Spring is in the air...

 I was looking for a scene with an April theme, and I  found one here in the opening chapter of A Taste of Honey--a book I always associate with May. Go figure. 

A Taste of Honey

Oberon, Book Four 

by PG Forte 

Paranormal Romance/Romantic Suspense 

This title is currently out of print. However, I'm currently in the process of re-booting the entire series. Join my FB group for updates: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCronesNest and get a FREE novella (details below).

BLURB: 

For Lucy Greco Cavanaugh, life is a dream come true. She has it all. The perfect family. The perfect husband. The perfect marriage. What more could she wish for? Other than the chance to do it all again. To experience once more the agony and ecstasy of falling in love with the man of her dreams. To recapture the joy and uncertainty that comes with starting over.

​ As far as Dan Cavanaugh is concerned, his life has become a nightmare. His storybook marriage is on the line when Deirdre Shelton-Cooper, the runaway daughter of a former girlfriend arrives in Oberon intent on proving Dan is her father. Even though he's convinced the girl's claims are false, Dan decides his only chance to keep from losing everything lies in keeping her very existence a secret from his wife and family.

But, sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you—and those you love. When Deirdre, masquerading as a surfer girl named Monica, accidentally hooks up with their son, Seth, Lucy and Dan are left to wonder: has their perfect, fairy-tale romance, turned into a classic Greek tragedy?

Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for. And it's more than you'd ever dreamed.

EXCERPT:

The present. Mid April. 

In a lot of ways, Oberon is typical of any one of several small towns to be found along California’s Central Coast. Clinging to sheer, corrugated green cliffs above a windswept strand of pale, golden sand, it lacks a little of the endless sunshine boasted by its neighbors to the south, enjoying instead a milder, more temperate climate and, for much of the year, a lot of fog.

The area surrounding the town lacks one other very important California mainstay as well: the plethora of freeways that grace most of the rest of state are largely absent here. Bounded on the west by the broad, brilliant blue crescent of San Bartolo Bay, and to the east by the majestic bulk of Mt. Totawka, the ‘sacred mountain’ of local lore, Oberon is virtually isolated. Set amid a tangled network of canyons and creeks, undeveloped wilderness and—where the landscape and the environment have cooperated—acres of agricultural fields, it’s a hard place to get to. It can be an even harder place to leave behind.

But if Oberon was ever the type of funky beach town where teenaged girls with sun bleached hair, driving station wagons with surfboards tied to the roof was a common sight, it certainly is not that way anymore. So when Lucy Greco-Cavanaugh did happen to spy one, rolling down Main Street one sunny morning late in April, followed only a few minutes later, by a longhaired young man in a VW convertible rabbit, also with surfboard, she knew something strange was up. 

 Perhaps someone was making a movie, she reasoned. Or maybe—and being a lifetime resident of Oberon this was of course the theory she favored—a sudden tear in the fabric of space-time had inadvertently allowed her to take a nostalgic glimpse back in time to the California-dreamin’ fantasies of an earlier age.

Not coincidentally, this time displacement theory was one that she found herself applying to more and more events of late. She was thirty-seven years old, and she had memories that spanned most of those years, albeit, with varying amounts of clarity. But somehow, lately, it was almost as if all those memories didn’t quite add up the way they should. 

 For several months now, she had been aware of a vague sense of dissatisfaction growing within her, coupled with a worrisome preoccupation with the past. As if some invisible anchor line that had once kept her mind tethered in the present had been cut. No matter how hard she tried to stay focused, her mind kept drifting back to places it had already been.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that while everyone around her seemed suddenly immersed in fresh new lives and new loves, she’d had to content herself with more of the same old, same old. Not that there was any part of her life that she wanted to change, she reminded herself sternly. She took a moment to rap her knuckles against the side of one of the wooden half barrels that served as planters on the terrace of the tea shop where she and her two best friends were having breakfast. The same old everything she had was pretty damn great.

She had two wonderful kids, satisfying work, a comfortable house, and she’d been happily married to the love of her life for the past sixteen and a half years. It was just that, after all those years, everything seemed to have gotten the slightest bit stale. She couldn’t help but remember how things used to be—

“Okay, Lucy,” Marsha snapped, “What’s wrong? You’ve been sitting here sighing to yourself for the past half-hour. You’re driving me nuts.”

Lucy frowned as she reached across the table for the pot of lavender honey. “Nothing’s wrong,” she answered. She could feel both Marsha and Scout eyeing her curiously as she occupied herself for several minutes deliberately drizzling the honey over the buttered French baguette on her plate, but she refused to return their gazes. “And anyway, I was not sighing.”

“You were sighing,” Marsha insisted. “Wasn’t she sighing, Scout?”

Lucy looked up impatiently as Scout turned weary hazel eyes in her direction. “What can I say, Lucy? It sounded like sighing to me, too.” Scout shrugged, absently stroking her baby’s head. Three-week-old Cole, who was turning out to be one of those preternaturally alert infants who have to be held all the time, had finally fallen asleep at her breast.

“Well, you’re wrong. Both of you.” Lucy took a big bite of bread and honey, and stared defiantly at her friends: Marsha with her new boyfriend, and Scout with both a new husband and a new baby. There was no way she was ever going to discuss what was bothering her with either of them.

She couldn’t believe that, with everything she had to be grateful for, she could still be so petty. She couldn’t believe that she would actually begrudge her two best friends a little happiness. But the plain fact of the matter was that she was so jealous of both of them, it was a wonder she wasn’t as green as an avocado. She saw the way Sam acted around Marsha, the way Nick looked at Scout, and she knew that once, she and Dan had been that way, too. Somewhere along the way it seemed they had lost that.

And she wanted it back. Oh, how she wanted it back! But, after all these years— she wasn’t sure that was even possible.

You couldn’t recreate newness could you? You couldn’t expect to discover anything too different about the same old person you’d been regularly and intimately exploring for almost two decades. And how could anyone ever hope to recapture the exquisite torture of doubt and uncertainty that so often accompanied the first stages of love? She wasn’t even sure she wanted to--except when she remembered the way the agony transformed into ecstasy…

Be careful what you wish for, a soft voice seemed to whisper in her head. She shivered as a gust of wind swept across the terrace setting the wind chimes to tinkling in the trees around them. Lavender spikes swayed on their long stems and the tiny pink Cecile Brunner roses that covered the arbor over their heads shed a few more petals onto the table. Cole whimpered slightly. Lucy watched as Scout wrapped his blanket more snugly around her baby and Marsha picked the petals out of her teacup.

Such Fleeting Pleasures
An Oberon Prequel Novella, 0.5
by PG Forte
Paranormal Romance

BLURB:

Love wasn't always strawberries and cream for Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh...or was it? In this Oberon prequel, we travel back in time to see how it all began. 

Most of the material in this prequel novella (which is set some eighteen years before the series begins) also appears as flashback scenes in A Taste of Honey. But you can download it (and read it NOW) for FREE when you join my Facebook group: The Crone's Nest

Enter My New Giveaway!

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As I mentioned in my last post. In the Dark has been serialized by KISS and is now available on the app! And thanks to the lovely people at KISS I have 50 coins to give away (each) to four lucky winners. 

KISS is a new and exciting way to experience Romance stories of all genres. Enjoy serialized quality content from NYT and USA Today bestselling authors, available right from your phone.

KISS has hundreds of titles and authors to choose from, including new and exclusive content from some of your favorite voices!

Best of all, you can choose just how much to read with our pay-as-you-go format!

Where can I download it? 

IOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kiss-read-write-romance/id1508942129

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stardust.kissreader&hl=en_US&gl=US

My giveaway will run until April 25th. Each "task" gains you another point and some can be done every day (if you're the competitive type).

Good luck and happy reading!

Such Fleeting Pleasures

 

Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh have one of the hottest marriages in Oberon. But life wasn't always strawberries and cream for these lovers. Or was it? In this Oberon prequel, we travel back in time to see exactly how their story begins... ​

 Such Fleeting Pleasures, the OBERON prequel novella, is currently available ONLY as a FREE DOWNLOAD when you join my Facebook group: The Crone's Nest.

 Excerpt: 

Eighteen years ago… ​

 Despite the brilliantly gold, late afternoon sunlight that filtered in through the frosted windows, Dan Cavanaugh was aware of a growing sense of dejection as he ambled through the big, empty greenhouse. There was a heaviness in his chest that even the familiar scents of clean soil and chlorophyll could not dispel. Five years he’d stayed away from home, and still, after all that time, “Nothing’s changed.” ​

 He had practically grown up here in his family’s Nursery. As a child, the surrounding fields had been his playground; an entire world where he was king of all he surveyed. As a teenager, he’d worked weekends and summers here until he could no longer stand either the sight or the smells, nor endure for even one more minute the constant bickering with his father over every last little detail of the running of the place. ​

 When he left Oberon for college, he vowed he’d never step foot in this place again, yet here he was; twenty-three years old, and about to temporarily take over as nursery manager while his parents went off on a long-anticipated tour of Europe. ​

He’d hoped that spending the summer here would give him the chance to figure a few things out. But five minutes had already been long enough for him to make a start. First of all, he now knew that there was no way he could spend the rest of his life locked away in some office or classroom. He needed to work with his hands again. He needed to spend a good part of each day outdoors. And he needed the connection to the earth with which he’d grown up. He’d missed all of that these last five years—more than he’d even imagined. ​

 Unfortunately, his second revelation in about as many minutes, was that he could never be truly happy working for somebody else. So, unless things around here had changed enough for him to handle coming back on a permanent basis, then he very much feared that he was effectively out of options where his future was concerned. 

 So far, at least in that regard, everything seemed all too depressingly the same. ​

 “What are you doing here?” An unfamiliar female voice startled Dan out of his reverie. He almost jumped in surprise. He’d thought he was alone. Damn it, he should have been alone, given that he’d purposely waited for the end of the day, until the business was closed and he was certain everyone had gone home, before he drove out here, just so he could avoid running into anyone else. ​ By rights, neither one of us should be here now, he thought, as he spun around to confront the young woman who was regarding him with a cool self-assurance that both amused and intrigued him. She appeared to be about his age, or maybe a few years his junior, and to look at her standing there, hands planted firmly on her very attractive hips, anyone would have supposed that she owned the place and that he was the interloper. He suppressed a smile at her arrogance. What am I doing here? Well, he could ask her the same question, couldn’t he? ​

 “I said, what are you doing here?” she repeated impatiently, and he did smile, then. Perhaps there had been a few changes here, after all.

 ​“Oh, I was just taking a look around.” He shrugged, and took a good, long look at her too, while he was at it. Cute. He felt his smile widen in appreciation. Very cute. Very definitely cute. Even with annoyance flashing in the depths of her chocolate brown eyes, and the damp tendrils of dark hair that clung to her neck. ​

 Her face was flushed with heat, a reaction to the temperatures here in the greenhouse, no doubt, although he suspected that everything about her would still be screaming heat at him, even if they were both blue with cold and standing in an igloo. ​

 Just the same, he couldn’t help but feel fervently grateful for the sultry conditions around them, if that was what was responsible for the abbreviated outfit she wore. Her bare shoulders rose out of a yellow halter top that seemed barely big enough to contain her full, round breasts, and which brilliantly accentuated the narrowness of her waist. Her cut-off jeans had been slit high enough on the sides to expose an extremely gratifying amount of firm, tanned thigh. So, okay, maybe the scuffed work boots didn’t do all that much for him, but, he decided, as his glance slid slowly back up the bronze expanse of bare leg, he could easily overlook a little thing like that. ​

 “Well, I’d say you’ve looked long enough,” she remarked dryly when his eyes finally returned to her face. “So now you can go.” ​

 She appeared neither discomfited by his blatant inspection, nor overly impressed by either his presence or by what he’d come to believe was his most charming smile. Dan felt somewhat aggrieved. He liked women, and they generally liked him, too. He wasn’t used to being so summarily dismissed. Nor did he especially enjoy being ordered out of his own nursery. ​

 He felt his own stubborn temper flare. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he answered, returning her stare coolly. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the tables. “I like it here. I think I’ll stay for a while.” ​

 “Think again,” she snapped, and her voice took on an even more steel-like tone. “Perhaps you’re not clear on the concept, but we happen to be closed right now.” ​

 He studied her curiously. “I know that. So why are you still here?” 

 “That’s none of your business.” ​

 A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Actually, it is, you know.” ​

 “Oh, really? How’s that?” For a split second he thought her assurance seemed to waver, but annoyance quickly reasserted itself, and she waved away the explanations he’d been about to make. “No. Never mind. I don’t care. I just want you out of here. Now.” ​

 Dan stared at her for a moment in silence. She was really serious about throwing him out, he realized, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how she expected to achieve her goal without his active cooperation. “So, you’re gonna make me leave?” he asked, just to make sure he was getting things straight. ​

 “Damn right I am,” she replied, so supremely confident that Dan was almost overwhelmed by the desire to rattle her chain a little. As bad an idea as he’d ever had, since they’d probably end up having to work together all summer; but still...ooh...awfully hard to resist.

 ​“Don’t you even want to know who I am?” he asked, ignoring the temptation as best he could and resolving to give her one final chance to back down. But she was having none of it. 

 “Seriously? I don’t care who you are.” ​

 It was mostly the fact that he believed her; and was unreasonably annoyed by her obvious disinterest in him, that caused his resolve to evaporate like water dropped on a hot skillet. He shrugged. “So fine, then. Make me.” ​

 Instantly, dark brows snapped together in a fierce scowl. He watched as she raised herself to her full height of maybe five-four, and glared imperiously at him down the length of her nose. “Excuse me?” she uttered in scathing tones that he found unexpectedly intriguing. 

He found himself smiling again, in spite of himself. ​ “Yeah, that’s right. You heard me,” he said, standing up then also, and glinting down at her. He towered over her by almost a foot, and probably outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, but she still wouldn’t budge; and he still couldn’t decide how he felt about  that—amused, impressed or just really, really pissed. “C’mon, babe. Give it your best shot. Make me leave. That is, if you think you can.”

 ​“Look, you,” she snarled. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are—” ​

 “The name’s Cavanaugh. Just like the nursery.”

 ​“—or what you think you’re doing here, but I want you out of my greenhouse. And I want you out now!” ​

 Dan choked back a laugh. “Oh, it’s your greenhouse? Well, that’s interesting. You know why? ‘Cause I always thought of it as mine.”