Thankfully in Love
Four bestselling authors!
Four Thanksgiving-themed happily-ever-afters!
By Anna J. Stewart: There's no place like home, especially during Thanksgiving. After spending ten years as an officer and analyst with a special division in a federal cyber-investigation, Tripp Atsila is on the brink of burnout. He returns home and meets Parker Rutledge, who changed her name and moved to a small town hoping to leave the damage her ex-husband caused behind. Now someone's found her; someone who wants to make her pay for her ex-husband's crimes. Can she trust Tripp? Can she trust anyone?
By Kayla Perrin: Miranda Cox isn’t looking forward to heading home for Thanksgiving. She’d raved to everyone that Matthew was the one; now she has yet another failed relationship under her belt. Despite working as a translator in Ottawa, and loving traveling abroad, she’s thirty-four and still single. Little does she know that a chance encounter at Union Station in Toronto with her childhood friend, Taz Morrison, will lead to a very special holiday. Is it finally their time?
By Melinda Curtis: Chef Drew Barnett has been hired to create the perfect Thanksgiving for a potential restaurant investor and is forced to work in the client’s guesthouse kitchen due to a power outage in the main house. Jilted bride and food critic Claire Rothchild is pet-sitting a friend’s St. Bernard in the same guesthouse. Drew doesn’t know what to make of a food critic in his kitchen, just as Claire doesn’t know how to stop interfering with his dishes and passing tidbits to a mooching pooch. Is this a recipe for a Dog-Gone Holiday? Or for love?
By Cari Lynn Webb: Born with a degenerative eye disease, photographer Kelsey Thomas knows two things: she will be blind within five years and her family wants to see her married and settled first. Then Kelsey's boyfriend breaks up with her one week before she planned to introduce him to her family at her grandmother's island commitment ceremony. At the resort bar, she meets Dr. Noah Lawson. He spends his life inside his lab developing cutting-edge techniques to slow the progression of vision loss. He’s been offered funding with strings—save the eyesight of a relative of a wealthy investor—but he’s reluctant to agree. Noah is smitten by Kelsey—so much so that he agrees to be her fake wedding date for the Thanksgiving holidays. Too late, he realizes her connection to his potential investor. Is this a set-up? Or fate?
Except from Dog-Gone Holiday:
Thanksgiving used to be one of food critic and lifestyle blogger Claire Rothchild’s favorite holidays.
Who didn’t like turkey, gravy-soaked stuffing, and pie? Who didn’t enjoy loading their plate with food without judgment? There were no presents to buy and wrap. No carols to sing. And for Claire, there was no column to write, no subtleties to detect, no presentation to critique. It was just sit your hiney down and try everything—even have seconds!
Claire loved Thanksgiving so much that she’d planned to get married on that day.
And then the dish ran away with the spoon.
In this case, the dish was her bridesmaid Teri, and the spoon was her fiancé Stewart.
Nearly a year later, Claire still had six cases of California Cabernet she was working her way through, a toddler she was battling custody for with Stewart, and a newly-developed aversion to Thanksgiving. This turkey day, she planned to hide out at the coastal guest house of her married kid sister, Mary Jane Plutarch. No turkey, no gravy-soaked stuffing, no pie, and certainly no Stewart. She’d told Mary Jane she and Olly weren’t going to be part of the fancy feast her brother-in-law was throwing. They’d be fine with fast food burgers; Olly with his glass of milk and Claire with a glass of Cabernet.
Knowing her sister, Claire was going to have to fight for her right not to party. Mary Jane was the family extrovert.
“Mommy, can I swim at Auntie M.J.’s?” Olly sat in his car seat behind her, sporting a black felt pirate hat and clutching his plastic pirate sword. His accessories and his love of all things pirate were a result of a trip to Disneyland last month with Stewart for his birthday.
“You can swim,” she told him. Olly was a four-year-old fish in the water, just like his surfing champion father. “But it might be too cold.”
“Daddy says pirates are never cold in the water.”
Daddy says…
Claire gritted her teeth, silently ruing the fact that the sun was out over San Diego today after an extremely wet and gloomy November. It didn’t matter to Olly that the wind coming off the Pacific Ocean was gusty and cold this time of year. Stewart was fond of saying, “If the sun’s out, the water’s fine.” And if his father said something, Olly took it as the gospel, even if it challenged his toddler balance and made his lips turn blue.
Mere blocks from Mary Jane’s Del Mar home, Claire drove slowly past a construction crew working on placing a large pipe in a section of street in front of an undeveloped plot of land. Two men consulted what looked like blueprints as they faced the seemingly impossible-to-build-on slope. By summer, Mary Jane would have another neighbor.
“Can I, Mommy?” Olly was still focused on his swim.
“We’ll see how cold and windy it is when we get there.”
“Pirate sails need wind, Mommy. And I can wear a coat.”
“In the pool?” Claire’s laughter lifted her spirits.
Maybe they would go swimming. Maybe they’d thumb their noses at Thanksgiving and spend the week in the pool. Maybe she’d forget she had a lifechanging decision to make by Black Monday. Maybe everyone would forget—Stewart, the family law judge, her lawyer….
Claire turned her thoughts away from legalities as she turned into Mary Jane’s gated driveway and entered the security code. With the windows down, the brisk coastal wind whipped in, bringing the tang of the sea and the sound of waves crashing on the cliffs far below. She rubbed her bare arms.
“I’m not cold,” Olly said with the kind of thumb-your-nose bravery that Claire used to have.
The iron gates opened on silent hinges, because mansions on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean, especially those owned by millionaire entrepreneur Luke Plutarch, didn’t have creaky gates. She eased her SUV up the driveway, taking in the majesty of the two-story Spanish Colonial Revival looming ahead. Clean, white stuccoed walls. Grand arches. Red terra cotta tile. It wasn’t much different from the home she’d grown up in, but it was a big difference from her small condo miles inland and she couldn’t stop a small pang of envy.
Before that small pang turned into an ache, Mary Jane came out the front door to greet them, flanked by a huge Saint Bernard. The dog was all white except for a brown mask over his eyes and ears. Compared to her short, petite sister, who counted every carb that passed her lips—even on Thanksgiving—the dog was the size of a small pony. She’d have to discourage Olly from trying to ride him.
Claire parked near the five-car garage and got out. Almost immediately, the wind tugged at her ponytail and she was given the smell test by the drooling Saint Bernard, which continued as she opened the SUV’s back door. “When did you get a dog?”
Said canine pushed his way beneath Claire’s arms as she ducked inside the back seat to release Olly. He stretched and sniffed and generally got in the way.
“Are we in the North Pole?” Olly asked in awe as Claire lifted him out. “That’s a polar bear.” The dog licked Olly’s face clean, giving her son a fit of giggles. “Can I keep him? He’ll make a good pirate.”
The Story Behind the Story
This anthology collection is the first entry by Arc Manor into publishing romance. I’m thrilled to be part of this endeavor.
Fans of mine may recognize Snowflake. His owner is in the military and when he’s deployed, Snowflake stays with his friends. Along with Snowy’s kibble, the pet-sitter receives a tin of ginger-type cookies. These dog treats look like people cookies, but if you happen to eat one…well, you might just hear what Snowflake is thinking.
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Other titles in the Snowy series:
Dog-Gone Christmas
Once Upon a New Year’s Eve
