Trouble in Paradise

After her divorce, bestselling romance author Mary Jane Marsh Simmons decided to move all seven of her girls out of the big city and back home to her hometown, Nacona, Texas. So when the last remaining relative of Miz Raven died and the Paradise was put on the market, she bought it, an old house that had been a brothel during the cattle trail days in Spanish Fort, Texas.

Joe Clay Carter had just retired from twenty years in the Marines, Special Forces. He'd lived through wars and rumors of wars and decided to go home to Nacona to do nothing but play poker, draw his retirement check and enjoy life. Two weeks later he was bored stiff, his motel room closing in on him, and he was seriously thinking of reenlisting until old high school crush, Mary Jane, came to his door asking him to remodel her new house.

As teenagers Mary Jane never gave Joe Clay a second glance, so he was surprised by her offer. Immediately they shook on the deal and he moved into her house to get started. Much to his surprise, the house came filled to the roof with little girls, good food, and crazy conversation, all wrapped up in a house that needed a minor miracle to fix by Christmas. He wasn't sure if he could get it done in time but he was willing to try. If only Mary Jane was willing to give him a chance too.

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and a RITA finalist with more than one hundred published books to her name. Her books include romantic women's fiction and historical, contemporary, cowboy, and country music mass-market paperbacks. She and her husband live in the small town of Davis, Oklahoma, where everyone knows everyone else, including what they are doing and when--and they read the local newspaper on Wednesdays to see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren and great-grandchildren to keep them young. For more information, visit www.carolynbrownbooks.com.