True Love Leaves no Doubts: An Inspirational Historical Romance Book Read online

  True Love Leaves no Doubts

  AN INSPIRATIONAL ROMANCE NOVEL

  GRACE CLEMENS

  Copyright © 2020 by Grace Clemens

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  True Love Leaves no Doubts

  Table of Contents

  True Love Leaves no Doubts

  Introduction

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Daring to Start Again

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  True Love Leaves no Doubts

  Introduction

  Florence Radcliffe decided to leave her home and her oppressive parents behind, eight years ago, and finally take her life in her hands. Her first encounter in the small town of Hot Springs was Johnny, who was meant to become one for her closest friends. For the last four years, Flo has been watching him pine for the love of Marian Voorhees, but the moment he comes up with a plan to seduce her, the situation becomes more complicated than ever. She knows she plays with fire, and in an attempt to tame her growing feelings, she will find herself trapped in a painful dilemma. Will she manage to sort everything out without ending up heartbroken?

  Johnny Mason has lost his mind ever since he met a young society lady who has shown no sign of liking him back. Blinded by passion and ego, he lures Flo in as his partner in crime to make Marian jealous. However, over the course of his scheme, he will get tangled up in his own trap. Will he find the courage to unfold his complicated feelings? Having finally a chance at true love within reach, will he take it before it is too late?

  Flo and Johnny are too afraid to ruin their friendship by expressing their newfound feelings. As time goes by, though, staying away from each other gets harder and harder. Will they ever discover their love for one another? Could they actually ignore these strong emotions?

  Prologue

  Johnny watched as Marian pranced around the room. They had come to the Morning Dove Hotel for a small get-together being thrown for a newly engaged couple. She was like a dove herself, he thought. She was a very attractive woman. Johnny was fully aware every man in Hot Springs, Texas, his hometown just outside Austin, was just as attracted to her as he was. Every man over the age of 25, anyway.

  When she turned to see him watching her, she honored him with the most graceful grin he’d ever seen. His heart thumped as he returned the smile. He wished she would come over and mingle with him by her side, instead of leaving him by the snack table.

  But that was just the way Marian was. She was a social butterfly and didn’t mind the attention she got. In fact, Johnny was pretty sure she thrived on it. He’d noticed how much more at ease she was when there were a lot of people around, especially men. They didn’t spend as much time alone as he would like, but that was the price a man had to pay to have a woman like her on his arm.

  Marian was two years Johnny’s junior and that wasn’t bad at all. She was a 28-year-old beauty queen as far as he was concerned. He’d been considering asking her to marry him but the time just never felt right. She was always conversing with someone else. They didn’t go to dinner and talk. They went to parties and she talked. To other people.

  Johnny didn’t really expect much more. He had work to do, running his father’s ranch in Hot Springs, which was so close to Austin that a rock would hit it if thrown with great force.

  It was an exaggeration, but Johnny sometimes felt that way since he’d made so many trips there. Austin was where most of his friends were. And it was where Marian lived. If he wanted to see her often, that was where he went.

  Marian’s family owned the bank in Hot Springs and another two in Austin. They had a great deal of money. Marian liked to let people know exactly who she was, though she wasn’t introducing herself often. Everyone already knew who she was.

  His eyes trailed her around the room as she laughed with three men who had made a half circle around her.

  To his utter delight, Marian leaned to the side so she could catch his eye and then waved him over. He hurried across the room, wondering what she wanted. Would she introduce him as her beau? He chided himself for getting his hopes up when he knew that was unlikely at this point. They needed to spend more time together alone to really forge a relationship.

  “Howdy.” He included all three men when he greeted them by looking at each and nodding. They replied the same, and all four pairs of eyes turned to Marian. Johnny noticed a look of suspicion in the eyes of the men. Or it could have been jealousy. Had Marian been talking about him? A tingle of apprehensive delight slid through him. He wanted to be cautious with his hope. He could only pray he wasn’t setting himself up for a great disappointment.

  “Johnny, this is Greg, Clark and Cole. This is Johnny.” She turned her pretty blue eyes to him. “I invited them to the party after you told me about it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Johnny gazed at her, shaking his head. “Of course not. The more the merrier, I say.”

  Marian beamed at him, bathing him with a warm feeling. “That’s so nice of you, Johnny. I just knew you’d understand. I met them when my family put on the theatre troupe last year.” She returned her gaze to the other men. “Gosh, we did have fun, didn’t we boys?”

  “We sure did, Marian.” The one named Clark had a mischievous look on his face. Johnny wondered briefly what that look might mean. He recognized it from a look his best friend, Flo, sometimes gave him when she was about to suggest they leave work behind and go for a picnic or something. She was always getting him in trouble.

  Thinking about Flo gave Johnny a different kind of pleasure. His best friend was 26 years old and worked as a house servant for the family Fitzpatrick. She’d come from the north to find work, leaving her parents behind. After four years of her living in Hot Springs, her parents had moved to Austin. They didn’t even tell her until they’d lived in the city for nearly two years.

  Johnny remembered when Flo told him how she felt about that. It had been six years since she had moved to Hot Springs and she hadn’t corresponded with them during that whole time. Then she came across them in Austin while out shopping and found out they had moved there. She didn’t get an invitation to see their small cottage and truth be told, she didn’t care whether they invited her or not.

>   It wasn’t that they had abused her as a child. She’d been shown no real love or affection by either. Therefore, she grew up feeling no love toward them either. There was no parent-child bond there and that made Johnny feel sorry for her.

  His own mother had died of cholera when he was 10 and Johnny had been raised by a loving father. John Sr. gave most of the ranch over to his son as his age began to advance and his health declined. Despite not even being sixty years old, John knew when it was time to give the reins to his son.

  “Yoohoo, Johnny…” He heard Marian’s musical voice calling him. He came out of his thoughts and looked down at her. “There you are,” the woman quipped. “You weren’t with us for a bit there. Come, let’s go get some lemonade!”

  Chapter 1

  Marian’s pretty smile ran through his mind as Johnny plunged the shovel into the soft dirt. His current job was to plant a row of trees along the fence line around the pasture on his father’s property. Once the shovel was in the ground, he leaned on it with both hands and looked out across the land at the outline of the mountains in the distance, making a rolling wave of the earth with a backdrop of gorgeous blue sky.

  It was nearing 10:30 in the morning, Johnny’s favorite time of the day. It wasn’t too hot, like it would be later that afternoon. And the chill of the first morning air was gone, warmed by the rays of the sun.

  His mind was filled with thoughts of Marian. She had looked so pretty at the party the evening before. He felt privileged she’d asked him to escort her, even if she did spend most of the time talking to other people. Mostly men. The women always seemed intimidated by Marian, something Johnny could understand.

  One woman Johnny knew wasn’t intimidated by Marian was Flo. He chuckled, looking down at the blade of the shovel and beginning a hole while he reminisced on the few times Flo and Marian had had brief encounters.

  While both were politely civil, the underlying tension was easy to see. Flo spoke her mind whether Marian wanted to hear it or not. And because Flo knew how to be forceful with tact, no one could accuse her of being petty or jealous.

  Flo was the kind of woman who knew who she was from the beginning of her maturity and never played a part for anyone. She was perfectly fine with just being herself. Those who didn’t like it, didn’t have to talk to her. It made no difference to her.

  “I’ve got plenty of friends,” she always said. “I’m fine with (insert name) not liking me.”

  He let out another soft laugh, pushing the blade of the shovel in the ground again.

  “And what has you so amused?” He spun around, hearing a familiar voice behind him.

  “You nearly gave me a seizure, Flo,” Johnny admonished with a smile. “Why are you sneaking up on people?”

  Flo laughed, squeezing her green eyes shut and throwing her head back. “It’s a skill I have. Comes in handy sometimes.”

  Johnny raised his eyebrows. “Exactly when does that talent do you any good? Who you trying to scare?”

  “Well, since I live in the Fitzpatrick house, I have to be a little quiet you know. Those two are a handful when they get cranky.”

  Johnny could picture the Fitzpatricks, a couple from the heart of Scotland who had immigrated to America in search of cheap land and the blessing of freedom. They weren’t old and cranky but he still understood why Flo would want to be a little quiet.

  Mr. Fitzpatrick was a large man with a boisterous attitude and a voice that boomed from one room to another. If he was on a large stage, the people in the back would hear him. The people in the nearest city could probably hear him.

  He and his wife rarely argued. They were cut from a similar cloth, though Mrs. Fitzpatrick was slender and small compared to her large husband. She had auburn hair that swept in long curls around her face and down her back. She often chose to leave her hair down, which wasn’t really the style he saw on most women, but he had no problem with it.

  They were in their late forties and had the energy of 20-year-olds. Mrs. Fitzpatrick made the most delicious butter and sugar cookies he’d ever had so whenever he got a whiff of the baking or Flo told him, he would mysteriously show up at their ranch just in time to have a few fresh ones.

  He nodded. “I understand,” he said.

  Flo leaned against a fence post and crossed her hands behind her back, giving him an intense look. “So you had a good time last night?”

  Johnny nodded. “Missed you there, though. Why didn’t you come?”

  Flo looked away from him and to the side, staring at the grass as if she’d never seen it before. She shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling very festive last night. I got the house to myself because the servants and the Fitzpatricks went out. Some to the party, others somewhere else. And I think the Fitzpatricks were visiting the Carringtons. Whenever they go over there, they don’t come back until the early hours of the morning.”

  “Well, I guess you didn’t really miss much,” Johnny said, pulling a shovelful of dirt from the earth with his shovel and dumping it to the side to reuse later. “Marian seemed to have a good time.”

  Flo rolled her eyes. “Oh Lord, is that who you were there with last night? I understand why you didn’t tell me.”

  Johnny snickered. “Yeah, I’m sure you understand. I don’t know why you don’t like her. You should give her a chance.”

  Flo narrowed her eyes and spoke with heavy sarcasm. “I didn’t just arrive on the boat, Johnny Mason. I’ve been here going on eight years and I already know her. I don’t have to talk to her every single day to know about her.”

  “But your opinion is biased,” Johnny retorted, kneeling to pull a rock from the hole he was digging. He tossed it over his shoulder when he stood back up, his eyes on Flo, whose face had turned red. “Do you even remember what happened to make you not like each other?”

  Flo finally turned her eyes to his. Shaking her head, she sighed heavily. “It’s not that it was one thing in particular. I just don’t like the way she leads men by their noses. Men – including you – will do anything for her just because she has a pretty face.”

  Johnny felt slight resentment flowing through him. “No, no,” he said. “It’s not just because she’s pretty. I mean, of course she is but…”

  Flo sighed again, this time in an exaggerated way that let him know he needed to stop talking. He didn’t want to aggravate his friend so he clamped his mouth shut and dug the rest of the hole in silence. It didn’t take long and when he looked to the side to where he’d set the saplings, he saw her holding one out to him.

  He took it with a grateful look, smiling. “I know you mean well, dear. I know you do.”

  Flo pulled the corners of her mouth down in a soft frown. “My intentions are only to let you know what kind of woman other people see when they look at her. She’s always talking! I thought I talked a lot until I met her. And…” Flo scrunched her nose in disgust. “Not only is she always talking, but she’s always talking about herself. How can you stand to listen to someone who has nothing better to talk about than themselves?”

  Johnny felt a pinch of anxiety in his chest. He hated it when Flo lectured him. Sometimes she made him feel like a child with her admonitions. She was a smart girl, and definitely cared about him. But even tactfully, she could sometimes be brutal in her assessments.

  “I don’t know, Flo,” he said, holding in a sigh so tight it made his voice thin. She studied his face, making him self-conscious. He felt his cheeks heating up. “I just like being around her. I like it when she talks to me. We have fun when we’re together.”

  Flo nodded, her blond hair bouncing on either side of her face where the curls had come free from the braid. “And tell me how many times you and she are together?”

  “We’ve seen each other every other day for weeks,” Johnny said defensively. What he’d said wasn’t exactly a lie. They had seen each other. But the circumstances when they had encounters could not be considered dates. The party the evening before had probably been the second time he’d be
en on a “date” with her and they still hadn’t been alone. Most of their other encounters were just meeting on the walkway, stopping to chat for a few minutes and then going their separate ways.

  Those could not be considered dates and he knew it.

  “She is playing you for a fool and I don’t like to watch that. You’re my best friend. When are you going to realize it?” Flo’s voice had softened considerably. He lifted his eyes to study her slender face, wondering what she was feeling and what had prompted this reaction from her.