Erica Lucke Dean - To Katie with Love (29 page)

I beamed. “The liquor anyway.”

“Just the liquor?” Cooper asked with a curious grin.

Marcy raised her eyebrows, flashing me a knowing smile. “I thought there were no more secrets?”

“Well, just one more.” I bit my lip, and my stomach flipped because I knew I was going to spill it right there on national TV.

Cooper looked truly perplexed.

I shifted to whisper, “I have a secret I’ve been keeping from you.”

His eyes widened. “Are you going to tell me?”

I leaned in closer, until my mouth was almost touching his ear. As the words spilled from my lips, he sucked in a harsh breath. Then I pulled myself back slightly before he grabbed both sides of my face for a very public kiss, followed by the second most profound
I love you
I’d ever heard him utter.

“That must have been some secret,” Marcy said.

Cooper was bursting at the seams with excitement. “Can I say it?” he asked me, and I nodded. “We’re having a baby!”

Marcy turned to the audience. “Now that’s what I call a sequel!”

PMS can be a real witch.

Ivie McKie isn’t your run-of-the-mill kindergarten teacher. After an encounter with a horny goat, followed by a confrontation with her lying, cheating fiancé, Ivie is shocked when the big jerk suddenly transforms into a skunk—the black and white furry variety.

Enlisting the help of her shopaholic friend Chloe and sexy club magician Jackson Blake, Ivie is forced to play a literal game of cat and mouse as she races against the clock to change her ex back before she’s arrested for his murder.

With every new spell comes a fresh wave of sexual desire, drawing Jack further into Ivie’s troubles—her panties, the car, the kitchen, and assorted seedy bathrooms along the way.

Ivie soon discovers what every witch worth her spell book knows: There’s nothing worse than a bad case of Post Magical Syndrome.

Coming February 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to those who each, in some small way, helped to bring this book to life. To my parents, for always believing in me and giving me the courage and freedom to color outside the lines. To my husband and children, for allowing me to listen to songs on repeat for hours on end, often into the wee hours of the morning, while I wrote.

To my amazing beta readers and friends; Kelly, for forcing me to cut words I didn’t want to cut in order to craft a better story, Mercy and Raine, for sharing their two cents during the beta process. And especially to Laura, for volleying ideas with me like a fast and furious game of imaginary ping pong. Without your help, I would’ve never gotten through the weeds of words to find the magic hidden within, and I never would’ve had the courage to submit the final product to a publisher.

To Lynn and the staff at Red Adept Publishing, for taking a chance on an unproven author. To Michelle, the very best content editor a girl could ever ask for. You got me. You got my characters. And you managed to pull things from my brain I would’ve never guessed were possible. And Lynn, thank you for making the hard decisions when I couldn’t. I may have lost a battle or two, but together, we won the war.

And a special thanks to my former crew from the Pine Mountain branch—Melissa, Alicia, Donald, Gail and Bette—for inspiring some of the quirky characters in this book.

I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time, Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains, where she lives in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse with her workaholic husband, her 180 lb lap dog, and at least one ghost.

When she’s not writing or tending to her collection of crazy chickens and diabolical ducks, she’s either reading bad fan fiction or singing karaoke in the local pub. Much like the main character in her newest book,
To Katie With Love
, Erica is a magnet for disaster and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.

How she’s managed to survive this long is one of life’s great mysteries.