Jar of Dreams

by Liz Flaherty

Overview

For as long as she can remember, Lucy Dolan has been jotting down her hopes on slips of paper and saving them in a pickle jar—her jar of dreams. It was the first thing she saved when the beloved family diner went up in flames, and it's safely buckled in her beat-up minivan when she lands in Taft, Indiana, to start over. She rents a room and goes into business with her landlady, but then Gert's nephew comes charging in to "rescue" his aunt.

Boone Brennan will be damned if he'll let Lucy take advantage of Aunt Gert, who raised him and his sister. Believing that she's just passing through, he's deeply suspicious of her—despite the sparks that fly between them.

Just as Boone and Lucy are starting to open up to each other, a series of fires throws Lucy under suspicion. Boone wants to trust her and his feelings, but with the whole town against her, will he stay by her side? Or will Lucy move on and find another place to make her dreams come true?

74,000 words

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781426894930
Publisher:	Carina Press
Publication date:	01/14/2013
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Pages:	287
File size:	675 KB

About the Author

Liz Flaherty spends non-writing time sewing and thinking she should clear a path through the fabric stash in her office. She also loves to travel and spend time with the grandkids (the Magnificent Seven) and their parents. She and Duane, her husband of a really long time, live in the Indiana farmhouse they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really, 40-some years of stuff? It’s not happening! She’d love to hear from you at [e-mail].

Read an Excerpt

...Can you come home for a while? Aunt Gert's failing...

The two short sentences in the middle of his sister's e-mail had leaped out at Boone as if she'd typed them in bold black print instead of her usual girly green font. Just like she'd planned when she wrote them. She always knew how to get his attention. It must be the lawyer in her. Not that that was necessarily a good thing, but it had gotten him off his couch and his mind on someone besides himself.

Common sense told him if Aunt Gert had really been failing, Kelly would have been on the phone barking out commands in prosecuting attorney language and he'd have been on the next flight out of O'Hare. Instead, he'd spent a week preparing to be away for the summer before trundling down Interstate 65 in his Jeep this morning.

He sublet his apartment to a resident at the hospital nearby. He and Chris Fodrea had become friends after a rather violent racquetball game when the young orthopedist had told him his leg wasn't broken and that he didn't need painkillers—he needed exercise. Boone forwarded his mail to the house on Twilight Park Avenue in Taft, Indiana, and stopped newspaper delivery. He'd stuffed a backpack with shorts and T-shirts, tossed his golf clubs into the back seat and buckled his laptop into the passenger seat.

He couldn't bear the idea of Aunt Gert growing old. Well, maybe she was already old—she'd lied about her age so long he had no clue as to how long she'd actually been leaping headlong into life in her Birkenstock sandals and white bobby socks. She'd seemed old when he and Kelly had moved in with her and Uncle Mike, but they'd been young adolescents with pain dripping off them in hot and dark streams—so his memory was probably less than accurate.

The exit for Taft and the neighboring small towns that dotted the banks of the Twilight River jumped up unexpectedly—had the town moved and he didn't know it?—and he whipped the Jeep in front of an eighteen-wheeler to keep from missing the turn, waving an apologetic hand out the window. The trucker's response, immediate and absolutely unfriendly, didn't involve his whole hand.

Boone plucked his cell phone off the dash and spoke his sister's name into it, thinking voice recognition was probably a good thing for people who shouldn't talk on cell phones in cars but did it anyway. "Hey, Kell," he said, surprised when she answered her own phone, "what do you mean, failing?" He'd left her a message asking that same question on the day he'd gotten the email. If she'd called back, he didn't know it. He had a tendency not to check his messages.

There was a quiet moment in which he was pretty sure he heard the wheels turning in her head, bringing her mind back from wherever it had been—it was a shame that she'd gotten all the powers of concentration in the family. He'd been told frequently that he could do with a few himself. When she spoke, though, it was still his little sister's voice. Light and musical and, if you were her often-annoyed older brother, fretful. "She's just acting weird, Boone. Are you in your Jeep? It sounds like a hurricane. I really wish you wouldn't use the phone in the car. You're already the worst driver in three states."

He ignored that. Lawyers probably exaggerated everything—that was how they made so much money. "What would be weird is if she didn't act weird." He inserted just a hint of a sneer into his voice. "You know that. What's she doing exactly?"

Editorial Reviews

Boone and Crockett, like peanut butter and jelly, are said in one breath for they were always together in Taft—causing trouble more often than not. More than 20 years later, though, Crockett is now known as Father and Boone is a nationally syndicated cartoonist. They each make it home to Taft at least twice a year, but civility, not friendship, is all they expect from each other now. A woman tore them apart many years ago and now another woman just may bring them together. Lucy has come to Taft under the advice of Father Crockett. A devastating fire not only destroyed her livelihood but also her only family left in the world. In Taft, she soon finds love and a new family with Boone, Crockett, Aunt Gert, and Sims. But upon Lucy’s arrival, fires start popping up in Taft. Will she lose her new life and new family as well?

Verdict This tender-hearted romance is the perfect light read whether you are on the beach or in front of a winter fire. The steam level is low, making it appropriate for a wider audience.—Heather Lisa Maneiro, Minnesota State Univ. Lib.? Moorhead(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Library Journal