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“But…when?” Zeke asked.
“From the date Doc Morrison gave me it had to be the night of the armadillos.”
Everyone began dancing again, leaving them no choice but to resume as well. Zeke was so stunned he stepped on Mimi’s foot. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Are you okay with this? I mean, I know we’re not kids anymore.”
His gaze locked with hers. “I’m more than okay with it.” He pulled her in close.
“Are you sure? Because you know what this means? We can’t run off to Hawaii in a few years. Your dream of selling coconuts is going to have to go on hold.”
“Then I’ll guess we’ll just have to stay here. After all, we are Whispering Bay’s number one power couple.” She laughed. He brushed a soft kiss against her ear, causing that all too familiar shiver down her spine. “I love you, Mimi,” he said quietly.
“I love you, too, Zeke.”
This was one of those moments in life, like the day her children were born, that she would remember forever. No more secrets. No more evasions. Surrounded by the love of their family, they were Mimi and Zeke again. Together against the world, and there wasn’t anything they couldn’t conquer.
Don't forget to check out all the books in the Whispering Bay Romance series!
The Best for Last: A Prequel Novella (Coming December 2015)
That Thing You Do (Book One)
Then He Kissed Me (Book Two)
That Man of Mine (Book Three)
Excerpt from THAT THING YOU DO
Allie Grant aimed her flashlight at the padlocked door to the Margaret Handy Senior Center. On the surface, the abandoned building appeared like any other ranch style structure built in the nineteen-fifties. Lots of brick, lots of windows, lots of deterioration. But this wasn’t just any crumbling building. According to her anonymous source, this building was haunted.
Unfortunately, it was also locked up tighter than the Spanx she’d worn on her last date. Which was so long ago that Allie could barely recall the details, the only memorable part of the evening being when she took off those Spanx. Alone. Right before crawling into bed with a Snickers bar and the worn out copy of Anne of Green Gables Buela had given Allie on her seventh birthday.
Allie stifled a yawn. She wouldn’t mind being in bed right now. It was nearly midnight and she’d been up since the crack of dawn. But she was a journalist in need of a story and a haunted building (as hokey as that sounded) was a potential goldmine in magazine advertising revenue. It was also the kind of story that could get a freelancer like herself a cover byline, but better yet, it was the sort of story that could land her a permanent job at Florida! magazine.
She raised her flashlight above the door illuminating a huge NO TRESPASSING sign. The way Allie saw it, she had two options.
The first involved going to her brother Zeke’s house, getting a decent night’s sleep, then waking up bright and early to seek out The Person In Charge. She’d make an impassioned (yet logical) plea on why she had to spend time inside the building, and The Person In Charge would comply, because, really, why wouldn’t they?
Under normal circumstances, that’s exactly what she’d do. She simply couldn’t help herself. Buela taught her early that good girls finish first. A thought that had remained stuck in her head the way her Cuban grandmother’s lumpy cheese grits used to stick to Allie’s ribs on a cold January morning. Although she’d been gone over twelve years now, Allie could still hear Buela’s voice telling her what to do. But right now that voice was being drowned out by yet another sign stating that the building was scheduled for demolition at nine a.m. tomorrow, giving Allie basically zip time to contact The Person In Charge.
Bringing her to option number two.
An option Buela would definitely not have approved of. Not to mention Zeke, who also happened to be Whispering Bay’s current chief-of-police. Nope. Allie was beyond certain Zeke wouldn’t take too kindly to his baby sister committing a B&E.
But was it really a crime to break into a deserted building scheduled for demolition in less than nine hours?
A shiver skated up her spine.
It wasn’t cold. Not really. It was October and still seasonably warm enough for the Florida panhandle, but the building was isolated from the rest of the ocean strip by at least half a mile. That on its own made it creepy enough, and then of course, there was that haunted thing.
Maybe she should channel the lion from The Wizard of Oz and begin chanting I don’t believe in ghosts…I don’t believe in ghosts…
But there was something to be said about Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and that whole pottery wheel scene.
Hopeless Hollywood romanticism? No doubt. It was lovely to believe that even after death there was something so powerful about the feelings we had while we were alive that they pulled us back to the people and places we once loved.
But all corniness aside, she was a journalist, and at the behest of Florida! magazine’s editor, Emma Frazier, Allie had just driven nearly six hours to investigate a story on what most people (herself included) would consider the flimsiest of leads. But if Emma wanted a ghost story, then that’s what Allie would give her. Impressing Emma Frazier was the key to landing her dream job, which happened to be Goal Number Three on Allie’s four part Life Plan. So despite the NO TRESPASSING sign, she wasn’t leaving until she got her story. A padlocked door was beyond her capabilities, but no building this old could be burglar proof.
