Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel)

Sweet Talk

Foreword by Robyn Carr

Featuring in Order of Appearance:

Melody Anne, Violet Duke, Melissa Foster, Gina L. Maxwell,

Linda Lael Miller, Sherryl Woods, Steena Holmes, Rosalind James,

Nancy Naigle, Molly O’Keefe, Brenda Novak

Sweet Talk

Copyright 2015

Cover Design by
Croco Designs

Formatted by
IRONHORSE Formatting

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. The authors acknowledge the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Thank you for purchasing this limited-edition digital boxed set filled with wonderful novels and novellas from some of today’s most popular authors. I hope you will have a wonderful reading experience and discover many authors you might not have read before.

All the proceeds from the sale of these stories will be going to fund important research at the University of Miami’s Diabetes Research Institute—because I feel as if they are currently our best bet for a practical cure. I have been involved in raising money for research for more than a decade. Usually, I run an annual online auction each May (so far, we’ve raised $2.4 million), but this “boxed set” effort is replacing the auction this year. I appreciate your support, and all those people who have supported me in the past. For more information about my efforts, please visit
http://brendanovakforthecure.org/
.

In addition to this boxed set, I’m offering two more this year—SWEET DREAMS (filled with 13 thrillers, including my own HANOVER HOUSE, the kick-off to my new suspense series coming out with St. Martin’s Press next year) and SWEET SEDUCTION (filled with 13 “hot” romances a la
Fifty Shades of Grey
). In addition, Lauren Hawkeye, a fellow writer who also has a son with Type 1, is contributing the proceeds of the sale of her contemporary romance, SAFE HAVEN, to the cause.

And don’t miss my very first cookbook!
LOVE THAT! BRENDA NOVAK’S EVERY OCCASION COOKBOOK
contains all of my healthiest recipes—the ones I used to raise my five kids, not recipes I hired someone to create—along with some recipes contributed by my friend and co-author Jan Coad, who once owned a restaurant and has published other cookbooks. It’s available in both digital and print,
so order yours now
.

Here’s to making a difference!

Brenda

Dedication

To all those who are fighting the same battle as my son, Thad. May we find a cure for diabetes
soon
! And to everyone who purchased this boxed set. Thanks for being part of the solution.

Table of Contents

Dear Reader

Foreword

Dreaming of Tomorrow by Melody Anne

Jackson by Violet Duke

Promise My Love by Melissa Foster

Deadly Obsession by Gina L. Maxwell

Interlude by Linda Lael Miller

Bayside Retreat by Sherryl Woods

The Memory Journal by Steena Holmes

Just In Time by Rosalind James

Sand Dollar Cove by Nancy Naigle

Christmas Eve: A Love Story by Molly O’Keefe

BONUS: WHEN WE TOUCH (
A Whiskey Creek Novella
) by Brenda Novak

I remember always being aware of diabetes. My grandmother had it, late onset. She took pills to control it. In college a classmate had diabetes and I marveled at her ease with the syringe but beyond that, I wasn’t very tuned in to her. She was nineteen and even landed in the hospital a couple of times because her blood glucose was all out of whack, but I was the same age. I was bullet proof, took chances here and there, was less than one hundred percent cautious and I was fine. What I knew about diabetes was that you should watch your diet, take your insulin, manage your disease and live a completely normal life. Right?

Wrong.

The seriousness came home to me a little at a time. My father-in-law had diabetes, and it was referred to as ‘brittle.’ He had to check his blood and inject several times a day, but my in-laws didn’t like to talk about such things so I remained blissfully ignorant. Later he suffered from macular degeneration caused by his diabetes and was nearly blind.

But the first brush I had with the absolute enormity was after a swim meet, at the ice cream shop along with tons of students and parents. My son was on the team and we’d gone to his meet. One of his teammate’s mother worked there and I said, “Great meet, huh?” And she said, “Have you seen Josh? Do you know if he ate something?” Well, of course I didn’t know. I wasn’t minding him. Besides, I had a sixteen year old son, too, and eating wasn’t one of my worries. I worried about more practical things, like if he’d drink alcohol, drive too fast or maybe go too far with a girl!

Then I noticed that mother had my son cornered. So I quizzed him, asking him what she wanted. She wanted to know if Josh had eaten after the meet. My son did know. Josh, apparently, carried something he could snack on, so he put Josh’s mother at ease. “I saw him eat,” my son said. I asked what the big deal was and my son said, “He’s diabetic. He forgets sometimes or sometimes just doesn’t feel like it and trust me, when that happens, it can be bad. Sometimes he has a problem even when he’s careful. His mother wants him to have kidneys when he’s older.”

Suddenly it fell into place for me. Just manage it? Just follow the rules? Bip, bop, zip? Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even get my son of the same age to trot his dirty clothes to the hamper! I was afraid he’d wreck the car out of sheer foolishness or carelessness while his friend’s mother was afraid he’d have a sugar low or insulin overdose and lose consciousness and wreck the car! She had to worry about all the same things I worried about PLUS guarding the health of a sixteen year old boy to make sure he lived into adulthood.

Talk about priorities.

The next time I rubbed up against the seriousness of the disease was when a woman I knew nearly died in childbirth because of complications of diabetes. I didn’t realize, none of us realized, her condition was so severe it had been strongly recommended she not risk pregnancy. She survived but later had a kidney transplant. Trust me, you don’t want to sign up for one of those.

Diabetes isn’t something one gets from bad habits or being careless. In fact there are still too many questions about the cause to find the cure. It’s a serious chronic health condition that requires lifelong monitoring and is all too often fatal. Great strides have been made in recent years but not enough to put the mother of a teenager with diabetes at ease, not enough to allow a woman who has had diabetes since she was four years old to risk having a family of her own.

Now as I write this and indulge a little history check of my own, the number of people in my life who have had to deal with diabetes is so much broader and deeper than I realized, than I paid attention to. There were uncles, cousins, friends, in-laws and colleagues. It reaches its tentacles deep into our families and touches everyone. It impacts every day for the diabetic and everyone within his reach. It’s a huge burden with potentially horrendous consequences.

And the cure is getting a little closer every day. Please, God.

Robyn Carr

Prologue

“Are you Whitney Steele?”

As she struggled to wake up, Whitney was shivering from the frigid air drifting inside her open doorway. A police officer was standing before her with an expression she couldn’t read. All she knew was that it was three in the freaking morning, and this intrusion was unacceptable.

“Yes. How can I help you?” Her tone was anything but polite.

The officer looked away for the briefest of moments, and her sleepiness vanished. Maybe this wasn’t news she wanted to hear. When his eyes finally reconnected with hers, the sympathy she saw made her certain of that.

“No news at this hour is good news,” she told him, and she started to shut the door in his face.

He put his hand out to keep the door open. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry … but there’s been a terrible accident.”

She stopped listening. Nothing else he could say would be worth hearing.

“No …” She could stop him. She would.

“Your sister and her husband were in an auto accident at 10:06 PM.” He paused, and the very air seemed to throb. “They didn’t make it.”

Whitney’s knees began to give out, and she felt blackness overtaking her.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Steele,” the officer told her again seconds before he caught her.

“No, you’re wrong,” Whitney pleaded. Christmas was right around the corner, and she couldn’t possibly live in a world where Maxine didn’t exist.

The officer simply looked at her with kindly but regretful eyes, and she knew he was speaking the truth. If only she could wake up from this nightmare.

“Are you going to be okay?” the officer asked. “Do you have someone you can call?”

“There’s no one. My sister was all I had left,” she said in a panic. How would she get through all of this without Maxine to guide her? “But … where are my niece and nephew?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I was just sent here to inform you of the accident since you are listed as next of kin.”

“I’ll have to find out,” she said, and then stepped back into her house and closed the door. She stumbled to the phone and dialed her sister’s house.

On the third ring, the babysitter picked up. She’d been informed about the accident, but she didn’t know what to do, and the poor girl was sobbing.

Whitney gathered herself together and headed over to her sister’s house. She had to stay strong for Maxine’s children. There wasn’t time to fall apart.

As she made the drive, all she could think of was that she was about to bring these two children the worst news of their life. And once she arrived, she sat in the car for a moment, composed herself, brushed away her tears, and took a deep breath. They would all somehow make it through this tragedy.

At least they had each other.

She walked through the darkened doorway and heard a mewling cry coming from the living room. The house seemed so empty, though nothing had changed about it — physically. But this time she knew her sister would never again grace the halls with her laughter or come rushing around the corner. With great effort, Whitney held in the tears that wanted to fall once more.