MUSE MONDAY
It's great to have Liz Flaherty back on Discover... for Muse Monday. I love books with mature heroines who have so much more to offer with life experiences. This story sounds like a fun one and makes my TBR list.
As any of us who’ve lived past the age of 40 know, life is all about reinvention. We wear so many hats as we go through those reinventions—the mom hat, the partner hat, the volunteer hat, the retirement hat, the nana hat…and so on. And on. Some of them fit really well and you never want to take them off, and some of them you might wear too long, or maybe they hurt your head, or maybe you wake up one morning and everything’s changed—hat and all.
Rye Winters grew up in
Chicago, and she loves it there. After many years in a small-town subdivision,
the forty-something widow is champing at the bit to go back. She’s sold her
business and her house and made plans right down to the kind of apartment she
wants to lease or buy—no more lawn-mowing or weed-eating for her! She’s not
going to need a car—which is great because she hates to drive. She’d reinvented
herself once—she could hardly wait to do it again.
But before making her final
move, she goes to Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania, population 2922, to be her best
friend’s “widow of honor” in her wedding.
Where she meets the preacher, falls in love with a cottage on the lake, and can’t stop looking at a downtown building that has so many possibilities. Hmm…
He’s afraid a second time at love wouldn’t live up to his first. She’s afraid a second round would be exactly like her first.
However, there is an
indisputable attraction between the green-eyed pastor and the woman with a
shining sweep of chestnut hair. Then there’s the Culp, an old downtown building
that calls unrelentingly to Rye’s entrepreneurial soul. And when a young man
named Griff visits Jake, life changes in the blink of a dark green eye.
Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B2FT1JLR
Excerpt
“Your eyes,” he said, “are
extraordinarily blue.”
“Yours are extraordinarily
green.” His sweater, the same color as his eyes, was soft under her hands,
covering shoulders and arms more muscular than she had expected. He was just
the right height to dance with, too. Looking up didn’t hurt her neck, but he
was enough taller than she to reduce her tendency to lead. “Is this our first
date?”
He looked thoughtful. “No.
Actually, I think we’ve had several. We’ve just kind of avoided calling them
that.”
“That’s good then.” She
sounded breathy again, but the truth was, she was feeling a little winded by
his proximity and how it made her feel. “Because, I wouldn’t want to be known
as someone who…you know…would kiss on the first date.”
“No, that wouldn’t be good,
would it?” His arms tightened. “But maybe after several dates it would be
okay?”
“I think so. A nice kiss goes
well with wine and cheese and Ebenezer Scrooge’s story.”
“Does it?” His lips, warm and
firm, met hers then. Searching. Tasting. Releasing. For a moment. “If one goes
well, how would they be with two?”
“Oh.” She raised her hands,
threading them through his thick, soft hair. “I think they’d be even better.”
The wine, cheese, and movie
were wonderful after four kisses, splendid after five. The wine had had plenty
of time to breathe and the cheese had warmed so that its flavor was rich and
its consistency creamy.
Kind of like the kisses. Not
the creamy part, but warm and rich and leaving her with a wish for more.
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She and Duane, her husband of at least forever, live in a farmhouse in central Indiana, sharing grown children, spoiled cats, and their grandkids, the Magnificent Seven. (Don’t get her started on them—you’ll be here all day.) To find out more about her, stop by http://lizflaherty.net/ or sign up for her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/df7dhP.
LinkTree to Social media links: https://linktr.ee/LizFlaherty
