Her breaths came uneven, like her heart had already chased him, all this time apart, and never bothered to tell her body. The desire to touch him beckoned, but she couldn’t, not if he would leave her when life got messy and he no longer wanted real.
“What about your family?”
“I don’t know. I can’t promise that my parents—my mom—will ever accept us. But I have enough on my own for a damn good start. And I’d have you.”
“Family is everything, Jay. I know that now.”
“Then we won’t cut ties. We’ll be tenacious.”
A ripple of warmth surfaced. She smiled, chuckled, shook her head. Finally, someone else brought the storm. Running and loving—two things that didn’t happen in the same life. But cycling and loving? Full circle, all that? Now they were talking.
“You are something else, Jameson Scott. Always with the five-dollar words.”
“Distracts people from the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m madly in love with you.”
His admission coaxed her pulse to throttle, her heart to turn over, her feet to leave the ground.
Free, you’re gone.
She nodded toward the bike, took a few steps toward the truck’s bumper, and lowered the tailgate. “I don’t think they’ll let you on the plane with that.”
In the noonday sun, a brighter dawn of realization spread across his features. He rushed the roadside weeds between them and covered her mouth with his. Had she any doubt she’d made the right decision, his lips would have finished the persuasion. His kiss was broiling, urgent, seductive. At last, when it eased, she breathed though parted lips, “I love you, too, Jaybird.”
He smiled against her mouth.
At the periphery of her lust-addled brain, Freesia heard Charlotte hooting and hollering, enough to summon a passing eighteen-wheeler to lay on his airhorn.
Jay barked out a laugh. Freesia launched into his arms.
It wasn’t Evangeline and Gabriel’s reunion; it was much happier. Freesia had a strong suspicion Charlotte would be telling the story for years to come, starting at the beginning…
Hunky guy, needed help, ate barbeque.
End of The Family Wish
Our Bridal Shop, January 2nd 2019
The Butterfly Dream, February 6th 2019
The Family Wish, March 6th 2019
PS: Please keep reading for exclusive extract from The Found Child.
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About Danielle Blair
Danielle Blair escaped the slog of her former accounting job to instead pursue writing women’s fiction. She pens empowering stories about women, for women, that focus on a woman’s unique journey to find her place in the modern world.
But this wasn’t always the case. Following a messy divorce, Danielle took to reading and writing to help sort out the whirlwind of emotions she was dealing with. What started as a coping mechanism turned into a passion and in 2017 she transitioned to writing full time. Along the winding journey to authorship she also met and married her current husband, who is the love of her life.
She writes her books with the help of her two sisters—Jennifer helps to plot out the stories, while Linda is the beady eye behind the editing of them. Since setting up the tire swing in their back yard together as kids, they’ve always worked better as a team—so why not write a book together?
She is the mother of two handsome adult sons, and three dogs that act like children (but she loves them anyway). When not lost writing her next book, Danielle can be found outside digging in the dirt, trying to coax her husband to just try yoga once, and cooking meals that may or may not end up burned every once and a while.
You will find her hanging out on:
BLURB
One mother’s life will change in the blink of an eye—and there’s no going back.
Elaine’s worst fears become reality when her beloved son Jakob is diagnosed with cancer. She needs to find a bone marrow donor, and time is running out. But while awaiting test results to see if she’s a possible match, Elaine learns a shocking truth about her son; a truth that threatens to send her back to the pills that almost destroyed her life once before; a truth that pushes her already fragile mental state to the breaking point.
Even as the family faces this new crisis, a ghost from Elaine’s past emerges to jeopardize everything she’s built. But is the threat real, or is it all in her mind?
Elaine needs to stay strong for her son, but as her whole reality continues to unravel, she can’t trust anyone—not even herself.
The Found Child is available now.
EXCERPT
Alert from Morgan Heights Correctional Facility: There has been a change in status for an inmate you are tracking. Inmate #33614 Hank B. Turner’s status has been updated to Paroled. You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to…
I read the email three times, hoping that I had misread it; that the words would rearrange themselves and say something different. They didn’t, of course. The man who had abducted my son eight years ago was walking free. All the air left the room, leaving me alone with the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears, drowning out everything but the panic as memories I had struggled to put behind me came surging back to the present as clear as the day they’d been inflicted.
“Elaine, are you listening?”
I blinked away the burn of impending tears. Seven other parents watched me from the edges of a large round table in one of the classrooms of Greenway Heights Preparatory Academy. Everything from concern to outright judgment was present and accounted for. I forced words out of my throat. “My husband’s company can donate laptops,” I said. “I’m sure he can provide software, as well; we just need to tell them what we want.”
Linda Keeler put a hand on my knee under the table. Her southern drawl drew at least as much enmity from the other parents as my brief lapse of attention; I wasn’t totally alone here, at least. “That would be just fantastic, Elaine,” she said. “I think that covers the robotics club, then. Anything left?”
The rest of the members of the Parents’ Board of Extracurricular Activities seemed satisfied enough, and so began the process of wrapping up the meeting. While they did that, I found myself watching the windows that looked out over the school’s perfectly landscaped central courtyard. I needed to see Jake, to remind myself that he was there with me. I knew he was, of course, and that he was safe, but my body refused to believe it until I could put my hands on him and hold him.
“The next meeting is Tuesday, March 12th at 4 p.m. All agreed?” Jessi Wyndam gave me a pointed look as if I was the only parent to get bored with these meetings or who sometimes had to reschedule.
“I’m sure I can manage,” I said. Not that it mattered; the decision had clearly been made.
As the other parents left the table, Linda leaned toward me. “I think Jessi’s just pissed that you one-upped her. I wouldn’t pay her any mind, hon.”
“I don’t,” I said. “And I didn’t, did I?”
“You really must have been out of it,” Linda said. She snorted. “She offered to bake some kind of gluten-free, vegan, alternative sweetener garbage for the Junior Developers’ club for their big showcase day.” She opened her mouth and poked one of her pink-manicured fingers toward the back of her throat. “I bet her kids binge on Skittles and Mountain Dew when she’s not looking. I know for a fact that her husband stops by Burger King every day after work before he goes home.”
I wanted to muster the good humor to give Linda a genuine laugh, but all that came out was a weak chuckle.
/> Linda wasn’t buying it either. “Are you okay, sugar?” She looked into my eyes, her brow knitting as she searched for something there. Nothing got past Linda, but this time there was nothing to find.
“I’m a little tired,” I said. “I should go get Jake. And call Nathan about those laptops.”
“He’d better make sure they’re top-notch or you know Jessi’ll complain at the next meeting about ‘commitment to excellence’ or some other passive aggressive nonsense.”
Linda and I both stood from the table and gathered our purses. They were almost a match though that wasn’t intentional. At least, I hadn’t intended it.
Filling my part of the conversation as well as hers, Linda offered, “I’ll walk with you. Jake and Ty are probably still at Robotics Club. Can you believe what kids get up to these days? When I was eight, I don’t think I knew what a damn ‘robot’ was.”
I wasn’t much good for any conversation on our way through the trophy-laden halls of the school. The place was a maze that I hadn’t quite memorized, so I relied on Linda to guide us toward the classroom where our two sons’ club took place after class hours. Consequently, I also had to match her ambling pace while she delivered all the gossip she could think of. Most of it, I didn’t even hear. My stomach was tied in knots and my hand ached from gripping the strap of my bag too tightly. From the classroom where the PBEx met, it was the first left, the second right, and then the first left, wasn’t it?
Linda took a turn that I didn’t expect, proving it was a good thing I hadn’t left her behind. The sounds of chattering kids met us at the corner and I sped up to follow the noise toward the door of the technology lab. I drank in the relief of arriving like it was oxygen.
That is, until I looked into the classroom to find Jake. The kids were all putting away their projects on the shelves at one end of the room, but Jake wasn’t with them. His coat was still hanging by the door. “Jake?”
Mr. Edmond, the teacher who ran the club, looked up from a conversation with one of the students and blinked at me through his Coke-bottle glasses. “Mrs. Jennson,” he said as he approached me, “there you are. Is Jake not with you?”
“With me?” I asked, incredulous. “No, of course he’s not, he’s supposed to be here. Why isn’t he?”
Mr. Edmond shook his head, his hands spread. “I’m so sorry, he said he wasn’t feeling well. He told me you were here for a meeting, and he was going to find you. You saw him after class, I believe?”
“He never made it to me,” I snapped. “When did he leave? You didn’t go with him?”
Linda cleared her throat from behind me. “I bet he’s visiting the restroom. Why don’t we go check?”
My face had grown hot. I didn’t need Linda to manage me and almost told her that… but she had a point.
“He left here about half an hour ago,” Mr. Edmond said. He pointed to my left down the hallway. “The nearest restrooms are over there, but I’ll phone administration and have them call for him over the PA just in case. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Jennson. He’s a very smart boy, so I’m sure he hasn’t gone far.”
I didn’t wait for more assurances or excuses. While Linda retrieved Tyler, I stormed down the hallway to the restrooms and checked both the boys’ and girls’ rooms. Jake wasn’t there.
It took an effort for me not to scream aloud for him as dark futures played out in my panicked imagination. It wasn’t difficult math. The man who claimed Jake was his son was out of prison, and now my son was missing. Again.
And what kind of mother did that make me? I’d lost my son for the second time.
The Found Child is available now.
The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3) Page 22
