Emmy Jo looped her arm into Seth’s and walked with him to the front porch. “I finished our story while you were gone. And you’ll never believe it, but Logan’s folks invited us to Sunday dinner. And Jesse was pretty nice. And I put fresh lilacs on your mama’s grave for her hundredth birthday. We’ll go to the cemetery tomorrow and you can see them.”
Seth patted her hand. “Thank you for taking care of that for me. And there’s hope for Jesse as long as he’s got breath, but it’s up to him what he does with it. He’s missin’ out on two great kids if he doesn’t shape up. About the story, I’m glad that you did, but I don’t even want to read it, Emmy Jo. You do whatever you want with it after I’m dead. Keep it for your kids or delete it, but I don’t want anything done with it while I’m still alive. I’ve let go of the past, and I’m living for today and the future with my family. It’s a wonderful new life.”
Tears welled up in Emmy Jo’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. “That makes me so happy. But I’m glad you told me the story, because it’s my past, too. And it’s what brought . . .”
He pulled a clean white hankie from his pocket and gently wiped her eyes. “I know, darlin’ girl. Would you look at this cabin,” he added, changing the subject. “It hardly looks like the same place. You sent pictures over the phone, but it’s so much better seeing it now. It’s hard to believe you got it all done in time for me to come home to after the cruise. We can’t hardly call it a cabin anymore, can we?”
“We’ve been calling it Seth’s place,” she said.
“I like that a lot.” He paused and then chuckled. “But I still hate red.”
She giggled through the tears. “And I’ll never like orange.”
“So some things never change.” He smiled.
“Thank goodness. See you tomorrow.” She hugged him one more time.
The limo driver brought his luggage to the porch of Seth’s new place.
New life. New future. New family. New friend.
Seth Thomas had come home, and it felt right.
“Hey, Tandy,” he called out across the yard before opening the door to go inside. “You ever been to the Grand Ole Opry? I hear it’s something to behold at the holidays.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dear readers,
Many, many years ago when Mr. B. and I were first married and he was going to college, we didn’t have money for entertainment, so we started telling each other a story. It all started with an old country song called “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” by Merle Haggard and evolved from there. When we took short trips to visit my parents for the weekends or long road trips to see his parents in the summertime, we added to the story.
I started writing it down on paper when our third child was born and would not sleep at night. In those days all I had was a spiral notebook and a few sharpened pencils. When Mr. B. found an old Underwood typewriter at a garage sale and bought it for five dollars, I was ecstatic.
Seth was a young man in that original edition, but the manuscript had too many problems to ever make it to market, so it got put away for twenty years. I dragged it out again when he was a middle-aged man, and it still had too many problems to be published. Now more than forty years after that first draft, Seth is past eighty years old and the time is right. I hope The Lilac Bouquet touches your emotions so much that you fall in love with him and with Emmy Jo.
As always, there are so many people who helped take this book from that story that Mr. B and I talked about all those years ago to the book you hold in your hand. Big Texas-size hugs to the whole team at Montlake Romance for all their hard work. Special thanks to my editor, Anh Schluep, for continuing to believe in me, and to Krista Stroever, my developmental editor, for all her hard work in helping me turn this from a forty-year-old idea into finished work. Thanks to my agent, Erin Niumata, and my agency, Folio Management, for everything you do. Y’all are all amazing!
Thanks to Mr. B, the man I’ve been married to for half a century. He’s my support system and my best friend, as well as the guy who listened to me talk about this story for all those years. And thanks again for buying me that first typewriter . . . which is still sitting in my closet.
What would an author be without readers? I’ll answer that. We’d be at the top of the endangered species list, a place I would never want to be for sure. So thank you to each and every one of you who buy my books, talk about them, and consider them as possibilities for your book clubs. And a special thanks to the ones who leave reviews!
Happy reading,
Carolyn Brown
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Charles Brown
Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and a RITA finalist. The Lilac Bouquet is her eighty-fourth published book. Her books include romantic women’s fiction, historical romance, contemporary romance, cowboy romance, and country music mass-market paperbacks. She and her husband live in the small town of Davis, Oklahoma, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing—and reads the local newspaper on Wednesdays to see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young. When she’s not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in her gorgeous backyard with her two cats, Chester Fat Boy and Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch them protect their territory from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her online at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.
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