Sweet Illusions (Indigo Bay Sweet Romance Series Book 4)

by Jeanette Lewis

  The ashes floated beside the boat for a moment, then swirled away. “I love you, baby brother,” Eva whispered. As a confused and lonely young man, he may have made some bad choices, but in her mind he’d always be the little brother she remembered—his eyes alight with love and hope as he followed her around the Compound, helped her hunt crawfish, and scouted out climbing trees they could turn into secret hideouts—just the two of them.

  Eva closed her eyes, searching for happy memories. This moment was for Sam; she didn’t want to spoil it with guilt. But the guilt simmered below the surface. What if she’d tried to take him with her when she’d first escaped to Indigo Bay? What if she’d sent for him sooner? Could she have saved him, or had he been so brainwashed by the cult that his fate was inevitable? There would never be an easy answer.

  In the three weeks since Jessie had kidnapped Eva, the story had grown, unfolding across local and national news sites. It didn’t quite merit the coverage of the 2012 standoff, but there was plenty of coverage about the Family. So far, Eva and Ben had been able to maintain their anonymity, but that would change as the wheels of justice began to turn and they were called to testify.

  The Atlanta police had arrived to the sound of gunshots. Eva’s mother guided them to the Tank and they’d reached the clearing just as Ben was prying the steel cover loose. He’d already shot the three cult members; the two thugs would recover, but Jessie had died at the scene. Once Eva was safe, Ben had spent a couple of hours in handcuffs in the back of a cruiser while the Atlanta PD sorted things out.

  Eva had spent the night in the hospital being treated for hypothermia. She and Ben had both been dosed with antibiotics to counter whatever nastiness may have been in the stagnant water, and then Ben took her home, to Indigo Bay.

  But the beehive had been kicked and the State of Georgia suddenly developed a renewed interest in The Nineteenth Day Church. More than three dozen children were now in protective custody, and Father Neezrahiah, his sons, and several other adults had been arrested. Investigations were underway, but they would eventually stand trial on a wide array of charges including child endangerment, welfare fraud, kidnapping, sexual abuse, and murder.

  Eva’s mother had helped the police, and been kicked out of the Family because of it. She’d moved to a battered woman’s shelter in Charleston. Eva knew that eventually the two would have to come to terms, but not yet. Resolution with her mother was something for later. Right now she wanted to say goodbye to Sam and look forward to a future.

  Ben’s arm tightened around her shoulders as she brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” Eva took a shaky breath, then tipped her head to look into his face. “But I will be.”

  He gave her a small smile, his dimple flashing briefly. “I love you, Eva,” he said, pulling her in even tighter. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re happy.”

  His eyes were warm and comforting—like hot chocolate on a cold day. “You already are,” she said. “And I love you too.”

  The kiss was longer this time, and in spite of the swaying boat, Eva had never felt so grounded, so perfectly safe and at peace. Ben’s mouth was warm, and his body shielded hers from the chill of the ocean breeze. Her pulse raced and they were both breathless when they finally broke apart.

  “I hope our babies have your eyes,” Ben whispered against her lips.

  She smiled as her fingers wound through the thick hair at the nape of his neck. No matter how bitter the past, the future would be sweet.

  About Jeanette Lewis

  Writing fiction has always been one of Jeanette’s favorite things and she can usually be seen going about life with the slightly distracted look that means she’s dreaming up another story. Other favorite things include family, friends, crisp Autumn days, having adventures, chocolate in almost any form, and frozen gummy bears.

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  @AuthorJeanetteL

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  Also by Jeanette Lewis

  Billionaire Bride Pact Series

  The Passionate One (Erin & Matt)

  The Rebellious One (Holly & Jordan)

  The Adventurous One (Taylor & Lane)

  The Glamorous One (Kynley & Dalton)

  The Ambitious One (Lindsey & Eric)*

  Destination Billionaire Series

  The Lucky Billionaire

  Snow Valley Series

  Feels Like Love

  Tin Foil Tiaras

  Love Coming Late

  Starlight Kisses

  Indigo Bay Series

  Sweet Illusions

  *Coming soon

  Acknowledgments

  Very special thank you’s to:

  My family – for putting up with me and making do with Ramen on the nights mom has a deadline;

  Cami, Christina, Daniel, Jennifer, and Makayla – for being willing to plow through this manuscript in its roughest form and give me honest feedback;

  Jennifer Youngblood — for being my go-to expert on the South;

  Jenna Roundy – for editing; and

  Especially to my wonderful husband Dan — who patiently listens to my stories all the way from baby brainstorming to final version and who is always willing to offer suggestions, feedback, encouragement, or simply serve as a listening ear. I love you, sweetheart!

  Much love to all!

  More Indigo Bay

  Sweet Dreams by Stacy Claflin

  Ever since her twin became a singing sensation, Sky Hampton has struggled to be appreciated for who she is—apart from her sister. She wards off Aspen’s fans, who beg for autographs and selfies everywhere Sky goes. She can’t even find a guy who likes her for her. Sky flees to the small coastal town of Indigo Bay in hopes of blending in and building her blossoming career.

  Jace Fisher is the textbook definition of the strong silent type—nobody can break through his tough exterior. He has suffered more than his fair share of tragedies, and to protect his shattered heart, he pushes everyone away. Jace spends his days fixing the Indigo Bay cottages, and his nights… nobody really knows. He keeps to himself.

  When Jace shows up to fix Sky’s AC, he barely notices her and she’s distracted with settling in. It takes an emergency situation to get them talking, and when they do, the two find they have more in common than first appeared. As their attraction grows, defenses soar. Will they be able to risk love when they’ve both been burned in the past?

  Sweet Matchmaker, by Jean Oram

  Bridal shop owner Ginger McGinty excels at matchmaking unless it’s for herself. That is, until she meets the dreamy Aussie who helps her get into an event meant for engaged couples. Logan Stone is sweet, caring, thoughtful and fun—everything she desires in a man. But it turns out, her new fake fiancé could use a bit more than just a pretend engagement to get him into parties—he needs a quick marriage keep him in the country so he can be with his adopted special needs daughter.

  With a marriage of convenience pro-con list longer than the average wedding veil, Ginger puts her faith in romance and offers Logan her hand in return for one thing—no lies.

  But little does she know, almost everything she knows about her new husband is based on a lie.

  Everything except his kisses and the way he accidentally spills his soul whenever they meet. And that’s quickly becoming a problem for Logan Stone who depends on distance and deceit to keep civilians such as Ginger safe from his enemy’s clutches.

  Will the two find love in their marriage of convenience, or will everything break apart when the truth rises to the surface, shattering everything, including their trust?

  Sweet Sunrise, by Kay Correll

  The last place on earth Will Layton wants to
be is Indigo Bay, but his younger sister needs him and he’s never been able to say no to her. But she left out a few details… like their father staying with her and the girl who dumped him years ago is living right next door.

  The last person Dr. Ashley Harden thought she’d see in Indigo Bay is Will Layton, but he’s back in town and just as irresistible as when they were young. Seeing Will again is a complication that isn’t on her carefully mapped out life plan.

  In spite of Ashley’s best intentions, she starts falling for Will again, but nothing has changed. She’s still focused on getting the townspeople to accept her and see her as more than the girl from the wrong side of town, while Will is determined to guard his heart at any cost.

  Not the easiest road to true love… especially when secrets from the past are revealed and history threatens to repeat itself.

  Sweet Illusions, by Jeanette Lewis

  Eva Malone was very young when her mother forced the family to join a violent doomsday cult, but she remembers a little about how normal life used to be. As a young woman, she escapes the cult and relocates to Indigo Bay, South Carolina to pursue her dream of peaceful anonymity.

  After several tumultuous years as a policeman in Atlanta, Ben Andrews has had enough. He returns home and joins the Indigo Bay PD, where the most exciting part of the job is getting a kitten out of a tree or rescuing tourists who lose their keys at the beach.

  Eva and Ben are immediately drawn to each other. But as the prophesied date of the apocalypse draws near and the cult steps up its efforts to find her, Eva realizes she can’t maintain her sweet illusion forever.

  Sweet Regrets, by Jennifer Peel

  Melanie Dixon never thought she would find herself divorced, pregnant, and living back with her parents in Indigo Bay. Not one to let misfortune get the best of her, she picks up the broken pieces of her life and bit by bit puts them back together. She’s determined to go it alone, but her loving and equally determined family and friends have another idea.

  Enter Declan Shaw, the boy next door from long ago. The boy she wasn’t quite ready to commit forever to at eighteen. Back in Indigo Bay due to a recent job promotion, Declan sees this as a second chance to reunite with the girl who has owned his heart since the day they met in their junior year of high school. But Melanie is a tougher sell on the idea than he thought she would be. Now it’s up to him to prove to Melanie that she can trust him with her heart and that he’s the man she and her baby deserve.

  Will the regret and hurt of the past win out? Or will love prevail?

  Sweet Rendezvous, by Danielle Stewart

  On her last tank of gas Elaine Mathews drives South. Spontaneity had never been her strength, but there was something about being publicly fired that had a way of changing things. An empty bank account, broken heart, and enough humiliation to last a life time was all Elaine could claim as her own. Her car choked to a stop in the quiet beach town of Indigo Bay and all she could do was sit on the curb and wait for the sun to set on her misery.

  Davis Mills has a routine. Wake. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. It hadn't always been that way. He'd left indigo bay once and returned a broken man. Now he kept his dreams small and his schedule tight. If there was no room in his life for anything new then he'd never repeat his mistakes.

  When fate has them, quite literally colliding Elaine and Davis are faced with an important question. Can you live a full life if you never take a risk? Or is life made up of every mistake, miracle and chance that comes with being in love?

  The Glamorous One

  By Jeanette Lewis

  The surf foamed around her hips like a tutu as Kynley Salvatici rolled in the wet sand. It scratched over her skin and she winced slightly, imagining all the places she was going to have sand—many of them places where one really didn’t want sand.

  Over Kynley’s right shoulder, the peak of Haystack Rock jutted from the water like the heavily barnacled fin of an enormous shark. The sky was crystal blue with only a few scudding white clouds and the coastline was picturesque with its rocky shoals, tree-covered cliffs, and soft sand beaches. A light breeze carried the faint scent of pine along with a tang of salt. Gorgeous. Wild. This was a place for lovers to walk hand in hand, for children to run trailing kite strings, and for artists to paint masterpieces.

  It was magical.

  Also? Freezing.

  Another wave broke, washing up Kynley’s legs, cascading over her body and barely missing her face, which she held just out of the water. She forced a smile as she rolled onto her back and stretched languorously, like a cat, her eyes never leaving the camera lens perched on the tripod positioned in the sand, away from the water.

  “Cut!” Gordon yelled from beside the camera. Kynley sagged onto the sand, only to dart up a moment later as another wave hit. She stood and rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms as Gordon came to the edge of the water.

  “You were out of sync,” he complained, an edge to his voice.

  “Sorry, I can’t hear the music over the waves.” Kynley waded toward him, pulling the wireless earpiece from her left ear. She frowned at it. “Are you sure this thing works?” She handed the earpiece to Gordon, who put it to his ear, closing his eyes and tipping his head in that way people have when they’re trying to listen so hard they need to shut out the other four senses.

  Kynley wasn’t ignoring any of her senses, chiefly her sense of touch. She shivered as the breeze sent her wet skirt slapping against her bare legs. “Can you hear it?” she asked Gordon.

  He shook his head. “Might need a new battery. Or maybe the water got it.” He turned and waved the earpiece toward a white tent pitched farther up the sand where it was dry. A man in jeans and a red jacket slipped around the soundboard and jogged toward them just as the door opened on the trailer, parked by the side of the road. Kynley sighed in relief as her stylist, Gabbi, emerged from the trailer, fuzzy robe in one hand, steaming mug in the other.

  Gordon and the guy in the red jacket were dissecting the earpiece, but Kynley turned her back, letting Gabbi drape the robe around her shoulders. She took the mug and wrapped both hands around the warm pottery, letting the rich steam and the scent of peppermint tea bathe her face. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said gratefully.

  “I know.” Gabbi shrugged. She wore jeans and a pink and black striped hoodie with a Hello Kitty decal on the chest. This week her hair was neon yellow, one side hanging free, the other braided into tightly woven cornrows that ended just behind her ear, showing off the row of piercings that ran up her earlobe.

  The guy in the red jacket took off toward the tent, Kynley’s earpiece dangling between his fingers.

  “I guess we’re on break until we get it fixed,” Gordon sighed, turning to Kynley. He cast a look at the sky. “Hope we don’t lose the light.”

  Kynley pulled the robe tighter, trying to control her shivering. Why was she the only one who had to get in the water?

  Never mind, she knew. As the lead singer for Jilted Storm, she was the focus of the music video. Not that everyone agreed with that.

  “Gordon!” a male voice called, and Kynley stiffened. Leeson, the band’s rhythm guitarist, came out of the tent and stomped toward them, sending up tiny clouds of sand.

  “Sebastian says you don’t need us for any more shots.” Leeson’s words were sharp and angry, as was the look in his brown eyes. He jerked to a stop in front of Gordon and over his shoulder, Kynley saw Sebastian emerge from the tent and stand staring in their direction, his arms folded over his chest. Even though they were at the beach and everyone else was in jeans and sweatshirts, Sebastian wore an expensive charcoal-gray Armani and didn’t seem to care that the sand would scratch his black leather Ferragamos. His designer sunglasses hid his eyes, but his thin lips were pressed together in a hard line.

  Kynley beat back a wave of guilt. They’d all agreed to hire Sebastian, persuaded by his promise of connections within the recording industry and his ability to score them a big contract, but she’d been the one wh
o had pushed for it the hardest. And after three months of Sebastian’s management, Kynley found herself increasingly the brunt of the band’s frustration, especially when conflicts arose.

  Like now.

  “I thought we were all in the beach shot,” Leeson said. He addressed Gordon, but his eyes cut to Kynley. Hard, accusing.

  Gordon sighed and pulled at his long auburn beard, the way he did when he was nervous. As the director of the video, technically he had final say over the production; however, they all knew the real power lay in Sebastian’s hands.

  “We already did your parts,” Gordon told Leeson in a slightly wheedling tone. “We’re doing some fine-tuning right now with Kynley.”

  Leeson huffed. “Yeah, fine-tuning that’s taken most of the day. Why are we even here if we’re only going to be in ten seconds of video?”

  “That’s just the beach portion,” Gordon pointed out. “You guys are in the rest of the shots, especially the warehouse and the freeway.”

  Leeson rolled his eyes. “Like you told us we’d be in the beach shots?”

  “We got more footage than you think,” Gordon said. “Trust me, it’ll be great.”

  Kynley’s eyes shot to Sebastian, who hadn’t moved from his spot by the tent but was watching them closely. He was too far away to hear the conversation, but she knew he could guess what was being said from Leeson’s body language. This argument had happened many times before.

  Jilted Storm was home-grown, an alternative metal hybrid born from the joint efforts of Kynley and Mick, the drummer, five years ago. They’d quickly added Trevor on lead guitar, Leeson on rhythm, and Corey on bass, and set about establishing their own style—dramatic, catchy songs that featured plenty of guitar riffs and drum solos, accompanied by Kynley’s soaring vocals. She’d written most of the songs and they dug deep into savings accounts and credit cards to record them and shoot professional-quality videos. After five years, they’d amassed a decent following on YouTube and enough real fans that they could tour several months out of the year, primarily in the US, but also to Europe, South America, and Canada. But now, they’d decided to take the next step—a recording contract. Sebastian was supposed to help them do that, though so far all he’d managed to do was raise tension.