Hallie's Hero (Love in Little River Book 4)

  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

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek: June’s Happily Ever After

  Love in Little River

  Also by Raneé S. Clark

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Sweetly Us Press, LLC

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles. This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the authors’ imaginations and are not to be construed as real.

  Cover design by Sweetly Us Press

  Cover Photo Template: “beautiful couple in studio” by kiuikson | www.shutterstock.com

  Editor: Kaylee Baldwin | www.sweetlyuspress.com

  Published by Sweetly Us Press

  www.sweetlyuspress.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS??!

  Nash Roberts clicked on the link his friend, Bellamy, had texted him, highly skeptical of it actually warranting all caps and multiple punctuation marks at the end of the text. Two sentences into the article she had sent, it became clear that he was going to have to talk her down. There was no way he was entering a contest to write an episode of their favorite TV show, He Spies, She Spies. The stupid stuff he wrote in his down time was a distraction, something to help him de-stress after a crazy day at the Little River Clinic or get back to sleep when he got called out in the middle of the night. Sometimes he used it to get his creative juices flowing, to get ready to write his real stuff. His fanfic was not meant to be shared with anyone. Ever.

  Well, except Bellamy, but that had not been on purpose. He’d been telling her how the writers could have executed the story better in the episode where Declan—the He Spies side of the partnership—got kidnapped by a Mexican cartel. Bellamy had told Nash he should write scripts for the show. He hadn’t been paying attention and absentmindedly responded that he already had. That led to her convincing him to send her some of the fanfic he’d written. She claimed to have a lot of basketball to watch during her next visit to Denver. In her words, she was bound to be bored by all those games, and she could read it on her phone. Nash had offered to go to the games for her, since her star basketball player fiancé always got her the best seats, but she’d dismissed that pretty quickly. She didn’t seem to understand what she was giving up by reading Nash’s dumb scripts in her courtside seat rather than actually watching the game.

  So Nash had stupidly given in, making her promise not to tell anyone. Nobody but Bellamy knew he wrote. If he was writing his own thrillers, and not knock-off He Spies, She Spies stuff, it would be different.

  He settled back on his couch and set aside his laptop. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He’d been called in to the hospital for an emergency after midnight. After that, he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep before he’d headed back to the clinic that morning. Thankfully, the afternoon had been slower than normal, and he’d taken off a few hours early. He’d been de-stressing with some free-writing before taking a nap, but he’d need to make himself a sandwich or something first.

  He glanced at the clock—just past three—before heading into the kitchen as he called Bellamy. He wouldn’t be able to convince her via text that this was a crazy idea.

  “You don’t actually think I’m going to enter this, do you?” he asked when she answered. He put it on speaker phone, dropping the phone on the island as he opened the fridge to grab the sandwich stuff, one of the few food items he kept on hand at his house. Between his crazy schedule, being a bachelor, and Bellamy always dropping off leftovers from her job at The Ranch House, he hardly ever cooked himself. Besides that, he could always stop by The Diner or his mom’s house too.

  Bellamy huffed out a sigh. “Nash. Are you serious? Your stuff is just as good as the actual episodes, and we both know the show needs some help. The whole, Declan wants to settle down to normal life and Mallory doesn’t, was a super lame way to write him off the show.”

  “They’re keeping options open for when they convince Declan to come back.” Truthfully, Nash and Bellamy had discussed at length the various vague articles they’d found about the actor who’d played Declan leaving the show at the end the season the year before. This latest season had limped along, like everyone had predicted it would, and Nash saw the writing on the wall. He wouldn’t be surprised if it got cancelled once this season wrapped up, unless the producers applied some serious life-saving techniques. But despite Bellamy’s delusions, that wasn’t the kind of life-saving Nash did.

  He heard the sound of a knife thwacking against a cutting board as Bellamy answered. “That script you showed me for Declan coming back is a way better way for them to wrap up the season, especially if they’re going to cancel it like we think. Declan and Mallory need to end up together or no one will be satisfied with the end of the show. You owe it to everyone to give us the happy ending we deserve.”

  “You don’t seem to understand how embarrassing this is for me.” Nash sighed and rubbed his temple. What would everyone in town think if they found out he secretly wrote fake scripts for his favorite TV show? He’d like to write books, thrillers or suspense novels, but the life of a busy small-town doctor didn’t hold a lot of room for the kind of research he needed to do. Plotting and organizing for the novel he planned to write someday was coming very slowly. He had a pile of craft books next to his bed to read and a list of online classes still left to take before he could try his hand at real writing.

  Bellamy gave another of her good-gravy sighs. “Fine. Use a pen name or something.”

  “Not happening, Bell.” He finished putting together his sandwich and then flipped on the TV to check and see what time the Mountaineers played that evening. He’d been a casual fan of the basketball team before Bellamy met her fiancé, Coy, but after hanging out with the basketball star, he’d started following all the games. “How’s Coy’s ankle?” he asked, hoping that if he changed the subject, Bellamy would let the topic of He Spies, She Spies scripts go.

  “He’s fine. He’s playing tonight, although half of Twitter says the Mountaineers shouldn’t be playing him. Why would they say that?”

  Nash suppressed a chuckle at Bellamy’s indignation on Coy’s behalf. “They think he’s risking further injury, and the Mountaineers are a shoo-in to win this series, so some people think it’s an unnecessary risk. They’re saying they don’t need him to win right now, so maybe the coaches should play it safe.”

  She gave a gasp. “You think he should be playing it safe?”

  This time he did laugh. “It didn’t look too serious to me, but I’m not there. It’s probably fine, and I’m sure Coy trusts the team doctors.”

  Her voice became muffled as he heard her say, “Are you telling the truth? Are you fine?”

  Whatever Coy’s response was, Nash didn’t hear. Bellamy came back on. “He says he’s fine.” But she sounded worried now, and Nash kind of regretted analyzing the situation for her. He should’ve said something like, “They’re just haters.”

  “I know you’ve only got a couple days with Coy u
ntil you have to come home, so I’m not going to take up your time, Bell. I’ll see you later.” Besides, once he finished this sandwich, he did need a nap.

  “You should enter the contest,” she said before he could hang up.

  “No way.” He didn’t let her argue further before tapping the screen and ending the call. He’d miss Bellamy when she moved to Denver in the fall. For now, she and Coy planned to spend summers in Little River, but he knew from Bellamy that Coy’s parents wanted them closer to South Carolina once they started a family.

  Nash hadn’t had a lot of time for friendships the past few years. His last relationship had taken all his free time, then he’d started hanging out with Bellamy after it ended. He got together for pick-up basketball with a few guys sometimes, but more often than not he had to work or got called away on the nights they got together. Plus there wasn’t really a singles scene for him and Wyatt, his only other close friend, to mingle in. Little River was a small town. Once Bellamy left, Nash would only have Wyatt, which might be more depressing than the fact that he wrote fake scripts for a dying show.

  He could always hang out with his mom and dad more. Every time he dropped by for dinner she would always mention that he didn’t drop by enough. He chuckled to himself as he finished his sandwich and turned off the TV. The game wasn’t starting for a few hours anyway, and he needed some sleep if he planned on staying up to watch it.

  He glanced at his laptop. The file that held the outline he’d started two years ago for his own suspense novel was open. He’d clicked on it after reading through the article that Bellamy had sent, like he felt guilty for the scriptwriting he’d been doing just before that. The only work he’d done on his real writing over the last several weeks had been reading through the chapter-by-chapter paragraphs he had and finding the holes where he needed to research to fill things in. He snapped the laptop shut and headed for his bedroom. Maybe the show getting cancelled would force him to stop living in a dreamland and actually do something serious with his writing.

  * * *

  Hallie Butler stared at Jonah from across the tiny café table at the coffee shop down the street from her condo. She tried to keep her jaw from going totally slack. “You’re serious. You think this fanfic script is going to save Spies.”

  Jonah tapped his phone. “This one specifically? Not unless we can get Quinn back, but there are some ideas in here I really like. This guy is the contest winner, hands down.”

  Hallie clenched her jaw. The contest was a stupid idea. She glanced over at Allison, the head of publicity for the show. The marketing team had come up with the contest to drum up excitement about the show and viewership, a last-ditch effort to save Spies. But Quinn was the only one who could save the show at this point, and he was too selfish to do it. Hallie ignored the wiggle of panic that kept sliding through her at the rumors passing around that this was it for Spies unless something drastic happened. She’d been on the show for five years now. It was her only big credit and had been the catapult for her into stardom. She could count on some good parts after it ended, but what if she didn’t find anything to fit for her again the way Spies did? She didn’t want to be stuck in a show she didn’t like because she landed the part in the wake of her Spies success.

  Stupid Quinn.

  “This is set in a small town, and the vibe is cool,” Allison broke in. “Plus, we’ve got hype behind us if we take it to a place called Little River, where the contest winner is from. You know that country star, Taggart Dubois? He did a kickoff concert there for his hometown tour a few years ago and blew up the internet trying to win his high school sweetheart back. Then the last season of The Catch and that twist of Coy Jones falling for a girl there? It’s all golden, Hallie. If we want to save this show, we can ride this wave.”

  Hallie looked down at her tablet and the copy of the script she’d spent last night reading. It was good, she could admit that, and she liked the ideas too. A lot of it was impossible with Quinn gone. The plot hinged on his character being called in from retirement after an old flame gets into trouble with The Agency, and then the beginning of a rekindling of Declan and Mallory’s explosive relationship. She imagined the writer had some even better ideas for wrapping it up so Declan and Mallory got their happily ever after.

  MalDec, as people liked to call the Mallory/Declan ’ship, had carried the show all five seasons. First, through the beginning with the obvious chemistry between the two actors and the witty writing that had played them so well off each other. Then had come the episode when Declan and Mallory had been forced to confront their feelings for each other after Declan took drugs on an undercover operation and Mallory almost had to sacrifice her life to save him. It had been the most watched episode of any show on the network that season, and there were still memes all over the internet from it.

  “Things are dire?” Hallie murmured, avoiding looking at Jonah.

  “The network asked us to have the writers come up with an alternate finale that wraps things up.” Jonah picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, shrugging at Hallie.

  Allison shared a look with both of them. “Rumor is they’re willing to pay Quinn a lot of money if he’ll come back for one or two scenes for it.”

  Hallie turned to Jonah. “I thought we were going with a new love interest. Those scenes we shot last week were good.” Hallie had liked the idea of Mallory falling for the new character, a bad boy who was also a good-guy thief.

  “Maybe he’ll grow on people.” Jonah shrugged.

  Hallie had stopped following the online reactions to her show after the episode where Mallory betrayed Declan to save her younger sister. People had been harsh, even though she’d redeemed herself. “It’s bad?” Hallie asked.

  “The problem is that we don’t have time to win people over,” Allison said.

  “A few more episodes, at most, and we can’t risk taking this new relationship all the way to the end of the season and then it not working out,” Jonah added. The two were tag teaming her. “We have to try this new script and see if we can buy some time to make the new guy the next Declan.”

  Hallie had trusted her director for so long. She’d worked with him on a couple episodes of another show for the network, and he’d asked her to come in for a screen test when they were casting He Spies, She Spies. He knew what he was talking about.

  Hallie drew in a deep breath. “Why are you selling this so hard to me? Why haven’t you just told me to pack up and get ready to spend a couple weeks in this place—Little River, you said?”

  “We’d like you to do promo stuff with the guy who wrote it, and maybe, if he’s not a terrible actor, have him do a bit part.” Allison grimaced.

  “Ahhhh. I have to schmooze some nerd who’s obsessed with the show.” Hallie rolled her eyes. “You know I care about this show as much as you. I’ll do my part.”

  Jonah grinned, his shoulders relaxing. “You a Taggart Dubois fan? Or Coy Jones? We’re trying to get a cameo from one of them.”

  Hallie pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. She’d make calls herself to help the casting director make that happen. Truth was, she was a Coy Jones fan, though she’d been Team Charlotte during his season of The Catch, a dating reality show. But Hallie’s assistant knew someone who worked for the show and had heard that Coy fell hard for Bellamy Hansen from the moment he met her, and his relationship with Charlotte was friendship from the beginning.

  “I’ve been known to watch The Catch a time or two,” Hallie admitted. “And you’re forgetting about Dru North. Isn’t his girlfriend from there too? The one he met while he was visiting Taggart Dubois for the holidays a couple years ago?”

  Allison snapped her fingers and widened her own smile. “That’s right! I forgot about them!”

  Jonah chuckled quietly before reaching across the table to take Hallie’s hand. “This will be fine, Hallie. Everyone is raving about this town and The Ranch House. I heard one of the Hemsworths stayed there a few months ago.” He waggled his
eyebrows before standing up.

  Hallie gave him a reassuring smile. Everyone was worried about the fate of the show, especially Jonah, who’d put his heart and soul into the last five years. “I can’t wait,” she said.

  Hopefully the writer wasn’t a total basement dweller or a creeper with an altar to Mallory Rider. Hallie could definitely get through a few appearances with him, and if going to Little River could save her show, she’d get there as soon as she could.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Something told Nash to shut the door when Bellamy showed up on his doorstep a few weeks after their conversation about the contest with a pile of disposable aluminum pans stacked in her arms.

  “What’s this?” he asked, stepping aside as she marched past him, through his living room, and right to his kitchen. She deposited the pans in a line on his counter, then went to his cupboards to get plates. “Bellamy?” he prodded. He’d grown used to the fact that Bellamy knew her way around his kitchen. She knew her way around a lot of kitchens in Little River; she’d cooked a meal in her fair share, truth be told. But she moved about his now with an air of avoidance.

  He gave a sigh and sat down at his small, square kitchen table, watching her plate a meal of pork ribs, homemade macaroni and cheese, and her famous biscuits. She set it down in front of him, handing over his utensils and then said, “Eat,” pointing at the plate as she did so.

  He obediently scooped up a bite of her macaroni and cheese, smiling as he put the creamy noodles in his mouth. Bellamy was up to something. The delicious food said so. And he was pretty sure she meant to fill his mouth and bribe him with the slightly spicy mac and cheese into complacency on whatever she wanted. She’d been bugging him to ask out a nurse that was filling in at the clinic. He was delaying until the nurse was done. Dating coworkers was tricky, and he didn’t want to get caught in something awkward.