirt Road Cat Shelter. River’d always loved animals so it was a dream job.
Before Adam knew it, they’d pushed their phone into his hand and were scrolling through pictures and videos of utterly adorable kittens and cats, introducing them to him and describing their antics.
“I should bring Gus by someday to see all the kitties,” he mused.
“You can,” River said. “But I don’t think she’s that interested in cats.”
The child in question came into the kitchen then, wearing her hangry face, and Adam jumped up to start dinner.
“You staying?” he asked River.
They shook their head and kissed him on the cheek. “Gotta run.”
“Thank you!” Adam called after them, putting water on to boil.
Gus pouted and slumped against the counter dramatically.
“What’s up, baby?”
“Nothing,” she sighed.
“How’s school?”
“Stupid.”
“You know I don’t like that word,” he told her gently. “Can you be more specific?”
“I already did this science lesson at home,” she said dejectedly.
Adam winced. Home meant back in Boulder.
“And everyone is boring.”
He wanted so badly to tell her it wasn’t true. That there were kids here who could be her best friends if she’d let them.
But he remembered too well being the odd one out in elementary school. (Not to mention middle school and high school.) He remembered how lonely it felt when other kids weren’t interested in the same things. When they thought you were weird.
“Maybe if you talk to them about things you’re interested in, you’ll make them interested too,” he offered.
Gus thought about that.
“Maybe,” she reluctantly allowed. After a minute, her eyes lit with excitement in a way that warmed Adam’s heart—and then made him suspicious. “Be back,” she murmured, and ran to her room.
* * *
