Beloved (72 page)
Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
She
'
d thought about them all winter long, as she and Mac had sat curled up in front of the fire; thought about what an overflow of happiness she had, enough to pass around to everyone, like a gardener who grows too many tomatoes. It worked for Bing: He took one look at Mac and her and turned around and married his senior development officer. Now they traveled all over the world together, a perfect match.
Couldn
'
t it work for Ben and Judith?
She lay in the hammock, half asleep, listening to the lazy buzz of insects, and the sweet songs of the finches in the trees overhead, and the distant sounds of Mac and his beloved John Deere. She must have drowsed off, or thought she had, because when she awoke she saw, or thought she saw, Ben and Judith together.
She was in a kind of flowing, iridescent white, and he was in something neutral, a
Nantucket
shade of gray. Even from a distance Jane could see her long, blue-black hair, curled and unmanageable. She was taller than he was, but his physique was perfectly suited for sailing:
broad
across the shoulders, and short bowed legs. They seemed to waver in the noonday heat, like a mirage, and then they were gone.
Jane bolted up from the hammock and cried,
"
Uncle Easy! Did you see that?
"
The old man rolled his head lazily in her direction, and winked.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
—Edwin Markham (1852—1940),
"Outwitted"
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A Month at the Shore
"
An addictive, captivating story of love, family and trust.
"
--
Romance Reviews Today
Laura Shore has fled her humble past on Cape Cod and made a name for herself on the opposite coast. But when she returns and joins forces with her two siblings to try to save Shore Gardens, the failing family nursery, she finds that she hasn't left the past behind at all. Kendall Barclay, the town's rich son and her childhood knight in shining armor, lives there still, and his hold over Laura is as strong as ever. Like a true knight, he's attentive, courteous, and ready to help -- until a
murder is uncovered
that threatens the family, the nursery, and Laura's deepening relationship with him.
Select here
to read the prologue of
A Month at the Shore
.
"Full of charm and wit, Stockenberg's latest is truly enthralling."
--
Publishers Weekly
In 1692,
Salem
,
Massachusetts
was the setting for the infamous
persecution of innocents accused of witchcraft.
Three centuries later, little has changed.
Helen Evett, widowed mother of two and owner of a prestigious preschool in town, finds her family, her fortunes, and her life's work threatened —all because she feels driven to protect the sweet three-year-old daughter of a man who knows everything about finance but not so much about fathering.
Select
here
to
read two
sample chapter
s
of Beyond Midnight.
RITA Award Winner
"Booksellers' recommended read."
--
Publishers Weekly
A showdown between a U.S. Senator (with a house on
Martha's Vineyard
) who believes in ghosts and a reporter who doesn't.
What could possibly go wrong?
Select
here
to
read four
sample chapter
s
of Emily's Ghost.
"
A deft blend of mystery and romance … sure to win more kudos"
--
Publishers Weekly
To Meg Hazard, it seemed like a good idea at the time: squeezing her extended family into the back rooms of their rambling Victorian home and converting the rest of the house into a Bed and Breakfast in the coastal town of
Bar Harbor
,
Maine
.
Paying guests are most welcome, but the arrival of a
Chicago
cop on medical leave turns out to be both good news
and bad news for Meg and the Inn Between.
Select
here
to
read two
sample chapter
s
of
Embers
.
"Buy this book! A truly fantastic read!"
--
Suzanne Barr
,
Gulf Coast Woman
USA TODAY
bestselling author Antoinette Stockenberg delivers an original and wonderfully romantic story of two people -- college lovers separated for twenty years -- who have the chance to be happy together at last.
But family, friends, an ex-husband, a teenaged daughter and an unsolved murder seem destined to keep the lovers star-crossed, until Dan takes up residence in the Cape Cod lighthouse, with Maddie's rose-covered cottage just a short walk away ...
Select
here
to read a sample chapter of
A Charmed Place
.
Wonderful, witty, humorous writing
--The Romance Reader
KEEPSAKE ... a postcard-perfect town in
Connecticut
. When stonemason Quinn Leary returns after seventeen years, he has one desire: to prove his father's innocence of a terrible crime committed when Quinn and Olivia Bennett, town princess, were high-school rivals. Class doesn't matter now but family loyalties do, and they're fierce enough to threaten the newfound passion between two equals.
"
Complex … fast-moving …humorous … tender"
--
Publishers Weekly
SAFE
HARBOR
. That's what
Martha's Vineyard
has always been for Holly Anderson, folk artist, dreamer and eternal optimist. If she could just afford to buy the house and barn she's renting, fall in love, marry the guy and then have children as sweet as her nieces, life would be pretty much perfect.
Poor Holly. She has so much to learn.
"As hilarious as it is heart-tugging ... a rollicking great read."
--I'll Take Romance
In Gilded-Age Newport, an upstairs-downstairs romance between a well-born son and a humble maid is cut short of marriage. A hundred years later, the descendants of that ill-fated union seem destined to repeat history. Or not.
USA Today bestselling novelist Antoinette Stockenberg grew up wanting be a cowgirl and have her own horse (her great-grandfather bred horses for the carriage trade back in the old country), but the geography just didn't work out: there weren't many ranches in
Chicago
. Her other, more doable dream was to write books, and after stints as secretary, programmer, teacher, grad student, boatyard hand, office manager and magazine writer (in that order), she achieved that goal, writing over a dozen novels, several of them with paranormal elements. One of them is the RITA award-winning EMILY'S GHOST.
Stockenberg's books have been published in a dozen languages and are often set in quaint
New England
harbor towns, always with a dose of humor. She writes about complex family relationships and the fallout that old, unearthed secrets can have on them. Sometimes there's an old murder. Sometimes there's an old ghost. Sometimes once-lovers find one another after half a lifetime apart.
Her work has been compared to writers as diverse as Barbara Freethy, Nora Roberts, LaVyrle Spencer and Mary Stewart by critics and authors alike, and her novels have appeared on bestseller lists in USA Today as well as the national bookstore chains. Her website features sample chapters, numerous reviews, many photos, and an
enchanting Christmas section.
Visit
her
website at
antoinettestockenberg.com
to r
ead sample chapters of all of her books
.
If you enjoyed reading this novel, please "Like" Antoinette Stockenberg's Facebook author page!
Sample
Prologue
Antoinette Stockenberg
"
An addictive, captivating story of love, family and trust.
"
--
Romance Reviews Today
Laura Shore has fled her humble past on Cape Cod and made a name for herself on the opposite coast. But when she returns and joins forces with her two siblings to try to save Shore Gardens, the failing family nursery, she finds that she hasn't left the past behind at all. Kendall Barclay, the town's rich son and her childhood knight in shining armor, lives there still, and his hold over Laura is as strong as ever. Like a true knight, he's attentive, courteous, and ready to help -- until a
murder is uncovered
that threatens the family, the nursery, and Laura's deepening relationship with him.
Prologue
The day after eighth-grade graduation was the best and worst of
Kendall
's life.
He was minding his own business, which happened to be tracking down a snowy owl that had been sighted in a woods just outside of town, when he heard boys' voices farther up the trail.
He was sorry to hear them. He didn't want to be caught with a pair of expensive binoculars around his neck and looking for birds, so he got back on his bike with every intention of leaving the way he had come: quietly. As he pedaled off, the voices got more shrill—whoops and yelps, the sounds of small-town kids on the warpath. He would be fair game for them, he knew from experience, so he picked up his pace.
And then he heard the scream. It was a girl's cry, frightened and angry at the same time, and it sent chills up his back and arms. He slammed on the brakes so violently that his bike skidded on the soft path and went out from under him, falling on top of him and scraping across his pale, thin legs.
He righted the bike, but his hands and legs were shaking as he mounted it again and set off in the direction of the scream. Part of him was hoping and praying that it was all just fooling around; but part of him knew better.
He found them in a clearing next to the trail where he knew kids liked to hang out drinking and smoking—and, he had always assumed, having sex. Four boys had a girl cornered.
She was standing in front of the campfire rocks. Ken couldn't see her very well because she was shielded by the four boys. They were practically shoulder to shoulder, but one pair of shoulders stood higher and broader than the rest: they belonged to Will Burton, the doctor's son, a bully who had squeezed more than one allowance out of Ken on a Friday afternoon. Will's younger, red-haired brother Dagger was there, too, and two other kids
that
Ken didn't recognize.
"Hey!" he yelled at their backs, almost before he could think about it.
They all turned around at the same time, surprised and therefore pissed. But Ken wasn't looking at them, he was looking at her. He was stunned to realize that she had breasts; how had he never noticed that? She was clutching her torn shirt to herself, but he could see her dark pink nipple. Instantly he looked away. When he looked back again immediately, he saw that her face was all flushed and her cheeks were wet, and he felt desperately ashamed.
"Leave her alone," he said in a voice filled with fury.
Will
Burton
just laughed. "Ooh, I'm scared. What're you gonna do? Run and tell your daddy?"
The other boys snickered and approached him as he stood astride his bike.
He could have taken off. He didn't, because he wanted her to make a break for it. But she stayed right where she was! He couldn't believe it. She wasn't moving. It was like she was hypnotized or paralyzed or something. She was looking straight at him and nobody else. He was ashamed in advance for what he knew was going to happen to him.