To understand the inspiration for my first Rebel Ink Press release, Love Never Fails, issued as an eBook in May, in paperback in June, you have to think about a Pontiac GTO, a wild but sweet high school boyfriend, and to spend a few moments wondering “What if?”. Although Reid Ramsey is not based on my old BF, he shares a few of the same qualities. He’s more of a composite of several boyfriends of the past. What happened, really is this, my family went to a car show and they had a beautiful GTO a lot like one I spend a lot of time riding around in with my BF. I also ran into that same boyfriend’s dad at the local Dollar General. My teenage daughters wanted to know who he was and when I explained, they asked a lot of questions. Apparently some children are born thinking that their mother has always been mated to their father. Or at least mine did.
So I wondered what if….what if he’d called me up five years or so after high school (and no our relationship didn’t end like Reid and Caroline’s and there are no other real similarities)….and I started thinking up a story.
Here’s the blurb:
Old love sometimes fades away…
When a late night phone call from the former love of her life interrupts
both her sleep and her otherwise quiet existence, Caroline Cunningham
finds she can’t refuse Reid Ramsay’s request for help. As the call pulls
Caroline back to her small hometown and into the heart of the search for
Reid’s missing brother, Caroline finds the feelings she thought she’d
buried where Reid was concerned are indeed alive and well.
And sometimes it refuses to die…
Reid Ramsay is still in love with Caroline Cunningham. As they work
together searching for Reid’s brother, Reid and Caro finding themselves
attempting to rebuild the life they once shared together. But their
future remains uncertain. Before they can find the happiness they seek,
each must work through the emotional baggage of the past and test the
theory they desperately hope rings true.
And here is one of my favorite excerpts:
All she had to do was
close her eyes and she could see it, that sleepy small town cuddled by the
rugged Ozark hills, sprawling over the hills and down into the valley. Each
tree-lined street, the town square, the high school football stadium, and the
parks were all as vivid as if she’d just left last week instead of five years
ago. In memory, Neosho had the frenetic quality of a dream or nightmare, a
surreal mystique that didn’t seem real. She seldom thought of it, just as she’d
tried so hard to block Reid from memory. She couldn’t think of him every day or
the pain would devour her so she’d trained herself not to think, never to
remember. Once he spoke to her again, however, all of her defense mechanisms
vanished like rising smoke from a campfire.
His voice on the phone
sounded the same, evoked a thousand memories, and twisted her heart with
painful spasms. She wondered if he looked the same after five years seasoning
and if he’d see the girl he remembered in her face or if she’d look like a
stranger.
Whatever prompted him to
call her was serious or he’d have never phoned. Caroline had no idea how he
even got her number given that it was unlisted. She’d forbidden her few close
friends to give it out to anyone and there was no one in Neosho now who would
know it. She lost touch with her many of her friends long ago, in the early
months of exile, afraid to hear from them because she knew they’d just want to
talk about Reid. She had no family anymore, no one except Aunt Julia and the
most she sent her was a card each Christmas. She said all she needed to say her
aunt on the day she left Neosho forever, leaving behind a life in shambles, a
reputation in tatters, and Reid.
Caroline stared at the
clouds that wafted past the airliner windows as memories long denied flew at
her like birds before an oncoming storm. Her best memories were with Reid, some
of the bad featured Aunt Julia, and a few others were the worst; ones that
focused on her loss and the secret even Reid didn’t know about. To return she
would have to face them all, Reid first and then the others. To face her aunt,
she’d have to confront old demons and she wasn’t sure if she had the strength.
Although she wanted to, meeting Reid again would be hard enough.
Caroline closed her eyes
and pushed all the thoughts away except the memories of Reid, as the plane
soared through the sky. At the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, the closest
destination she could book on short notice, she rented a car and began the hour
drive north, back into Missouri, back into the Ozark hills where she grew up.
With summer past, the first brilliant colors of fall painted the landscape with
orange, yellow, and red.
Caroline was almost home
and she was terrified.
She thought she knew the
way but now that Highway 71 was four-lane, she felt lost so she meandered off
onto the original highway, the old, two-lane road she remembered. She followed
it through the neighboring small towns and on into Neosho, amazed at the new
businesses that lined the highway on the southern edge of town. It wasn’t quite
noon when she reached her hometown, which looked both amazingly the same and
yet so very different.
Now that she was here,
her knees trembled and her hands shook. The faded blue jeans she pulled on for
travel felt too casual and the old T-shirt, a favorite, seemed like a rummage
sale reject. She hadn’t bothered with make-up and the best she could do before
she met Reid was brush her hair smooth. Caroline resisted the temptation to go
buy a new outfit, to stop and have her hair done or have a full cosmetic
makeover at the Merle Norman studio, and drove straight to the Big Spring Park,
a tiny area just two blocks from the downtown Square.
She parked in the lot
across the street and walked across, nervous now that she’d see Reid again in
moments. As she traveled along the sidewalk that led through the park, her
heart thumped so hard she could feel each beat. Caroline skirted around the
Grecian pool and veered right to where wide cement steps led down to the spring
inside the grotto. This had once been their special place, a refuge in times of
trouble. Before she could see anything, she heard small stones pitched into the
water, the rhythmic plunks familiar, and she knew Reid was near. He was
nervous, too, or he wouldn’t toss pebbles. When calm, he could sit as still as
a statue for hours. With a long, deep breath, Caroline started down the steps
toward where he sat, almost at the bottom.
If he heard her coming,
which she thought he must have he gave no indication, sitting with his back to
her. His broad shoulders were tight beneath the old chambray work shirt he wore
and his black curly hair was longer than she remembered, touching the collar of
the shirt. She sat down next to him and put her hand on his arm.
“I’m here.”
At her touch, he turned
and she felt the energy surge between them, electric as ever. Reid’s eyes, the
deep navy blue she remembered so well, met hers and her anxiety melted.
“Caroline.”
His voice made her name
an endearment.
They stared at each
other as if they could bridge five years distance in a few moments and then he
put his arm around her.
“You got here quick. I
thought you might keep me waiting half the night.”
“You knew I’d come.”
“Yeah, I did.” It
appeared he hadn’t doubted her, even after the years of silence and separation
and something deep within her stirred and rejoiced at that. Even now, it seemed
he knew her well.
“Why did you have me
come here, to the grotto?”
“Don’t you remember?”
His voice was very soft.
“I do. This was our
secret place, somewhere we came when we were troubled.”
Reid nodded. “We came
here the day after my mom died.”
Caroline leaned against
his shoulder, savoring the feel of his strength behind her, inhaling the long
remembered but never forgotten masculine scent of him. En route, she worried
that he was injured or ill but even though he looked tense, he also looked
well.
“Are you all right?” She
needed to know.
“I’m okay,” Reid said.
He put his hand in the center of his chest. “That is, except for this pain I’ve
had right here for about five years now. A deep, burning pain that never went
away. Today though, it feels just a little bit better.”
She inhaled sharply,
panicked at the idea of him having chest pains and then realized his heart
trouble was romantic, not medical. Without analyzing it or planning what she’d
say, she leaned forward.
“Maybe this will help it
heal.”
She touched her lips to
his, a very light kiss, her mouth barely touching his.
“It helps if it’s real,”
Reid said, taking her face into his hands and kissing her with thoroughness
that ignited fire in her veins. “Did you mean what you said on the phone?”
Like it? Here’s where you can buy it:
Buy links:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1937265056/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_alp_9fibob1AE1KMD
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Never-Fails-ebook/dp/B0053CYRPO
http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-loveneverfails-550136-149.html
http://www.manicreaders.com/index.cfm?disp=bookdetail&bookid=14802
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