Book Title: Tea and Primroses
Author: Tess Thompson
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: February 2014
Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions
Tea and Primroses: Nothing is as it seemed in calm, quaint
Legley Bay.
Famous novelist, Constance (last name) lived a seemingly
straightforward – if private – and somewhat predictable life. Friends, beloved
daughter Sutton, a beautiful home, and all the success an author could wish
for. A perfect life….but was it?
When a hit and run accident suddenly takes her mother’s life,
Sutton finds hidden secrets with her heartbreak. Emotional walls she assumed
Constance had built to protect her privacy may have been to protect something –
or someone – else entirely. Family and friends return home for support,
including her own lost-love, Declan. He’s the first thing she craves to help
her cope with her loss and the questions she’s left with, but he’s also the
last person she wants to see. Will he be able to put down roots at last?
Can the loss of true love be the making of a life or is it
destined to be the undoing of everything? When money, power and love combine
across time, anything is possible.
Prologue
When the doorbell rang, Sutton
Mansfield at first thought it was part of the music on the radio. She hummed to
her favorite country station, set loud as she moved about her bungalow, sipping
hot, black tea and unpacking from her overseas trip. She was looking forward to
lunch with her mother, who had used her contacts in the publishing industry to
arrange the dream trip for Sutton’s thirtieth birthday. Sutton had studied for
two months with a master baker in Paris.
She pushed open her front window;
the familiar scent of the seaside entered the room. It was an ordinary morning
in Legley Bay: the sound of seagulls in the distance; the familiar view of her
street, lined with modest houses built mostly in the 1940s; and, just beyond,
the Pacific Ocean a paler blue than the August sky. Legley Bay was a
one-stoplight kind of town, the unwanted stepchild of the northern Oregon
coast. There were no tourist temptations here, no stretch of beach with famed
rocks like Cannon Beach or Manzanita or Arch Cape. No one opened shops or
restaurants to tempt wealthy city dwellers. It was nothing more than the
ordinary here, buildings sagging and faded from damp, salty air, and small
businesses struggling to survive against Wal-Mart and Costco thirty or so miles
in every direction but west.
Opening the window a little
farther, she took in a deep breath through her nose and felt grateful for the
familiar. Home is home. It was good to return. She turned away from the view
and back to her cozy bungalow, decorated with eclectic pieces she’d gathered
over the years, antiques and shabby chic, all very French countryside, like the
artisan and rustic baked goods she made: crusty breads, buttery pastries, soft
cookies.
She’d conquered the croissant
while in Paris. She smiled, thinking of it, but instantly sobered. There was
nowhere to debut her new skills but her own kitchen. She had no job. Six months
ago she’d left her assistant baker position at a well-known bakery in Portland,
where she’d apprenticed for the better part of five years, to move home to
Legley Bay. It was her dream to open her own shop, but so far the courage to do
so had been as elusive as the perfect croissant.
The sound of the doorbell came
again. Yes, it was the door, not a note in the music. Who could it be? No one
but her mother knew she was back in town. She turned down the radio; her mobile
phone was buzzing—Roger. She tossed the phone on the couch; it bounced on a
cushion and fell onto the soft rug. Voicemail. Just go to voicemail,
she thought. I need time to think. Not yet. She
needed to speak with her mother first. Her mother would help her sort it through.
Mom, I’m having doubts about the wedding. That’s all she
would need to say. Then they would hash it out over a glass of wine or a walk
on the beach. Is it just that I’m afraid or do I not love him enough?
Her mother would know the answer.
The doorbell rang again just as
she reached for the doorknob. Opening it, she saw Tim Ball, the town’s Chief of
Police. He was the same age as her mother, in his mid-to-late fifties, and his
lined face was still handsome, hinting at the town’s football star he once was.
But today his skin was gray and his features pinched. She backed away from the
door, as if he were going to hurt her. What was the
matter?
“Sutton, can I come
in?”
She nodded, backing into the
room. Don’t say it.
He guided her toward the couch.
“Please sit, sweetheart.”
She did so, clasping her hands
together on her lap. “Is it my mom?”
“I’m so sorry.” He stopped; his
eyes reddened. “She was killed this morning.”
Book Title: Blue Midnight
Author: Tess Thompson
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: July 2014
Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions
“If you change your mind, here’s this.” Finn Lanigan kissed a
young Blythe Heywood one last time under an Idaho star-scattered sky. Then she
left, returning to her fiancé and the wedding she’d committed to. It was the
last kiss that ever weakened her knees, the last sky she noticed for over a
dozen years.
Thirteen years later, newly divorced, she finds the forgotten
slip of paper in the back of drawer.
Finn Lanigan - 208-555-2004
She’d tossed it years before, hadn’t she? Surely she had, in
one of the moments that first year of marriage when her loyalty was resolute.
Apparently not. Here it lived. Her temptation. Her road not taken.
Facing three weeks without her young daughters, she sets out to
find the man she left behind so long ago. With only the name of the small town
where he once lived, Peregrine, Idaho, and the memory of their last kiss under
a starry sky, she heads across the Pacific Northwest in search of him.
What she finds in the foothills of Blue Mountain and the tiny
town of Peregrine changes her life forever. But it is her destiny and destinies
cannot be denied.
The first book of the Lanigan Clan Collection, laced with
Thompson’s complex and diverse characters, “Blue Midnight” is a mature love
story about second chances, family and the complexities of trust and
vulnerability after betrayal."
Chapter
1
I found it at the very back of my
bedside table drawer, next to a forgotten bottle of nail polish. I’d forgotten
to empty the drawers in preparation for the movers that morning and was doing
so now, shoving most of the neglected or forsaken contents into trash bags. But
this scrap of paper, it stopped me. Shaped like a duck’s beak and wedged
between the bottom of the drawer and the back panel, with just its tip exposed,
it wasn’t enough, really, to indicate something of any significance. But I
knew. I knew in an instant. I stood motionless, taking in every jagged detail.
Then, I tugged; it came loose easily. This small slip of paper with a man’s
name and number scrawled in blue ink seemed benign enough. Finn
Lanigan 208-555-2004.
And yet, the pulse at my neck quickened. Heat traveled from my center to every
limb. I sank on molten legs to the stripped mattress. I held this scrap of
paper, torn from a bar receipt, between damp fingers and stared at it like the
ghost it was.
I’d tossed it years before,
hadn’t I? Surely I had, in one of my moments that first year of marriage when
my loyalty was resolute. Hadn’t I disposed of it when I embraced my choice?
Apparently not. Here it lived. My temptation. My road not taken.
My daughters’ voices floated up
the winding staircase from where they chased one another like wanton puppies in
the now nearly empty 4,500 square feet of custom floors, intricate finish work,
and marble countertops. I went to the window that faced the street and looked
out onto our neighborhood park, empty this morning of children. Today was the
first day of summer vacation and children and their mothers were sleeping late.
How many hours of my life had I spent in that park, pushing my babies in
swings, chasing after them as toddlers, and, when they were old enough to climb
the play structures by themselves, chatting with other mothers about this
milestone or that? The hours could not be calculated, of course, nor the wages
lost by choosing to stay at home with my children instead of continuing my
career.
The windows were open to let the
fresh June air cleanse away all remnants of the scents of my family before the
new owners claimed it with their own smells. Outside, the movers shouted to one
another as they loaded the family room couch into the moving truck. My neighbor
from two doors down walked by the truck, her eyes averted. Her manicured hands
grasped the leash of her Labradoodle. She couldn’t look. It was easier to
pretend the collective nightmare for almost every woman in our affluent Seattle
neighborhood had not happened to someone in their circle, someone with whom
they exercised, had dinner parties, and volunteered at private school. Someone
they liked. A stay-at-home mom, almost forty-five, left by her husband for
another woman and forced to leave her beautiful home and sought-after
neighborhood. I was everyone’s worst-case scenario.
My eyes went back to the slip of
paper in my hand.
If you change your mind,
here’s this. Then he’d kissed me one last time under an Idaho
star-scattered sky larger than any other. After the kiss I wished would last
forever ended, as all good things must, I turned away, back to the life I’d
agreed to, the wedding I’d committed to. It was the last kiss that ever
weakened my knees, the last sky I noticed for thirteen years.
Now, Clementine, my
seven-year-old, pounded up the stairs, followed by the tip-tap of her older
sister Lola in her flip-flops. I shoved the slip of paper in the pocket of my
shorts. I couldn’t know then why I didn’t just toss it in the garbage like I
had so many memories and possessions in the weeks preceding. I know now. It was
my destiny, and destinies cannot be denied.
Tess Thompson is a novelist and playwright with a BFA in Drama
from the University of Southern California. In 2011 she released her first
novel, Riversong, which subsequently became a best seller.
Like her main character in the Legley Bay collection, Tess is
from a small town in Oregon. She currently lives in a suburb of Seattle,
Washington with her two young daughters, Emerson and Ella, and their puppy
Patches. She is inspired daily by the view of the Cascade Mountains from her
home office window.
Tess is working on her next novel and regularly blogs about her
journey as a mother, author and friend at www.tesswrites.com.
Tea and Primroses
Blue
Midnight
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