Ain't Misbehavin' (Roaring Twenties Series Book 2) Read online

  AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ BY JENNIFER LAMONT LEO

  Published by Smitten Historical Romance

  an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas

  2333 Barton Oaks Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614

  ISBN: 978-1-946016-42-3

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Lamont Leo

  Cover design by Elaina Lee

  Interior design by Karthick Srinivasan

  Available in print from your local bookstore, online, or from the publisher at: ShopLPC.com

  For more information on this book and the author visit:

  http://jenniferlamontleo.com/

  All rights reserved. Noncommercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, provided the text does not exceed 500 words. When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line: “Ain’t Misbehavin’ by Jennifer Lamont Leo published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Used by permission.”

  Commercial interests: No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are all products of the author’s imagination or are used for fictional purposes. Any mentioned brand names, places, and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, bear no association with the author or the publisher, and are used for fictional purposes only.

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. “NIV” and ”New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM.

  Brought to you by the creative team at Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas (LPCBooks.com): Robin Patchen, Pegg Thomas, Eddie Jones, Shonda Savage, Brian Cross, Judah Raine, and Lucie Winborne

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Leo, Jennifer Lamont

  Ain’t Misbehavin’ / Jennifer Lamont Leo

  Printed in the United States of America

  More Roaring Twenties books by Jennifer Lamont Leo

  You're the Cream in My Coffee

  Praise for Ain’t Misbehavin’

  Opening this follow-up to You’re the Cream in My Coffee was like returning home after a time away. In Ain’t Misbehavin’ Jennifer Lamont Leo has brought us characters who are at once flawed and endearing. Dot and Charlie’s story is one of ups and downs, twists and turns that keep the reader guessing what might be next. While the ending is altogether satisfying I still find myself craving more from this author.

  ~Susie Finkbeiner

  Author of A Cup of Dust, A Trail of Crumbs, and A Song of Home

  I always love reading novels that have characters who seem like real people. The characters in Ain’t Misbehavin’ are so much so, you’ll find yourself engaging in what they’re feeling, and relating to their failures. I enjoyed the ups and downs, twists and turns of this delightful story, as well as the Roaring Twenties setting, so expertly re-created.

  ~Jan Cline

  Author of Emancipated Heart, Finding Christmas and You, The Greatest of These is Love, and A Heart Out of Hiding

  Jennifer Lamont Leo’s characters, Charlie and Dot, are as flawed and real as they are charming and endearing. Ain’t Misbehavin’ has you rooting for them both as they traverse the changing societal landscape and overcome obstacles in this skillfully crafted story set in the Roaring Twenties. Get ready to be transported to a time with smoky speakeasies and cunning mobsters, where department store customer service is paramount, faith and worship are a part of the daily fabric of country living, and the community pulls together when tragedy strikes. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop! Rich and beautiful writing, a must-read.

  ~April McGowan

  Award-winning author of Jasmine, Macy, and Hold the Light

  Ain’t Misbehavin’ is an absolute delight; a jazzy romp through 1920s Chicago. Jennifer Lamont Leo draws readers in from the first page with snappy dialogue, intriguing characters, and a heartfelt journey. I can’t wait to read more from this author. She's the cat's meow!

  ~Karen Barnett

  Award-winning author of The Road to Paradise

  For Thomas

  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

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  A Gift for You

  Thank you for investing in this book. As a thank you, LPC Books would love to offer you advance review Kindle copies of our forthcoming books. These Kindle ebooks will be delivered to your Kindle reader. We release around 40 books a year. You pick which ones you wish to receive. Visit the link below to sign up for our FREE Kindle ebook subscriber list:

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Dot Rodgers slid the lacy, peppermint-pink dress over her head and tied the satin sash around her slim hips. She looked at her reflection in the bedroom mirror.

  “Ugh!” It would be just the thing if she were attending a holiday hop at her old high school instead of a sophisticated soirée at her friend Veronica’s Chicago apartment. But this was New Year’s Eve, 1928. At twenty-four, Dot was long past high school.

  Charlie would probably like the frothy frock. He’d say she looked sweet.

  Which was one of the things she loved about him.

  But tonight she wanted to wear something dazzling. Eye-catching and fun. A dress like she used to wear, back before she met Charlie. Tonight, she’d be reintroducing him to all her city friends. He’d met them once, briefly, when he’d come to the cabaret to hear her sing. But that episode had been awkward and uncomfortable, as she’d still been seeing Louie Braccio at the time. Her friends had barely paid attention to Charlie. This time would be different, now that he was her man. And she knew he would grow to love the glamour and excitement of city life, if he’d give it half a chance.

  Furthermore, Veronica had mentioned that some members of the Northside Eskimos dance orchestra might be coming to the party. If Dot could meet them and charm her way into an audition, maybe she could stop selling hats and revive her fledgling singing career. She needed to make a good impression.

  But she wouldn’t impress anyone dressed like Little Nell.

  She flung the offending garment onto the pile of discarded clothing strewn across her brass bed. Demure things, all of them, with ribbon and lace. She had only herself to blame. She’d bought every garment over the last couple of months, trying to transform Dot Rodgers into someone she was not. Someone who would make a good wife for an upstanding straight-arrow like Charlie Corrigan.

  That was, if he ever popped the question.

  If Marjorie had been there, Dot would have given her the pink dress. She would have been delighted to watch her eyes light up. But her friend, roommate, and possible future sister-in-law was several hundred miles away with the rest of the Corrigans, neck-deep in preparations for her Valentine’s Day wedding. Trust a romantic soul like Marjorie to choose a wedding day that was already laden with hearts and flowers, not to mention cherubs aiming poison darts at unsuspecting people.

  Not that love was poison, exactly. But it did complicate a girl’s life.

  Hands on hips, Dot surveyed the wreckage. Not one outfit would do. She wanted something spectacular. But also the sort of dress Charlie would approve of. No need to shock the fellow. Not that he ever complained about what she wore. He never complained about anything she did, which was part of the problem. He treated her as if she were some ideal specimen of womanhood.

  How very wrong he was.

  She loved Charlie, truly she did. But she was tired of clipping her wings. He’d have to understand that this was how things were done in the city. And now it was New Year’s Eve, a night to shine if there ever was one.

  Frankly, she deserved to have a good time after her disastrous Christmas. She should have known better than to show up unannounced on her family’s Indiana doorstep on Christmas Day, bearing new hats for her mother and sisters and a fine fedora for her father. He’d grudgingly let her come in, but now his angry voice still rang in her head.

  “You come here with fancy gifts that you bought with dirty money, earned by parading yourself on the stage. You think you can buy your way bac
k into this family? Well, you can’t. You’re an ungrateful, selfish girl. No decent man will ever want you.”

  That ringing declaration had come after she’d described how she’d been supporting herself, that in addition to selling hats in a department store, she’d been trying to launch her singing career. She’d described her part-time job singing at a cabaret, described how the place had closed, and how she was sure to get another job singing. She’d wanted to show them—to show him—she was making it on her own. She wanted to ease old wounds, forget the past, relate to her father as an adult.

  It hadn’t worked.

  It was partly Charlie’s fault, of course. She would never have gone, would never have attempted a reconciliation after all this time, if Charlie hadn’t encouraged her. Make peace with your mother and sisters, he’d said. Don’t let your father bully you. Well, that had gone well, hadn’t it? Maybe all that forgiveness and reconciliation stuff worked well in a picture-perfect family like the Corrigans, but not in the Reverend Oliver Barker household.

  She marched to her jam-packed closet and reached to the back for a sparkly silver dress, last worn to a shindig at Louie’s Villa Italiana. She slipped it over her head and surveyed herself. Perfect. Metallic beads and silky fringe caught the light with every move she made. From the top drawer of the dresser, she selected a headband encrusted with jet beads and rhinestones and slid it over her smooth dark bangs. She clipped on a pair of ornate chandelier earrings, the cool metal grazing her jawline, and added a long rope of beads, knotting them at the breastbone. A quick swipe of red lip rouge and a sweep of kohl around her eyes, and she was ready just as the buzzer sounded.

  Charlie Corrigan stood on the cement porch of the small brick two-story building and reflexively patted the left pocket of his overcoat, a gesture he’d repeatedly performed over the course of the day. Through the thick black wool, his gloved hand could just make out the outline of the tiny square box that held his future. Reassured that the precious diamond ring hadn’t fallen out and gotten lost somewhere between Kerryville and Chicago, he straightened his shoulders and adjusted the brim of his fedora. In the crook of his elbow lay a dozen red roses wrapped in green paper. All was ready. Tonight, he was going to ask Miss Dorothy Rodgers to do him the honor of becoming his wife. During the drive, he’d rehearsed his lines and pictured exactly how the moment would go. In an atmosphere of softly crooning clarinets and candlelight, he’d produce the little velvet box, and her dark eyes would grow enormous, and he’d say, “Dot, will you marry me?” and she’d say—

  Buzzzz!

  The alarming rasp and click of the door’s lock startled him. He pulled open the heavy, glass-paneled portal and crossed the tiled floor of the slightly musty-smelling vestibule just as the door to the first-floor apartment cracked open. A woman’s face peered out.

  “Oh, Charlie, it’s you.” The door opened wider to reveal a sixtyish woman wrapped in a blue chenille bathrobe and wearing scuffed slippers. Her iron-gray hair was curled in soft white rags all over her head, and she wore a gleeful grin on her broad face. “I thought I heard someone come in.”

  With strained patience, Charlie stopped and touched the brim of his hat. “Just me, Mrs. Moran, and a happy New Year to you.”

  No army sentinel kept a closer watch on his post than the landlady did on the comings and goings from her building. On previous visits, Charlie had found out how nearly impossible it was to make it from the front door to the staircase unobserved. Which was probably a good thing, he reflected, if inconvenient at times. Chicago wasn’t a safe and peaceful place like Kerryville. With only ladies living in the two-flat, the landlady downstairs and Dot and Marjorie upstairs, they couldn’t be too cautious about opening the door to strangers.

  “The same to you, young man.” The landlady’s grin turned girlish as she patted her rag-rolled head. “I must look a fright.”

  “Look at you, getting all dolled up for a date,” he teased. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “Oh, go on with you.” Mrs. Moran scoffed, but her green eyes twinkled. “I’ll be having a date with that handsome young bandleader, Guy Lombardo. Did you know he’s doing a special New Year’s Eve broadcast on the wireless?”

  “You don’t say.” Charlie shifted his weight and glanced toward the staircase. For a brief, awkward moment, he feared she was going to invite him in to listen with her. On impulse, he drew a rose from the bunch in his arm and handed it to the woman. “For you. You can’t meet a man like Mr. Lombardo without a corsage.”

  She took the bloom and lifted it to her nose, her face beaming as she sniffed deeply. “Why, Charlie Corrigan, aren’t you a charmer. You’re so much nicer than that fella she used to go with, with his flashy suits and jeweled stickpins. Used to drive up here in his fancy automobile and bring her costly presents—earrings and what have you. But he didn’t treat her very nice, if you ask me.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice, even though they were the only two in the vestibule. “They said he owned an Italian restaurant, but you don’t make that kind of money from spaghetti, if you know what I mean.”

  Charlie did know. “Is that so? Well, I need to be going …” The last thing he felt like doing was discussing Dot’s wealthy former beau, who had indeed owned a restaurant that fronted a speakeasy. And now the man was locked up in jail. She was well rid of the crumb. But all at once, Charlie felt tinges of doubt shadow the edges of his mind. What would she think of the ring in his coat pocket if she was used to expensive baubles? His family’s dry-goods store was doing well these days, but he didn’t have a bootlegger’s budget to spend on jewelry.

  “Now go on, shoo.” Mrs. Moran waved the flower as if he were the one detaining them both. “You young people enjoy yourselves tonight.”

  “Thank you. We will.”

  As the landlady retreated and closed her door, he took the carpeted stairs, bounding up them two at a time in his heart but constrained to a dignified pace by his bum leg, a souvenir from his scrape with the Kaiser’s army.

  All he had to do now was talk his girl out of this crazy party she’d mentioned. The last thing he wanted was to share tonight with anyone else but her.

  Dot swung open the door to her apartment before he could knock, and he stood dazzled by glints of silver dancing off her dress like a thousand shooting stars. For a moment, he couldn’t speak.

  How did an ordinary fellow like him end up with an extraordinary creature like her?

  “Well,” she said with a smile. “Aren’t you going to come in?”

  He cleared his throat.

  This was going to be one heck of a night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dot’s heart fluttered as Charlie stepped over the threshold looking uncharacteristically dapper in evening clothes and a charcoal-gray Chesterfield that she hadn’t seen before. He cast a slow, appreciative glance at her and gave a long, low whistle.

  “You look like a million bucks.”

  “Do I?” She’d half expected him to think the sparkly, low-cut dress was too outrageous, but his expression clearly said otherwise. “So do you. New duds?”

  Embarrassment reddened his angular cheekbones, and he shrugged, but she could tell he was pleased. “Peter clued me in to some bargains at Field’s.”

  “You mean to tell me you two came to Marshall Field’s, and you didn’t pay me a visit?” She placed her hands on her hips in mock offense, secretly pleased that he’d finally purchased some up-to-date apparel. She’d make a city boy out of him yet.

  He coughed. “I believe you were in Indiana at the time.”

  “Oh.” A brief bubble of tension rose between them, then burst. They’d have to talk about Indiana sooner or later, but now was not the time. “Well, anyway, you look mighty spiffy.”

  “Thanks. Needless to say, that’s some dress.” He ran a hand over his sandy-brown hair, center-parted and smoothed to patent-leather perfection.

  “These roses are lovely. I’ll go find a vase.”

  He followed her into the cramped kitchen. “There are only eleven,” he confessed. “I gave one to Mrs. Moran.”

  Dot laughed as she set the bouquet on the small oilcloth-covered table. “On sentry duty, was she?” She tilted her head and smiled at him. “That was awfully sweet of you.”