Shades of Green
by Liz Flaherty
I tend to have lakes in books. I’m not sure where it came from, since I’m totally terrified of water, but it’s definitely a repeater in my settings. There was the Lake Miniagua series from Harlequin Heartwarming. The A New Season series is about a small town called Fallen Soldier, but at its far edge is Cooper Lake. I really thought I was probably done with lakes.
But then my husband and I drove to Town Lake, near Akron, Indiana. I’d never known it existed even though I’d lived in the area my entire life, but there it was. Back a narrow road, with a lot of trees and a small group of houses.
It didn’t take long for Town Lake to get a new name—Harper Loch—and grow some, to sprout houses and a walking path all the way around it, to have a mercantile, a salon, a church, two huge houses called the Burl and Lark Meadow, and a population that has grown from 87 to 100 over the course of three books.
Harper Loch has become so familiar to me in the writing of this series. Actually, at the risk of sounding really sappy, it’s dear to me. I hope you love it, too.
Introducing Shades of Green, Cari’s story. What will happen when the preacher and the pilot dance together at a wedding? Come along and find out!
Blurb:
Pastor Cari Newland’s life is stuck in the middle.
Her friends and parishioners at Harper Loch are mostly older than her thirty-two years… or they’re younger. While she likes being a single minister, she would also like to meet someone who sees her as someone besides “Preach.”
She gets hugged a lot, she realizes, but she never gets held. She’s never been the daughter her parents wanted or the woman her long-ago fiancé needed. Her life is good, but it’s lonely.
Enter handsome navy pilot Zack Grant. Visiting his parents at the lake, he attends a wedding Cari officiates. They talk and they dance and they are … interested. But Zack’s life is a thousand miles away and Cari’s life is firmly in Harper Loch. When interested begins to grow into something more, Cari and Zack must decide how to fit into each other’s world and whether or not they can make a long-distance romance work.
But Cari’s life is in the small lake community in Michigan. Zack’s is in the Florida Panhandle. And neither of them has any intention of changing locations.
Excerpt:
“It’s funny,” I said, as we talked over coffee, “that a day that should have had sadness in it, and did, because of John’s suffering, has been such a good day. Celebrations of life are just that, aren’t they?”
He laughed, the expression as clear in his dark blue eyes as the sound. “Do you overthink everything, by any chance?”
I frowned at him, although I wasn’t able to hold it very long. “It’s not by chance,” I said in my best preacher voice. “I work at it.”
Although I laughed, too, and enjoyed looking into his eyes, there was truth to the overthinking. Because of my vocation, it’s important that I never hurt anybody. I didn’t mention Ray’s baldness until he did. I didn’t tease Ellie about her OCD until she bemoaned it at a Wednesday gathering.
“I need to stop doing that with my parents,” I said slowly, using the tines of my fork to pick up crumbs of the piecrust that was flakier than my own. “I can’t change them. I can’t create what seems like quality of life if that’s not what they want.”
Zack nodded. “Good point. Remember that Luke and I weren’t all that charmed about Pop moving to Michigan? We had a hell of a time coming around to the fact that he’s an adult and completely able to take care of himself. Especially with Ellie doing the heavy lifting.”
“I get that. I wish I had more faith that Dad would do the right thing for Adria. I understand that he wants to let her keep her independence as long as he can, but what if he puts her or others in danger? I still get the willies when I think about her on that trip here with someone none of us knows.”
While I didn’t like that I was ending my good day on such a serious note, it was good to talk to someone who didn’t have a horse in the race. Zack had met my parents, but he didn’t have any kind of relationship with them.
“How is it having them stay with you?”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, because I’d been living alone since I was in culinary school, and I liked it. But I couldn’t come right out and say I didn’t want to share my house with my parents. Not only would I sound like an ungrateful brat, I didn’t really consider the parsonage my house. It was part of the church, albeit sometimes a messy part. There were meetings there sometimes. I counseled people there.
“It’s not like at Pop and Ellie’s, is it? They just tell me when they want me to get out of their hair, or Ellie sends me on an errand.”
“I kind of do that with them. I keep them busy when I can, or they’d just sit in front of the TV all day. Adria’s been crocheting, and she helps with the flowers in church. I think she likes to feel needed. I guess everyone does. Women, anyway.”
Zack grinned. “Men like feeling needed, too, but at our convenience.”
“Do you have any advice?” I fluttered my eyelashes at him. Since they’re short and stubby, I’m sure it wasn’t exactly a thrill, but his grin deepened anyway. “In case I need it.”
He reached for my hand where it lay on the table, picked it up, and kissed the palm, holding my gaze the whole time. “Be who you are,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Bio:
No comments:
Post a Comment