Red Door Inn (Prince Edward Island Dreams Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Liz Johnson

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166 pages

English

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Description

Marie Carrington is running from a host of bad memories. Broke and desperate, she's hoping to find safety and sanctuary on Prince Edward Island, where she reluctantly agrees to help decorate a renovated bed-and-breakfast before it opens for prime tourist season.Seth Sloane didn't move three thousand miles to work on his uncle's B&B so he could babysit a woman with a taste for expensive antiques and a bewildering habit of jumping every time he brushes past her. He came to help restore the old Victorian--and to forget about the fiancée who broke his heart.The only thing Marie and Seth agree on is that getting the Red Door Inn ready to open in just two months will take everything they've got. Can these two wounded souls find hope, healing, and perhaps a bit of romance on this beautiful island?Step into the Red Door Inn, a lovely home away from home tucked along the north shore of fabled Prince Edward Island. It's a place where the wounded come to heal, the broken find forgiveness, and the lonely find a family. Won't you stay for the season?

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	23 février 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493401734
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0432€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Liz Johnson
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0173-4
Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Published in association with Books & Such Literary Management.
Endorsements
“ The Red Door Inn by Liz Johnson took my breath away! The Prince Edward Island setting hooked me from the beginning, and the compelling characters and vivid writing kept me binge reading until the book was finished. These characters are as memorable as the ones in Anne of Green Gables . Highly recommended!”
— Colleen Coble , author of The Inn at Ocean’s Edge and the Hope Beach series
“Liz Johnson is a rock-solid writer. Any book by my friend Liz will be creative, well researched, and intriguing. I have worked closely with her for many years and endorse her heartily.”
— Max Lucado , New York Times bestselling author and pastor
“A charming inn in need of restoration, Prince Edward Island, and a love story? Yes, please! In The Red Door Inn , Liz Johnson crafts a story about new beginnings and fresh hope. I thoroughly enjoyed this first novel in her new series and the vicarious visit it offered me to the Canadian Maritime Province of Prince Edward Island. I could almost feel the sea breeze!”
— Becky Wade , author of the Porter Family series
Dedication
For Twila, Hannah, and Julia, who helped me uncover the hidden treasures of the Gentle Island.

And for the people of PEI, who so generously share the joy of the island with visitors like me.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Excerpt from Next Book
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
1
T he change in Marie Carrington’s pocket wouldn’t pay for a ferry ride across the Northumberland Strait to Prince Edward Island, let alone a bus ticket to anywhere else in the world. As she cupped the Canadian dollar coins in her shaking hand, they clinked together, drawing the curious gaze of the man in the seat next to her.
Marie shifted on the painful plastic chair, putting her shoulder between all the money she had access to in the world and the gaze shrouded by bushy, white eyebrows.
Two. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Seven twenty-five.
The sign on the café attached to the ferry terminal announced a fish sandwich lunch special for $6.99, but tax would be more than a quarter. Besides, that would completely wipe her out. And then she’d be penniless in a strange town.
“Which color do you like better?” The man with the eyebrows and more wrinkles than she’d ever seen on one face leaned forward, holding out four paint swatches.
Marie rotated farther away from him, shoving her coins back in her pocket, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“My wife liked the pale blue, but I think we need something brighter for the shutters of a bed-and-breakfast. Don’t you?”
She couldn’t fight the urge to survey the swatches, even if just out of the corner of her eye. With one finger she twisted the necklace at her throat, imagining each color on the front of a robust, two-story Maritime home.
He dipped his chin as though waiting for her answer. “Well? Don’t you think it’s too light?”
Finally she whispered, “Unless the house is a deep blue.” Keeping an eye on him, she scooted to the far edge of her seat, the armrest digging into her side as she bent to scoop her backpack into the safety of her lap.
“What?” His eyebrows nearly reached his hairline. Pulling his glasses from his front shirt pocket and planting them on his face, he held the color swatch in question to within an inch of his nose, mumbling her words over and over. “Deep blue. The house could be deep blue.”
After several seconds of peace, she decided he’d forgotten all about her until he flipped the same blue color swatch over her shoulder and pointed to the darkest hue on the row. “Is that dark enough?”
“No.”
“Then what would be?”
Shoulder still in place, she pointed with her other hand to the blue of his pants. “Maybe with a hint of gray mixed in.”
Holding the color card against a handful of jean fabric, he nodded slowly. “That might work. But not too much gray.” He scratched his chin, his whiskers rasping beneath aged fingers. “What about the trim? Would you do the same color as the shutters?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Lots of things. What do the neighboring houses look like? Do you have other colors around the house?”
“Like what?”
She relaxed her back a fraction of an inch so that she didn’t have to strain her neck to watch his reactions. “Maybe a flower garden or water feature. If you already have several other colors, keep the trim and shutters the same color or the house can look disjointed and unappealing.”
“Never thought of having a flower garden.” He poked his tongue into his cheek, staring at the color cards as though they’d failed him. “Suppose women might like that.”
“Men too.”
He raised one of his bushy brows at her.
“Really.”
“Well, if I have to have flowers and a red door, I suppose the shutters and trim should be one color.”
“Why a red door?” Marie hadn’t asked a voluntary question in two months, but this one just slipped out before she could clamp her hand over her mouth.
The old man didn’t seem to notice her surprise. Instead, lost in the colors in his hands, he cleared his throat. “We visited the island for the first time fifteen years ago, and the red doors captured her imagination. She said we had to have a red door. There was no argument. No discussion, only—”
“The nine thirty ferry will begin boarding shortly.” The voice of the announcer echoed over the tinny intercom. “All passengers please make your way to the boarding area and have your ticket in hand.”
The old man shuffled his cards and tucked them into his pocket before slipping one arm into his oversized coat. He reached for and missed the other arm twice before Marie set her bag back on the floor, stood, and held the jacket open for him. “Thank you.”
She nodded and slipped back into her seat, fighting the urge to hug her knees to her chest and let the tears roll. She could sit here for hours, but it wouldn’t make the money she needed appear. She’d never have enough for the ferry traveling north. She couldn’t come up with the sixteen dollars to keep moving.
“Aren’t you going on the boat?”
He wasn’t from New England or the Canadian Maritimes. Any self-respecting man from that area would know it was a ship or a ferry, not a boat.
“No.” Her fingers brushed over her pocket and the outline of her meager funds pressing through the black corduroy.
His eyebrows pulled into a V that looked like a single angry caterpillar. “Have some more ideas to ask you about.”
She looked anywhere but into his ice-blue eyes, her gaze finally resting on the posted ferry schedule above the ticket counter. “I’m not going to Prince Edward Island today.” If she was honest with herself, she probably wasn’t ever going to make it to PEI. More than likely she’d have to call her father back in Boston and face him, no matter how much she hated that.
“Don’t you want to go to the island?”
Her laugh was more stinging than humorous, even to her own ears. Of course she wanted to go to the island. Of course she wanted to keep putting more and more distance between her and her past.
She’d grown up reading books set on the island, dream ing of finding a home there. She’d even managed to squeeze one of her favorites by the island’s beloved author into her backpack. Of course, the corners were bent and the edges worn, but she’d never loved the book or the dream of the island any more than she did sitting just a few miles away.
Of course she wanted to go to the island.
But wanting wouldn’t get her more than a toe in the icy water.
“I don’t have a ticket.”
“That all? I’ll get you a ticket.”
She shook her head, swallowing the hint of hope that was quickly coupled with certain disappointment. “Thank you, no. I can’t accept.”
But he was halfway to the counter already, spreading the mouth of his cracked wallet and pulling a colorful bill from within. He said something to the raven-haired ticket agent, who tipped her head to shoot a curious glance around his arm.
Grabbing her bag, Marie jumped to her feet. If she were lucky, a wave would crash into the building, sweeping her away. Away from prying eyes and inquiring stares. Away from old men who asked too many questions. Away from that ever-present emptiness.
But luck wasn’t on her side.
A familiar tightness rose in her chest, and she gasped for even the shallowest breath.
Oh, not again! Not with an audience and no place to lie down.
She tried to fill her lungs as a band squeezed around them. The ground shifted, her whole world tilting as she stumbled toward the chair she had just vacated. Squeezing her eyes shut against the black spots that danced in the edges of her line of sight, she leaned forward, fighting for a breath. Pain shot down the middle of her chest, but no amount of rubbing soothed the throbbing.
She was going to pass out in front of everyone.
A hand gra