Today is the final day to download free the Christmas Inspirational Romance A Country Kitchen Christmas. And at long last we are going to speak with Penelope Anders. We’re meeting up at a local WiFi Cafe in downtown Atlanta so I can post as we talk. The cafe is a little crowded, but it looks like she snagged us a comfy booth.
Hi, Penelope. Thanks for agreeing to speak with us today.
Penelope: Dana said you wanted to talk to me, but if she thinks I’m going to confess anything to you that I wouldn’t tell her she’s sadly mistaken.
Well she did think you might give me an insight into your past where Derek Smythe is concerned.
Penelope: Like I’ve told Dana, Derek and I didn’t have a past. We grew up in Craters Corner, and we both went to the same high school, but that is as far as it went. Unless you call him always staring at me in the hall way or in class. It was kinda creepy.
Sounds like he had a crush on you.
Penelope: I guess. At the time it made me uncomfortable and being uncomfortable isn’t exactly the way a teenager likes to feel.
True. So what did you think when he bought the farm at auction?
Penelope: I was furious. The nerve of him doing that. It would have been far better for a total stranger to have done it than Derek Smythe, at least that is what I thought at the time. Now I couldn’t be happier that he bought the place. Did you know he hasn’t changed one thing about it? It looks the same as it did when I lived there with Aunt Edith.
Tell me a little about her. She raised you?
Penelope: I came to live with her when I was five. She was a wonderful woman, but she didn’t think I belonged in the kitchen. She claimed I’d be in the way.
Is that why you never learned to cook?
Penelope: Yes. But Derek said the way I picked up cooking I had to be a natural at it. He gave me lessons. Did he tell you that his grandfather taught him?
No he didn’t mention it. Sounds like your opinion of Derek Smythe has changed greatly since high school.
Penelope: It has. And I suppose I have Barton Bixby to thank for it.
How’s that?
Penelope: If he hadn’t run the contest, then Dana wouldn’t have gone to Craters Corners and got Derek to let me come back for Christmas.
Hmmm…. so Bixby was right. It worked out in the end.
Penelope: Yeah. Bixby is annoying like that.
Leanne Tyler 