Coleen had heard just about all she wanted to hear from her grandmother about the Bentleys—no one could be that nice. There had to be an angle there somewhere. People just didn’t help other people for nothing—not in this day and age.Tony Bentley wasn’t expecting to find his mate, and as a Were Panther he could even understand her reluctance. He was, after all, a Bentley, and the poor woman had … woman had been taken through the ringer, but she was his mate, and he wasn’t about to take no for an answer.
Coleen’s ex had left her in a heap of debt, and she couldn’t allow herself to bring that kind of baggage into a relationship. She’d work through it somehow—without the help of the mighty Bentleys.
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‘Anthony’ is the fifth book in Kathi S. Barton’s “Bentley Legacy”. If you’ve been following the series then you know Anthony, aka Tony, has really been the quietest one so far and the most like his Grandda. No one in the family knows he found and lost his mate ten years ago when she was murdered. Tony has lived with the hole in his heart all this time knowing he’s destined to be alone for the rest of his life. He’s a small animal veterinarian and until now has lived in an apartment. Flying home to Ohio from a seminar in Florida he’s set upon by a small girl, Amanda aka Mandy, who fills him with her happy voice but a sad, startling list of facts about her great-aunt Carol. Unfortunately, the child’s mother and sibling died in a car accident some years back and her dad, Sheppard, is in the Army. Come to find out, the child’s great-grandmother, Bethany, is a friend of the Bentley family and she’s to meet the girl at the airport. Of course, Tony gets ahold of his family so that a coat, hat, gloves, and boots are there for her when they arrive since Mandy is not only dressed for the warm Florida weather but in sandals as well. Sheppard has a sister named Coleen who has her own problems. She thought she was divorced but once the man died, a team of lawyers has informed her that she was not only not divorced but she owed over one-hundred-fifty-three-thousand dollars in debt from him plus bills he had taken out in her name along with expenses from the wake, funeral, and burial. She’s had to sell her house and almost everything she owned to pay what few bills she could and is now going to her grandmother Bethany’s house to try and start over. Fortunately, she’s a trained chef and Grandda owns a restaurant but that’s going to be a meeting of the minds. She’s untrusting of men after all this and who can blame her? Tony is going to have his work cut out for him.
Colleen has had more than her fair share of problems with men. After being forced into a marriage she never wanted, she’s now forced to give up her dreams of opening her own restaurant and deal with a man who has unattainable goals for her. When she finally feels like she’s free of him, after filing for divorce, he dies and she’s now left with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to pay off in his name. Now she’s forced to sell everything she possess and move to Ohio with her grandmother to lick her wounds and hope she doesn’t work to death paying off all this debt.
**”It was hard to come to love you, I know that, but you’ve changed my life; not just being a ca, but changed everything about my personal self and gave me worth. I wonder now why I fought it so hard.”**
Tony’s goals are simple. Take care of his family and open his small vet clinic. He’s already convinced he’s lost his mate years before, so he’s accepted a life alone. The Bentley family is known to help out those who ask or need it, especially their friends. With Bethany taking care of a great granddaughter and now her granddaughter moving in, things are tight. But who knew that helping out a little old woman would bring Tony the one person he thought he would never have?
**”Finding you makes me want to do this right, to make it perfect. I’ve been given a great gift, and I don’t want to f*** it up.”
The Bentley family is now ready to help Colleen in any way they can and even help her attain her dreams along the way. The only question now is, can Colleen open her heart again to a man?