A Heart to Trust
Page 30
“I know! I had no idea he’d accumulated so much crap in that room.”
They’d all laughed as box after box of stuff was packed up from Carl’s room and stacked in the hallway the previous Saturday. By the time Carl was finished, Jenny had been wide-eyed.
“I had no idea your room was that big!” she’d said, staring at the space left in his room. “I’m redecorating and we’re making this our bedroom.”
Olivia had wholeheartedly agreed, and they’d spent a fun Sunday repainting the room in a calm, restful shade of green.
Jenny’s old room would be turned into an office space they could share; her bed would go, having already been secondhand when she moved in, and they’d use Olivia’s bed from her rooms at Broderick’s to furnish their new bedroom.
Tamara, Carl, and Roz were busy reassembling it right now, having insisted on contributing something useful while Solomon worked his muscles lugging boxes.
Olivia sidled up to Jenny and slipped her arms around her waist. “Is it time for the fizz?”
Jenny looked at her, her heart full at the sight of the beautiful woman who would, from today, be living with her. Then she kissed Olivia softly. “I think it should be. The others will be finished soon.”
Olivia squeezed her, then stepped away and walked into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with a tray containing six champagne flutes—her gift to herself for moving in—and set it on the coffee table. Then she went back to the kitchen and reappeared with a bottle of real champagne.
The sound of the popping cork pulled everyone from wherever they were in the apartment, and soon, four eager faces watched Olivia pour.
Each of Jenny’s friends stepped forward to take a glass and then stepped back to stand with their partners.
Carl held hands with Solomon and kissed his nose; Roz cuddled up behind Tamara with one arm around her belly.
Jenny looked at them, and her eyes filled with tears.
Olivia came back to Jenny with her own glass and, once again, slipped an arm around Jenny’s waist; it seemed to be Olivia’s favorite way of holding her when they were standing, and Jenny wasn’t about to complain.
Tamara was the first to raise her glass, and the others swiftly followed suit. “A toast. To a new home and to new beginnings.” She turned to look directly at Jenny. “And to our baby girl, who is now, definitely, all grown up. My friend, I am so happy for you. What you and Olivia have is so perfect for each of you.” She directed her gaze at Olivia. “And thank you, for making her so happy. Welcome to the family.”
Jenny’s tears fell freely then.
Olivia turned into her, her glass raised. Her eyes were damp. “To us.”
“I love you.” Jenny’s voice was husky.
“And I love you.”
They clinked glasses and sipped as their gazes locked.
Jenny’s heart pounded and her hands trembled as excitement coursed through her. This is it. Where I’m meant to be.
Home.
Other Books from Ylva Publishing
www.ylva-publishing.com
Dare to Love
A.L. Brooks
ISBN: 978-3-96324-362-2 (mobi), 978-3-96324-363-9 (epub)
Length: 89,000 words (270 pages)
Investment banker Ash Taylor left her cut-throat world to set up a cool, cutting-edge tattoo studio. Her love life’s been a lot bumpier, though. Ever since a heart-breaking affair with a straight colleague, she’s vowed to steer clear of women unsure of their sexuality.
Talent-agency executive Carmen Lyttleton is straight, career focused, and not prone to distraction from her occasional casual relationships. When her best friend gets a tattoo at Ash’s studio, Carmen finds herself unexpectedly impressed by Ash and her business.
When they accidentally meet again, Carmen is shocked by the sparks between them and the realization that she feels a lot more than just admiration for Ash’s work ethic. It can’t possibly mean what it seems…can it?
The pull between the women is powerful but so are their fears, old baggage, and stubbornness. Can they dare to love?
The Love Factor
Quinn Ivins
ISBN: 978-3-96324-378-3 (mobi), 978-3-96324-379-0 (epub)
Length: 75,000 words (215 pages)
Molly Cook is almost thirty, with dismal career prospects, and has given up on saving the world. It might be the nineties, and everything’s shoulder pads, Doc Martens, and The X-Files, but people won’t budge on gay rights. Molly decides to give a PhD a whirl but finds herself more interested in campus politics…and her strict and sexy statistics professor.
Professor Carmen Vaughn is stuck in small-town Maryland with smarmy blowhards for colleagues and ungrateful students who can’t handle her high standards. She has no intention of coming out, least of all to Molly, a troublemaking grad student who can’t stop picking fights with the conservative faculty.
But when Molly discovers evidence implicating a homophobic colleague in a scandal, Carmen can’t ignore it—even if the subject hits too close to home. As the two women work together to make their case, they grow closer than Carmen ever imagined. But she absolutely refuses to get involved with a student.
The thing is, as the chemistry builds between them, Molly isn’t sure she wants to be a grad student anymore…if she ever did.
A Roll in the Hay
Lola Keeley
ISBN: 978-3-96324-356-1 (mobi), 978-3-96324-357-8 (epub)
Length: 66,000 words (185 pages)
The whole “big city, successful career, loyal, hot girlfriend” experiment has been a miserable failure for veterinarian Tess Robinson, so she’s moved back home to a small town in the Scottish countryside. She doesn’t count on a run-in with the stuck-up, maddening, local landowner Lady Susannah Karlson, who tries to boss Tess around as if she owns the whole town…which she sort of does.
Closeted, wealthy, ice queen Lady Karlson is having the worst year – becoming widowed, being embroiled in a public feud over her vast estate, and now finding herself at odds with the sharp-tongued new vet who has just blown in from London. The annoying woman is so unsuitable to tend her horses, so impertinent, and so frustratingly cute.
As their clashes build and they’re thrust together against a back-drop of eccentric village busybodies, class warfare, and deadly dangers, the circling women start to wonder if there might be something more to the rising tensions between them. It can’t all be hate, can it?
Rewriting the Ending
hp tune
ISBN: 978-3-95533-504-5 (mobi), 978-3-95533-505-2 (epub)
Length: 107,000 words (286 pages)
Juliet is an author with a deadline. A big deadline…and a ratty old backpack, and she’s on her way to Belgium.
Mia has a one-way, first class ticket to anywhere. Today anywhere happens to be Scotland. The one thing she knows is that money can’t buy happiness, and she has no idea what does.
A chance meeting in an airport lounge and a shared flight itinerary leaves Juliet and Mia connected. They’ve known each other for only twenty-four hours and they are destined for separate countries. How do you forge a future when the past keeps pulling you back?
About A.L. Brooks
A.L. Brooks was born in the UK but currently resides in Frankfurt, Germany, and over the years she has lived in places as far afield as Aberdeen and Australia. She works 9–5 in corporate financial systems and her dream is to take early retirement. Like, tomorrow, please. She loves her gym membership, and is very grateful for it as she also loves dark chocolate. She enjoys drinking good wine and craft beer, trying out new recipes to cook, and learning German. Travelling around the world and reading lots and lots (and lots) of books are also things that fight for time with her writing. Yep, she really needs that early retirement.
CONNECT WITH A.L. BROOKS
Website: www.albrookswriter.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/albrookswriter
Twitter: @albrookswriter1
E-Mail: albrookswriter@gmail.com
A Heart to Trust
© 2020 by A.L. Brooks
ISBN (mobi): 978-3-96324-454-4
ISBN (epub): 978-3-96324-455-1
Also available as a paperback.
Published by Ylva Publishing, legal entity of Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Ylva Verlag, e.Kfr.
Owner: Astrid Ohletz
Am Kirschgarten 2
65830 Kriftel
Germany
www.ylva-publishing.com
First edition: 2020
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Depending on your device, the text might be displayed differently from the publisher’s approved version.
Credits
Edited by Miranda Miller and Alexa Bisko
Cover Design and Print Layout by Streetlight Graphics