Christmas Comes To Dickens Anthology Featuring Liz Flahery!

 

Christmas Comes To Dickens!

Featured Story: Wisdom of the Heart

Featured Author: Liz Flaherty HTML Code for Trailer:

Synopsis:

They held each other’s hearts twenty years before as teenagers, but life intervened. Now they’re both back in Dickens, finding new friendship in an old place. Fee’s daughter and Jed’s stepsons are mostly grown, so they’re both in good emotional places.

But Fee wants to stay in Dickens forever, running Silver Threads and Golden Needles, her quilt shop, and Jed wants to stay on the road and in the air as a photojournalist. Can they find a way to meet in the middle?

~Try an Excerpt!~

“Jed?”

His head swung, the silky light brown hair still shaggy, still straight. How she’d envied him that hair. His eyes, the same blue as an afternoon storm cloud, met hers. “Fiadh.”

Only he and her mother had called her by her full name, and she still loved the way the Fee-ya came off his tongue. “You’re here,” she said. Nothing like stating the obvious. She shook her head at her own inanity and stepped out from behind the table. “I’m so glad to see you.”

He met her between the flannel and the fleece, and there was no question that they would hug each other. He had stolen her heart and then broken it all those years ago, but he’d also uncovered courage in her she hadn’t thought she possessed. She’d understood when and why he’d left. The secret had kept her from looking for him later, from seeking a new beginning from the place they had stopped. 

“You look wonderful.” The squint lines she’d always told him he’d get from looking through viewfinders had materialized, but he wore them well. He was broader than he was as a kid, but still built like the basketball player he’d been. She’d kept up with him, buying the travel books and coffee table books he contributed to or written and copies of magazines that featured his photography. She’d even gone to a book-signing once, for The Other Side, his book on bridges, but had left when he entered the room with his wife on his arm.

She’d known he married, and even hoped for a chance to meet his wife, but when the time came, she couldn’t do it. Her relationship with Jed Healy was something so personal and private she couldn’t share it with anyone. If there was a part of her that mourned the fact that he’d fallen in love with someone else, she chose not to acknowledge it. 

“So do you.” He held her hands, spreading her arms so he could look at her. He didn’t seem to notice the silver threading through her red hair, the waistline that seemed to be disappearing no matter what she did to retain it. What he did notice, though, didn’t surprise her at all. 

When he touched the tea stain near her collarbone, the texture of his fingers warmed her right through the fabric of her green cotton sweater. “I’m glad to see not everything has changed,” he said, laughter crinkling the lines around his eyes. “You still enjoy what you’re drinking.” 

“Fully,” she said solemnly. “I don’t have a single article of clothing that hasn’t enjoyed it with me.” She slapped lightly at his fingers, then held them in hers. “It’s so good to see you. Are you staying out at the camp over the holidays? Is your family coming?”

His smile slipped a little. “I’m staying at the camp, but no one’s coming. Can we have dinner while I’m here, though, and catch up?”

“Of course. I’ll even cook if you can get your courage up, Healy.”

“Count on it.”

He still held her hand…or she held his. She couldn’t have said which. And his smile…she loved that smile as much as she had a lifetime ago. She wondered where his wife was, if they had children—

“Mom?” Ailey’s feet on the stairs at the back of the shop announced her entrance into the room. “Mrs. Lindstrom’s quilt is done, but it’s still on the quilter. I’m meeting the girls for tacos at Los Tres Caminos, okay? I won’t be home late.”

“Sure.” Fee stretched her free hand toward her daughter. “I want you to meet Jed Healy, a real blast from the past you never knew I had. Jed, this is my daughter Ailey.”

~Meet Liz!~ 

Liz Flaherty—Stories from the Heart—is a USA Today bestselling contemporary author. Retired from the post office, she spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and doing whatever else she wants to.

She and her husband Duane live in the old farmhouse in North Central Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really…40-some years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening. It would require removing old baseball trophies from the attic and dusting the pictures of the Magnificent Seven, their grandchildren. (The dusting’s not happening, either—just saying…)

 A $30 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC will be gifted to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.a Rafflecopter giveaway