by Lisa Ireland
‘Bea, I can’t see you from up here, but I know you’re in the crowd somewhere. I have some things I need to say to you and I wanted to do it out here in public so that you know that I mean them. This way I’m not just accountable to you, but to the whole town if I screw things up again.’
The room had gone eerily quiet and the space around Bea became even greater. Joe came over and slid his arm around her waist protectively. ‘Are you okay, sis?’ he asked. ‘Do you want me to stop him?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I want to hear what he has to say.’
‘Beatrice Elliot,’ Mitch continued, ‘you are the love of my life. I think about you night and day. I think about you when I’m driving, when I’m playing with my son, when I’m doing the dishes and at night you fill my dreams.’
A collective ‘aaw’ came from some of the women in the crowd and few sniggers were heard from some of the blokes. ‘Give a rest, Mitch,’ someone called from the back, but the voice was quickly shushed by others.
Mitch wasn’t deterred. ‘I think you already know this. I don’t think you doubt my love for you but maybe you doubt my ability to be there for you with all that I have going on in my life. Bea, I want you to know I will do anything to keep you in my life. Being away from you these past few months has been torture for me.’
A pathway had cleared so that not a single body stood between her and Mitch. Bea wanted to step forward, to go up to him and stop him from making such a colossal fool of himself, but she found her feet fused to the spot.
‘I’m not asking for the world Bea. I just want a chance to be part of your life again. I promise you will always come first in my life. We can take things slow. We don’t have to get married, or live together, not unless that’s something you want. I just want to know that I can see you each day and that you’ll be pleased to see me. Whatever else I have, I’m nothing without you. So what do you say? Can you give me another chance?’
The whole room was looking at her, waiting for her answer. ‘He must really love you, sis, to make such a dick of himself in front of all these people,’ Joe whispered. ‘For God’s sake go give the poor chump an answer. Put him out of his misery.’
What on earth was she doing standing here? This was her chance to have everything. For years now everyone kept telling her she was brave, when really in her heart she knew every action she’d ever taken stemmed from fear, not courage. Here was a chance to finally be the woman everyone thought she was. Her mother’s words yet again came to her.
Be brave, my little honeybee.
Later Bea couldn’t remember how she got up on the stage, but somehow she found herself there in Mitch’s arms. He pushed the microphone away. ‘I meant every word,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought long and hard about whether this was the right thing for me, for you and for Ollie, and honestly Bea, I don’t know. I only know how I feel. I’m desperately unhappy without you. I feel like my whole world’s turned grey. So what do you think? Will you give me another chance?
‘I will,’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck.
Then he kissed her and the sound of the whole town clapping and cheering became the soundtrack to the story they would tell Ollie in years to come.
Thanks for reading Honey Hill House. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to know more about me, my books, or to connect with me online, you can visit my webpage lisairelandbooks.com, follow me on Twitter @LisaIreland66, or like my Facebook page Lisa Ireland—Author Page.
You can also follow me through my publisher’s page here www.escapepublishing.com.au
Reviews can help readers find books, and I am grateful for all honest reviews. Thank you for taking the time to let others know what you’ve read, and what you thought.
You’ve just read book #2 in our A Dollar for a Dream series. The other books in this series are A Heart Stuck on Hope by Jennie Jones and The Healing Season by Catherine Evans. All the books in the series can be read as stand-alone stories.
If you liked this book, here are my other books: Breaking the Drought and Feels Like Home.
This book was published by Escape Publishing. If you’d like to sample some more great books from my fellow Escape Artists, please turn the page.
BESTSELLING TITLES BY ESCAPE PUBLISHING…
A Heart Stuck on Hope
Jennie Jones
Adele Devereux knows what adversity tastes like, so when she’s retrenched from her job in Sydney, she packs her bags, takes her meagre savings and her shy, uncommunicative eight-year-old daughter, Ali, and moves to the country to take possession of a long-empty house for a rent of one dollar a week.
Adele is living on hope, and when Ali starts a friendship with Tom Wade, their taciturn neighbour, Adele is drawn further into the lives and intrigues of Dulili, the small town attempting to regenerate itself, and into the lives of the Wades.
Tom Wade is facing the biggest crises of his life. He’s back in town while he figures out the smartest way to regroup from the shattering and unexpected downfall of his business, Wade Rigging.
His new neighbours are testing his resolve to remain detached. Adele, because he doesn’t have time for anything more than falling in-lust, and Ali, because the child is giving him her hand and it’s a responsibility he doesn’t think he can handle. Tom has never backed away from a challenge, but he has a business to close and a new one to start, and he can’t do that in his hometown.
Adele has to get over a love that has nowhere to go, and Tom can’t see that by leaving Adele and little Ali, he’s breaking his own heart.
The Healing Season
Catherine Evans
Can two broken people find a way to start again?
Alicia Pearce had her life planned—marry her best friend, manage her home town agricultural store, live in her grandparent’s old house, and fix the troubled relationship with her parents. But life doesn’t follow plans, and Alicia finds herself alone, grieving for what could have been, while struggling to start a business in a dying rural town.
Lachlan Muirhead moved to Dulili for a new start. A farmhouse for a buck, a job at the Ag Store, and a town to call his own seems perfect. But you can’t keep secrets in a small town and as he becomes involved with the community, he’s concerned his past may catch up with him.
Can Lachlan trust enough to accept help from Alicia? Will Alicia overcome her shattered dreams and learn to love again?
Lisa Ireland
Feels Like Home
Lisa Ireland, a brilliant new voice in rural romance, invites you to Linden Gully and the wedding of the year…
When celebrity novelist Johanna Morgan surprises everyone by arriving back in Linden Gully three weeks early for her best friend’s wedding, she’s shocked to find her ex-boyfriend Ryan Galloway is back too and well-integrated in the community as the local vet.
Jo’s maid-of-honour duties are not the only thing that’s brought her home. The family homestead of Yarrapinga is now her responsibility, and Jo needs to decide whether to keep it—and replace old memories with new ones—or sell it and cut off all ties to her childhood and her home.
Ryan has brought his young daughter home to Linden Gully to provide stability after the death of her mother. The last thing he needs is Jo’s return, and all of the emotional turmoil that she brings with her.
Thrown together as attendants at their best friends’ wedding, Jo and Ryan have no choice but to grin and bear all the tension. But it’s not only resentment lingering between them. The attraction is still there, and the heat and the memories.
They say you can’t come home again, but maybe, for Jo and Ryan, home is not just a place, but a state of the heart.
Lisa Ireland
Breaking The Drought
When a smooth-talking, sophisticated city girl comes striding into town on her stiletto heels, he’s the last person who wants to notice…
When Jenna McLean gets roped into attending a matchmaking ball in a small country town, she holds no illusions of m
eeting the man of her dreams. A no-nonsense magazine editor, Jenna doesn’t believe in leaving love to chance, which is why she’s developed Marriage Material—a fool-proof framework for husband hunting. Shearers and farmhands need not apply.
Sheep grazier Luke Tanner has met women like Jenna before, and knows not to waste his time. With the drought dragging on and bushfire season around the corner, the last thing he needs is a spoiled city girl like Jenna adding to his problems. He’ll help out with the ball because it’s good for the community, but he won’t dance, he won’t flirt, and he definitely won’t be matched.
It’s been a long dry season, but everyone knows when it rains, it pours.
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ISBN: 9781760370435
Title: Honey Hill House
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Ireland
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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