Dearson

Dr. Polly Alberton is all out of laughs. She snorted from sheer absurdity when her husband of twelve years announced he was leaving her and their two kids to become a full-time yachtsman. She laughed in disbelief when the nanny she’d hired announced she won the lottery and was moving to Arizona mere weeks after she and her kids moved back to her father’s country home in Green Valley, Tennessee. And she straight-up cackled when she looked at herself in the mirror one day, only to find she no longer recognized the person she’d become. Because after all, isn’t that what happens when you play the role of the dutiful daughter, wife, doctor and mother, you lose yourself in the process?

Aside from her kids, the only other joy in her life comes from reading romance-which no one knows about. Not her ex-husband, not her judge father, and certainly not the twenty-four-year-old valet driver who keeps giving her flirtatious looks every Sunday at her required weekly brunches with her father.

Jace Vargas is an aimless twenty-four-year-old with an eclectic résumé that includes valet driver, Lyft driver, and freelance clown-so he’s a regular barrel of laughs. But it will take more than a bunch of hot air to get to know proper Polly Alberton. The thirty seconds he spends valeting her car each Sunday are his favorite seconds of the week. And it’s not because she tips well. It’s because her car stereo plays whatever audiobook she’s been listening to, right up to the time her Bluetooth disconnects. She’s a gorgeous, buttoned-up paradox, cloaked in layers of mystery . . . and he desperately wants to find out what’s underneath.

When Polly hires Jace to be her kids’ nanny, those layers start to shed one at a time. And throughout the course of a summer, along with a six-year-old spitfire, a brave ten-year-old, some magic tricks, and laughter, they both might find the things they’ve wanted most-with the help of each other.

’The Best Medicine’ is a full-length contemporary romance and can be read as a standalone. Book #5 in the Teachers’ Lounge series, Green Valley Chronicles, Penny Reid Book Universe.