The Last Chance Cafe.

The Last Chance Cafe
Linda Lael Miller
Published 2002
Pocket Books
373 pages.

  Summary from back cover.
When a blinding Nevada snowstorm and a broken-down truck force Hallie O'Rourke and her two young daughters into the warmth of the Last Chance Cafe, Hallie could not know she would find a new beginning at the roadside diner. Or that the handsome stranger she meets there would change everything she believes about home and family. Chance Qualtrough is a rancher with deep roots in Primrose Creek, and he's never met a woman as alluring -- or downright stubborn -- as Hallie. An undeniable passion is pulling them together, but Hallie is fleeing a danger so threatening she dares not let Chance into her heart. Will all that Hallie fears come back with full force, destroying her last chance for the life she's always dreamed of?

This book has sat for at the very least three years on my TBR pile.  As I am involved in a couple of TBR challenges I finally picked up this book - turning away from some of the 2012/3 books.  I have read a number of Miller's historical fiction and enjoyed them but they weren't books that I would rave over. Hence this one sat and sat.......

I found I really enjoyed this story - it was contemporary, and I have to admit I do warm to contemporary more generally.  Not that a great historical will not have me raving about it - it will.  There was a heroine in trouble and on the run, also two adorable twin girls - Hallie's daughters who added to the charm of the story.  The hero was very likeable and ready to help Hallie shoulder her burdens.  In the background were a delightful array of small time characters in the community.  Throw in a few baddies out to get Hallie and it had all the elements that kept me entertained.

It was a predictable plot, when as a reader you read these kind of stories, you do know what is going to possibly happen, but you enjoy the story anyway.  Sometimes a book like this is just the read for me. When I sit up at night to finish a book I know I was hooked by it.