Whisper of Surrender

by Melanie Shawn

  WHISPER OF SURRENDER

  by

  Melanie Shawn

  Melanie Shawn © 2018

  Google Play Edition

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn.

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

  Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns

  Copyedit by Deanna McDonald

  Book Design by BB eBooks

  Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing

  Rev. 1.0

  Welcome to Whisper Lake!

  Whisper Lake is a spinoff of our bestselling Crossroads series. This cozy, Midwest, tourist town is home to Stone Castle (which is widely believed to be haunted) *insert spooky “oooOOOooo” here*, The Needlepoint Mafia (a knitting club run by three matchmaking “Dons” that may look like sweet, little old ladies, but prove that looks can be deceiving), seasonal festivities that include a Kissing Booth “manned” by dogs…get it…manned, and a lot of well-meaning, meddling folks that love keeping our heroes and heroines on their toes.

  Dedication

  The entire Whisper Lake series is dedicated to all the romance authors out there who give me endless hours of escape, entertainment, and therapy! Each book is going to highlight three authors that are near and dear to my heart and inspire me to write sassy, fun-loving, swoon-worthy love stories that (I hope) are filled with humor, heart, and heat. Most of you know who you are (because I fangirl SO HARD!) but now the world will know, too, because I am shouting it from the rooftops (and by rooftops I mean the dedication page).

  Book two is dedicated to Bella Andre, Susan Mallery, and Rachel Gibson. The women that make up this romance trinity are all auto-buy authors for me. Each time I pick up one of these ladies books I am captivated from the first page to last. Whether it is the Sullivan family or the folks in Fool’s Gold or the Chinooks Hockey team this trio of romance rock stars write sweet, sizzling, and poignant stories that I escape into.

  Whisper of Surrender has a blatant shout-out and hidden Easter eggs that true Bella, Susan, and Rachel fans (especially those that follow their social media) will be able to spot. If you haven’t indulged in these must-read women’s books, you are seriously missing out! I know you’ll fall in love with the heroes and heroines but also the friends and families and worlds that they create!

  XO

  Shawna

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Coming July 2018

  A Note From Melanie and Shawna

  Other Titles by Melanie Shawn

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  “Online dating is about as much fun as getting a tattoo over a sunburn.” Jessa Myers’ statement fell on deaf ears.

  Her feline companions didn’t hear a word she said. One of them, literally. Elvis Pawsley, her hearing-impaired cat, sat beside her in her breakfast nook, his tail flicking as he bathed himself while soaking in the morning sun as it streamed through the bay window. Next to him Marilyn Purroe was lounging on her throne pillow. She could hear just fine. She just didn’t acknowledge Jess’s existence unless there was food involved.

  “You have no idea how lucky you are to be neutered,” she said to Elvis as she ran her hand over his head. She looked back down at her phone and tried to will herself a positive attitude.

  If it was up to her, her love life would be like a John Hughes movie. She wanted to meet the man of her dreams organically, not online. But that wasn’t reality. Reality was that this was a numbers game. So, even after her dud of a date the night before, Jessa was determined to get back on the dating horse. Which in this day and age, especially living in a town as small as Whisper Lake, meant using technology.

  So here she was, sitting at her kitchen table, sipping a green tea as she swiped her way through a dating app that hadn’t been particularly successful for her in the past.

  Her thumb slid over her screen as she quickly moved through dozens of potential matches.

  Shirtless guy with guitar.

  “Nope.” She swiped left.

  Guy standing in front of a sports car.

  “Uh-uh.”

  Duck-face selfie of a guy with better eyebrows than her.

  “Oh, hell no.”

  She was just about to swipe again when a face popped up on her screen that she’d never swipe left on. Her best friend, Ali was calling.

  She answered, “Hello soon-to-be Mrs. McKnight.”

  “That still feels so weird.”

  “Really? Because you’ve been pretending to be Mrs. McKnight since you were in elementary school.” Ali had been crushing on her fiancé Kade McKnight since they were kids. Unlike other girls who played wedding day dress up and doodled their crush’s names on notebooks, Ali and Jessa would play business women and store owners, which was exactly what they were now, and Ali would always sign “invoices” and “checks” as Mrs. Allison McKnight.

  Now she was going to be living out her childhood fantasy of being Mrs. McKnight. Two days ago, Kade had asked Ali to marry him.

  “I know I have, but that was always make-believe. This is actually happening. I still can’t quite believe I’m getting married.”

  Jess was happy for her friend. Ali had been raising her teenage nephews, KJ and Ricky, since her older brother Patrick had passed a year and a half ago due to a brain aneurysm. She was the sweetest, most selfless person that Jess knew and she deserved all the happiness in the world. And she knew that Kade was going to do everything in his power to bring her that happiness.

  Jessa heard a deep male voice in the background.

  “You better believe it because it’s happening.”

  “Hello, Kade.”

  “Jess says hi,” she heard Ali say before then hearing some very distinct kissing sounds.

  “Hello!” Jess interrupted the impromptu make out session. “I’m still on the phone.”

  “Sorry,” Ali said breathlessly as she giggled. “How did your date go last night?”

  “I was home by seven.”

  “I thought you were meeting him at six-thirty.”

  “I was.”

  “Oh boy, what was it this time?”

  Jessa gave her the Cliffs Notes version o
f her most recent dating disaster.

  Ali made a hissing noise. “Sorry, Charlie.”

  “It’s okay, bae.” Ali might be an engaged woman, but she would always be Jess’s before-anyone-else.

  “Aunt Ali!”

  Jess heard one of the twins call out from another room.

  “Hang on, KJ!” Ali responded before returning to their call. “I gotta go. Oh, wait! I was calling to see if you’re free for dinner?”

  “Are you cooking?” Ali had many amazing gifts but cooking was not one of them. Since her friend took over parental duties after her brother passed, Jess had choked down more than her fair share of dinners that barely passed as food. Luckily, Ali was well aware of her shortcomings.

  “No. You’re safe.” Ali assured her.

  “Then yes, I’m free.”

  “Dumbass! No!”

  “I hope you’re talking to the dog,” Jess teased.

  Dumbass was the name bestowed on Kade and Ali’s dog by its former owner, Kade’s late father. Ali had done her best to change the name, but Dumbass refused to answer to anything else, so it stuck.

  “I am,” Ali assured her and, in the background, Jess heard one of the boys telling the dog no. “Does Lanterns at seven work?”

  “Yep. See ya then.”

  Just before the line disconnected, she heard her friend squeal in delight and giggle again.

  Jess set her phone down and a melancholy cloud settled around her. As happy as she was that Ali and Kade were going to live happily ever after, it was hard not to wish she had someone making her giggle as she got off the phone.

  She’d been trying to be positive and simply look at this time in her life as an adventure. It was proving to be much more difficult than it should be. No one online was who they said they were and people in real life only seemed to be interested in being online. Her last three dates had crashed and burned all in their own unique ways.

  Date number one had shown up thirty minutes late, claiming to have been tied up at work. Which, in his defense, might’ve been true, it’s just that Jess didn’t wait around to find out after she spotted the ring on his left finger. He turned white as a ghost when she pointed it out to him.

  Date number two was fortunately both on time and ringless, but his breath was so bad she’d barely made it past introductions.

  But the worst by far had been last night’s date. Date number three. He wasn’t married or suffering from halitosis. His only crime was that he gave her hope only to squash that hope like a bug beneath a steel-toed boot.

  Holden was employed, attractive, funny, and smart. And fifteen minutes into their date she discovered he was also a chain smoker. Jess had been born with a congenital heart condition and breathing was far too precious to her to sacrifice for anyone; even someone as hot as Holden.

  Her hand drifted over the large scar that she wore proudly on her breastplate. Without this scar, she wouldn’t be here. But because of this scar, someone else wasn’t here. Someone else had had to die so she could live. That was a sobering reality to be faced with.

  She’d met the family of her donor. Alice Tapper was a grad student who was engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart when she was killed in a car accident. By all accounts she was kind, generous, and loved by all that knew her. Family was everything to her and she was so excited to be starting her own.

  Maybe it was silly, but Jess felt a responsibility to Alice who would never get to fulfill the dreams she’d had. She wanted an HEA for the both of them. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t turning out to be all that easy. Nothing she was doing was working.

  It wasn’t a complete shock that she was clueless in all things love. Up to this point, all of her romantic milestones had asterisks beside them.

  First kiss, she’d been nine years old and overheard her parents talking after her mom got a call from the doctor who’d told them that the last stint hadn’t done what they’d hoped and without a miracle, Jess’s outlook was grave. Even at nine, she’d known what that meant. So she snuck out of her house and went down to the pier to think.

  She hadn’t planned it, but she’d ended up kissing a poor, unsuspecting tourist boy that had come to check on her when he saw her crying. It had been a good kiss, a great kiss even, but she’d got embarrassed when she pulled back so she’d made some sarcastic comment about it not being that great.

  She thought about that kid a lot.

  Did he remember the girl that told him in one breath she was dying and in the next, leaned over and planted a big one on him?

  Her first boyfriend had been born out of convenience and pity when she was fifteen. There was a boy at the children’s hospital that was even sicker than she was and he’d asked her to be his girlfriend. She’d agreed because how could she say no to a boy that she knew most likely wouldn’t leave the hospital alive. And she was glad she had because he hadn’t, and she didn’t have to live with the guilt of blowing off the dying kid. She’d spent six weeks as Tommy Clark’s “girlfriend” before he passed away. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as the movie The Fault in our Stars was, but sometimes she liked to pretend it was.

  The first time she had sex was even less spectacular than these previous two milestones. Given her condition, birthdays were pretty big accomplishments back then and she’d secretly made a pact with herself that if she made it to eighteen, she was having sex and getting a tattoo on her birthday. She figured go big or go home.

  She looked down and ran her thumb over the words inked on each wrist. On her left just and on her right breathe. Afterward she’d met Louis Rickman up at Star Gaze Point, the local lookout spot. She’d known Louis since grade school. He was decent looking and he’d told her he wasn’t a virgin. Looking back though, she was pretty sure he’d lied because he’d fumbled with the condom and then lasted all of two pumps.

  All of those experiences had had one thing in common: they were related to her health, or lack thereof. Now, she didn’t have a ticking time bomb that was counting down the seconds until her death. She was free to live her life and date whomever she wanted with only the expectation of eventual death, just like everyone else. It was strange, but certain death did give life an odd clarity that she hadn’t realized she’d feel somewhat lost without.

  But she was doing her best to figure it out. She took another sip of her tea and thought about how far she’d come. Over the past few years, she’d moved out on her own, became co-owner of a business, and started to try and dip her toe in the dating pool. Unfortunately, her life wasn’t turning out to be a romantic dramedy. Digital dating was like the Wild West, and Jess felt ill-equipped to navigate it.

  She was half-tempted to call in Whisper Lake’s “matchmaking mafiosas” for reinforcements. Mrs. Dobrinski, Mrs. Chen, and Mrs. Weathersby were three women, all in their eighties who founded The Needlepoint Mafia knitting club of which Jessa was a needle-carrying member. Those three women ran the town of Whisper Lake like mob bosses, but instead of ordering hits on people they ordered meet-cutes.

  The trio of cupids chose an unwitting subject and then went about creatively throwing that person into random run-ins and compromising situations with potential mates they deemed suitable. For the most part, the ladies never confirmed or denied their shenanigans. But once, after Mrs. Weathersby had had a few too many at the Christmas Festival, she’d let slip that “if” they set people up, their strategy for love connections was throwing noodles against a wall and seeing what stuck.

  The matchmaking dons’ current target was the one man Jess knew she’d never end up with who also happened to be the only man she’d ever dreamed of a forever with.

  Ethan Steele.

  For years, Jess had been battling a private, internal war over what she felt for the man whose caramel eyes, strong shoulders, and deep voice made her insides turn to mush. Where her friend Ali had always admitted to being in love with Kade since they were kids, Jess had always chosen to hide her infatuation with Ethan.

  It was a cruel twi
st of fate that her brain and body were at such odds as to what was good for her where Ethan was concerned. As much as she’d love to give into her base desires, she knew she couldn’t.

  Would she and Ethan be compatible between the sheets? If the fireworks she felt every time she saw him, or even thought of him, were any indication, then yes, they absolutely would.

  But would they make each other happy? Well, if the frustration and irritation she felt every time she saw him or even thought about him were any indication, she felt safe to say that no, they would not.

  He was too overbearing. Too overprotective. Too over…everything. He was just too much.

  The way he looked at her was unnerving. He watched her every move, every breath, every smile. He was living out the Police song, but not as stalkery. More like in a concerned friend way. The problem was that she’d spent her whole life being watched with concern. Between her parents and her doctors, everything about her had been studied since she was a small child. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life under that kind of scrutiny, even if it were Ethan doing the scrutinizing.

  Plus, she was still holding a grudge from when he narked on her the first day of high school. She’d left first period to go get her oxygen tank, which she’d stuffed in her locker but should’ve had with her, and on the way passed out in the hall. Of course, he’d been the one to find her. He promised her he wouldn’t tell anyone but then she was called to the nurses’ office the next period. It might not be a big deal to other people, but trust was something that she took very seriously. She’d looked in his eyes when he’d promised her, and he’d lied.

  So, as much as she’d love to experience Ethan’s single-minded focus between the sheets, she wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Moving on,” she announced aloud to Elvis and Marilyn who could’ve cared less as she scrolled through the icons on her screen.

  She’d heard of a new dating app and decided there was no time like the present to fill out her profile. She’d heard good things and the ads with “real people not actors” had sucked her in.