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Overview
Avery Baldwin is going back to Carolina . . . to the small mountain range called Crowfoot Ridge where she spent the summers of her youth. This time, though, the trip isn't just in her mind, as it has often been in the twenty years of a childless marriage grown cold. Now Avery is finally ready to return to the magical place where she first discovered friendship and love.During that golden time, Avery befriended Sylva Marshall and her older brother, Mars, little suspecting that those summers would shape her future and haunt her hopes of happiness. Back at Crowfoot Ridge she finds these old friends and confronts the tragic, brutal act that ended their days of innocence and shattered their precious bond.
While Avery may not find what she hopes or expects, she'll soon discover that the magic of Crowfoot Ridge burns strong, for this special place just might help her find her way again--and her one true love.
Hesitation
Avery drove by the shop after dinner. His shop, a converted depot. The sign said Tars Marshall, Woodrighm. Her hand trembled on the steering wheel. Her breath caught in her throat. Twenty-one years since she'd seen him. She'd spent all those years looking for life, while Mars had gone on and lived it. Avery wanted to stop, but couldn't. She would sleep. Prepare herself. Avery fought for a balance between caution and harebrained recklessness. She would see Mars tomorrow.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062018427 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 09/07/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 343 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Part One
Ken Kessler stood alert and prepared at the podium, ready to deliver the future. His infantry assembled in the company's new conference center. The sales team chatted in the aisle, dressed for business, not Florida's subtropical heat. Planners, accountants, and the others had taken their seats. He tapped a pointer on the lectern and waited for everyone to settle down.
"Friends and colleagues." He leaned into the mike and flashed his quick smile.
"Welcome to the 1985 Kessler Properties annual meeting. You all have made this a banner year for us, and I want to thank you." He began the applause. When it subsided, he continued, "Some exciting projects are in the planning stages. To start with, we are advertising lots in Pelican Estates. Gina, the phase-two map, please." He waited while his assistant displayed the plan. "We expect to revitalize the project, kick it in the ass, as they say. My wife handles sales there, so contact Avery if you have any questions or need any brochures." He gestured toward her.
Avery, sitting at the far end of the second row, waved an acknowledgment. The last place she wanted to be was trapped for two hours on a plastic chair listening to her husband. She imagined him naked at the podium, a ploy to diminish his stature.
"The Tequesta project is under way," Ken said as Gina slipped the development map into position. "The entrance has been changed because the county had a problem with traffic congestion around a school." He indicated the change with the pointer.
Ken's voice had the sound of a late-night disc jockey, all optimism drenched with seduction. And so casual in his expensive tweedjacket. Avery tuned him out; she'd heard it all before. The company thought they owned the Treasure Coast and conducted their slash-and-burn conspiracy as if they were irreproachable. The world-famous diver Mel Fisher searched offshore for the wrecks of Spanish galleons with treasure spilled across the ocean floor, while Kessler Properties found their treasure onshore, leaving the land wrecked. Avery shared the bounty and the blame.
Gina had the prodigious task of changing the maps on the easels. She'd been hired to answer phones not so long ago. Advanced fast, from receptionist to secretary, to office manager, and now assistant to the double-tanned vice president, first from golf and then from sailing. She positioned a new schematic plan, and Ken began to talk about it. With her brooding Latin eyes and enough black hair for two people, she was Avery's opposite. And Gina was ambitious.
During the seventies, Ken and Avery had been drenched with ambition, hope, and responsibility. His ambition was alive still, while Avery was left with the responsibility and a growing sense of catastrophe.
She wished she'd grabbed a glass of water before the meeting started. She heard the words "deer pond" and began to listen.
". . . exciting project," Ken was saying. "Deer Pond Garill be an exclusive community with a security entrance. A guard house here," tap. "As you can see, we are leaving park land, drainage ponds, wooded areas," tap, tap, tap, "here, here, and here."
"Deer pond?" Avery asked. "Excuse me for interrupting, but there aren't any deer left in this part of Florida."
"Statues of deer, Avery, not real deer." Everyone laughed.
"Life-sized statues will be scattered around in the green areas and especially at the various drainage ponds. We still have deer in Florida, don't we?""Price range, Ken?" someone asked from the back.
Everyone was still chuckling.
"Quarter mil and up." Ken circled the map with his pointer indicating the boundary fencing.
Avery couldn't remember the last deer she'd seen in this overpopulated region, and tried to think when she'd ever seen wild deer. On one of her family's vacations to North Carolina, a doe, a buck, and a little spotted fawn had come to drink from the pond at Sylva's house. She and Sylva were both seven years old, and it was the first time she'd ever been allowed to spend the night with Sylva. Hard to believe thirty years had passed. She chased the thought away by running her locket along its chain.
The caterers were brewing coffee at the back of the room. The aroma of French roast blended with perfume, aftershave, and the formaldehyde of new carpet. Avery took a glass of white wine after the meeting and nibbled a Swedish flatbread spread with crab-laced cream cheese. She hung back, away from the giddy award winners, away from the rabble of doting accomplices around Ken. He was in his element at these functions. His casual confidence, the company's success, their gilded future, attracted people to him.
"Avery, hi. Where have you been hiding?" Two prim-figured women from accounting joined her.
"Ladies, how's it going?"
"Pretty darn good for Gina, if you ask me," one said. "I heard she's taking over Golden Sands."
"Not Golden Sands." The other snapped her fingers as if trying to come up with a name. "It's those new condos over on Jensen Beach."
"Taking over?" Avery asked. "As property manager?"
"Interesting, isn't it?" The woman's eyes were elusive behind bifocals. "Funny it wasn't announced today."
Avery nodded and felt ambushed by innuendo.
"We just thought you'd like to know. Ken has mapped out a grand year for 1985. He's terrific, isn't he?"
"Yes, terrific. What would I do without him?"
The two women looked puzzled; they waved and moved back into the crowd of eager employees.
Avery wormed her way through the big-boned contractors and divorced realtors, speaking to people she hadn't seen in a while, nodding to others.
"There you are," Ken said.
"I don't mean to intrude. I see you're busy."
"Not at all," he said to the others. "Avery's done a great job with Pelican Estates."