OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (36 page)

“What do you think?”

He tightened his grip on her, and she felt his smile in her hair. “You’re my kind of woman, Farrell. I think I’ll keep you. Forever.”

“I love that word.”

“I know.”

“But—” She turned in his arms and faced him. “Before forever begins, I need to know about April.”

Tension tightened his mouth, and he dropped his hands from her shoulders, took a few steps back. His face was so closed, it looked as if—if he were going to speak—it wouldn’t be until the next millennium.

Keeley didn’t intend to wait. “During our calls, every time I asked, all you said was ‘things looked good,’ and you were working on it.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Still am.”

“Hagan didn’t tell, Hagan lied … what?”

“Hagan came through all right.” He rubbed an eyebrow. “He took some persuading, but, yeah, he came through.”

Silence. She didn’t want to know.

“And?”
Keeley decided if she was going to spend her life drawing information from this man, she’d better hone her interrogational skills. She had visions of Chinese water torture, or maybe one of those medieval racks.

“I was too late. By about two weeks.” He let out a heavy breath. “Two lousy weeks. She’d been living in some kind of low-rent apartment in Portland. The building manager said she left in the middle of the night. Skipped out on the rent.”

“No forwarding address, then.”

“No.”

Keeley wrapped her arms around him. She wanted to absorb his disappointment, and though easy words of sympathy weren’t nearly enough, she said, “I’m so sorry, Gus.”

He ran his hands down her back, squeezed her waist. “It wasn’t a total loss. I talked to a neighbor. She said April told her she was going south. San Diego, maybe. Or San Francisco. As leads go, it’s not much. But I’ll see where it takes me. The thing is—”

“Go on.”

“She’s alive,” he said, his voice tight. “All these years, looking for her, never a trace—I could never be sure. But knowing she’s alive … I’ll find her. Sooner or later, I’ll find her.” He stopped again. “Her and her girl.”

Keeley’s head came up. “She has a child?”

“A young teenager, the woman said. She was vague on the age.”

“And all these years on her own.” Keeley, afraid she’d cry, went back to the window overlooking the bay where she stood and watched the evening darken into night.

She thought about April, a woman on her own with a young daughter, both of them running in the middle of the night—from God knows what or who. No money to pay the rent, nowhere to go. There was pain there—and fear. She rubbed her chest where her heart rested uneasily.

Such women were the women of Mayday House. Women Mary and her mother had spent their lives trying to help. Women for whom she would do the same. Mayday House would be a place to mend lives like April’s, a soft place to fall.

She said a silent prayer that wherever April was, she would find such a place.

Gus came up behind her and took her in his arms.

“We’ll find her, Gus,” she said. “We won’t stop looking until we do.”

He kissed her hair. “Yes, we will.”

“Let’s go home.” She spun in his arms, suddenly excited, eager to get started … on everything. “Let’s eat the wonderful dinner you’ve ordered, then drive to Mayday House. I want to be there.”
I need to be there—with you.

Gus smiled, raised a brow at the king-sized bed dominating the luxurious room.

“We’ve got one just like it at home,” she coaxed. He kissed her. “Damned if we don’t,” he said. “Mayday House, it is.”

Dear Reader:

Thank you for buying and reading OVER HER DEAD BODY, the 2
^nd
book in the
The Bliss Legacy Trilogy.
I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, you'll check out my other e-titles, and maybe leave a review on Amazon—if you're so inclined.

Brief descriptions of my books follow.

Romantic Suspense

Full length novels

KILLING BLISS. (Book 1: The Bliss Legacy Trilogy)

Addy Michaels, living a careful life on a forgotten back road in Washington state, thinks she's safe—that the past and its corpses are long buried. She’s proven wrong when renowned profiler, Cade Harding, shows up. Cade has reopened the fifteen-year-old cold case involving the murder of Addy’s foster mother, Belle Bliss. And his findings all point to Addy.

A PERFECT EVIL

Hannah Stuart, overcome by loss and her own despondency, is a willing recluse, until she inherits a fortune and three letters. The letters contain proof positive of heinous crimes, old and new; crimes Hannah feels honor-bound to expose—no matter the cost to her own safety. But she needs the help of the one man willing to do anything to destroy the letters. (A standalone book)

IN ROOM 33

When her stepfather dies, travel writer, Joy Cole, inherits the aged and derelict Hotel Philip. In the Philip's grim, hoary walls she sees the chance for a new and better life, both for her lonely soul and the long-neglected hotel. She also becomes attracted to one of the Philip's residents, the enigmatic Wade Emerson. But among the ragtag group of tenants in the hotel, there is a resident evil, an evil with plans to end Joy's life before it can begin—in Room 33. (A standalone book)

Coming soon:

KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE – The Bliss Legacy, Book 3 is the love story of April and Joe. Sold by her drug-addicted mother and lost to her brother, Gus, since she was a child, April loves and is indebted to the unconventional woman who saved her from an ugly fate—and now that woman has disappeared. The same woman who chose to raise April as her own abandoned her real son Joe as a toddler. So when April asks for his help, he gives it reluctantly. Within days they find themselves caught in a web spun with murder, money, and power.

April is a one-time Vegas showgirl. Joe is a high-level bodyguard.  

Contemporary romance

CALIFORNIA MAN (Book one: The Salt Spring Island Friends Trilogy)

A romance set on an idyllic Pacific Northwest island, it tells the story of Emily Welland, a timid, reclusive woman who meets a golden California man—a man determined to calm her fears and gain her love. (Emily's battle with extreme shyness is one a lot of us introverts can relate to.)

MAN FOR THE MORNING (Book two: The Salt Spring Island Friends Trilogy)

Lynn MacDonald, a single mother, gets a break from her busy responsible life with a trip to Paris. Open-hearted and open-minded to all that life has to offer, in the City of Light, she meets a man her polar opposite. (Lynn is a favorite of mine, a strong caring woman who deserves to find the love of her life.)

MAN FOR GRACE (Book three: The Salt Spring Island Friends Trilogy)

Grace Whitby is feeling more than a little blue and lonely. Both her best friends are married and happy, while she’s left on Salt Spring to wonder if she’ll ever find the man for her. Then Colin Ross comes back to the island—the last man on earth Grace expected to see again. (The wrong guy shows up at exactly the right time—but he has a lot to set right before he becomes the man for Grace.)

MAN ENOUGH (Book 4: Salt Spring Island Friends)

At age 32 and with a young son, hard-working, responsible Toni Corbett sees herself as too old and too settled for Porter Ross. Porter is 25 and living a carefree single life. He does what he wants and goes where he wants—and drives the latest hot car to get there. All good. But Porter is crazy about Toni, and when he decides to prove he’s man enough for marriage and fatherhood, he does it in style.

ONE TOUGH COOKIE

Set on Spain's magical Costa del Sol the story features Willy Desmond, a woman resolutely committed to being financially, emotionally, and physically independent. She wants
no
man—until she meets Mister Wrong. (If you like a woman who wants to be the hero of her own life, you'll like wild Willy.)

LOVE LETTERS, INC.

Rosie O'Hanlon, a clever and funny tech writer, moonlights writing love letters for the "dating impaired" and ends up with love being returned to sender—in the form of the last man on earth she should fall for. (If Rosie doesn't make you smile—I'll turn in my writer's badge.)

A MAN CALLED BLUE

Simone Doucet, a woman caught between her own ambition and loyalty to her boss, her ruthless mother, is determined to prove herself during a critical business trip to London. That means staying focused. But that focus blurs when she meets Thomas Bludell. (Simone needs to learn how to live her own life—and the man called Blue is exactly the right man to teach her.)

DREAM'S DON'T WAIT

Evan North has dreams, dreams put on hold years before when she became a teenage mother. But just as her dreams,
finally
, are within reach, she meets Lincoln Stewart, a man rich enough and seductive enough to disrupt her thinking. Linc has plans of his own. Plans that tempt Evan to change her course and put those dreams away—forever.

Short stories and novelettes

OVERKILL

The first in a series of short stories and novelettes, this story features Tanner Cross and the test he's given before taking leadership of the Raven Force, a privately funded group of covert agents who work against the illegal arms/drug trade. Tanner's okay with the test. He's not okay with the idea that a very special woman in his life might be collateral damage.

STAYING COOL

Once burned twice shy, Patrick Byrne wants no part of the woman who walked out on him and took his heart with her. The trouble is, someone wants her dead, and if he doesn't help her, no one will—not even the powerful, lethally effective Raven Force.

IN GOOD HANDS

Thrown together by chance—and very reluctantly—Esme Shane and Dane McCoy instantly know they're all wrong for each other. But when fate gives them ten days on a secluded estate on a sun-drenched island in the Gulf of Mexico, what happens between them is anything but reluctant. It's incendiary.

ATTITUDE

When Ginger Cameron decides to do a re-do on her life, she doesn't mess around. She changes her attitude and her wardrobe. She's planning on a nun-like life for the next two years, all work and no men. A great plan, until she meets sexy former soap star Cal Beaumann who sets out to test Ginger's new, very retro, attitude to the max.

Again, thanks for reading my work. I don’t have a mailing list—yet—but if you’d like to know about my new releases, here’s the link:
http://authoralarms.com/EC_Sheedy

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence.
Thou shalt not
is soon forgotten, but
Once upon a time
lasts forever.” — Philip Pullman