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Category:
Romance
Publisher: Books We Love
Type: Fiction
Pages: 238
Copyright: October 1, 2024
ISBN-13: 9780228631668
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
A writer in mid-life crisis, a soft-spoken bookseller and a prickly pirate ghost come together at a mysteriously haunted beach cottage for a summer of discovery and new relationships.
Everything Bonnie Keeler believes about life and marriage changes the day she discovers her husband’s infidelity, which he says is caused by her romance writing. She feels shamed into giving up her passion – creating stories of mystery and romance; always with happily-ever-after endings. Leaving everything behind, she travels to Provincetown, where she can wallow in self-pity and drown her sorrows in the ocean.
Two things interfere with Bonnie’s self-imposed solitude—a seafaring ghost in her rental house who seems very protective of her, and Robert Garrett, a soft-spoken bookseller, who quietly infiltrates her life. Rob tends to discount the ghost’s existence until it saves Bonnie’s life. The discovery of an old journal helps them solve the mystery of the ghost’s identity, and Bonnie experiences a reawakening of her artistic passion as she writes the ghost’s story.
With her summer lease on the cottage soon ending, Bonnie wonders if she has time to heal in other ways, perhaps finding love with a quirky bookseller who offered her selfless, unconditional friendship and laughter when she needed it most.
Excerpt
I looked again at the directions I had scribbled on a note pad after talking to the realtor. This couldn’t be right. Squinting through the windshield into the late afternoon sun, I tried to find the road he said would be there.
“Who ever heard of giving directions by counting telephone poles?” I muttered, even as I continued to count. “Eleven, twelve, thir—" I hit the brakes. Surely the dirt path on the left was not the road where he said to turn.
Cautiously I angled my car around telephone pole number thirteen and onto a path that was more undergrowth and sand than anything even remotely resembling a road. I slowed, picking up my cell phone from the seat beside me. Two bars. Great. If I did get stuck, chances were good I wouldn’t even be able to call a tow truck.
I drove cautiously between outbreaks of wild roses whose long neglected branches reached out like octopus tentacles to snare me. I had almost decided I made a wrong turn when I saw a barely visible sign off to the side.
It swung at an odd angle from the post because one of the chains holding it was broken. I stopped the car and tilted my head so I could read it. It was the right realty; the huge red letters HN were a dead give-away. I grimaced as the belly of my Honda scraped bottom when I turned onto another roadway that may at one time have been gravel, then again maybe not.
I flipped off the air conditioner and opened the windows. The overhanging trees completely blocked the sun and the drop in temperature was unreal. Only a slight breeze filtered through the open space, but I could smell the salt air and knew; just knew, what I was looking for lay ahead. It had to be, because I was desperate.
I mentally slammed the door on thoughts I did not want to have. I wasn’t desperate; I was on vacation. I was…
“Oh, my.” I rounded a curve and the house came into view. It perched on a low hill, lush foliage surrounding it and so many wild sand rose bushes across the front that at first I didn’t see the steps leading to the porch. Wood shingles and siding were weathered to gray. The hurricane shutters on each side of the windows had possibly been red or bright pink at one time but were now sun faded to a point of almost being colorless. As my gaze swept the exterior, I was happy to note that at least all the shutters were there, and the siding appeared to be sturdy.
I climbed out of the car, pulling my tee shirt away from my sweaty back. Coming to Cape Cod in July had sounded like such a great idea, but it wasn’t just my sweat glands that were rebelling. My hair hadn’t been the same since crossing onto the peninsula at Bournedale. The salt air and humidity did things to it that I didn’t even want to think about, and I contemplated a hair cut—a very, very short hair cut.
Cape Cod really had nothing to do with my frizzy, blonde-streaked hair. I blamed my current, very confused state of mind on That Time; the eight months of numbing, heart wrenching pain I had endured before making a choice that would change my life forever.
“What do you want me to do?” My husband had asked when I had once again confronted him with his infidelity, and he had again denied any wrong doing.
“I want you to move out.”
“I can’t do that,” he replied and I had actually felt a weight lift from my shoulders. I knew the choice was now mine.
A shiver raced down my spine even now, thinking of That Time. I had important decisions to make about the rest of my life, and I wanted to see if I could still write, an avocation I had been shamed into giving up.
The need to create happy endings again had been consuming me even as I struggled with my self esteem, mental and physical health, and the actual process of moving out of the home I had occupied for the past seven years.
In my desperate flight, I left behind the majority of my possessions but what I wanted to leave behind—the hurt, betrayal and anger—somehow managed to climb into the packed car with me.
Maybe I could drown them in the ocean I heard crashing to shore on the other side of the house.
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