by Edie Ramer
“Something about a miracle coming soon,” he said.
She drew back her hand. Nodded. Licked her lips. “That’s when I first saw the sparkles. And no one else saw them except me.”
“And now me,” he said.
“Now you. I think I know what the miracle is.”
The stars were disappearing slowly. One by one. As if they’d sent their message and could rest for now.
“The twinkling stars?” he asked.
“The baby.” She smiled at him. “Our baby.”
He stared at her, the laughter leaving, and the look in his eyes made her hold her breath though her heart was hammering in her chest. Then he leaned down and kissed her. Not with passion, but tenderness. He pulled back and she breathed. And she smiled. And she felt tears well up. Happy tears.
“It’s going to be magic,” he said.
“A miracle.” She wondered if Elsa could see the sparkles, too. After all, she was part of this. Without her egg...
But Trey was smiling at her, his head coming down. And behind him, she saw the sparkles lighting up again, as if someone plugged them in. Or they just liked her and Trey kissing.
She reached up. So did he.
“Our miracle,” he said, and then he kissed her and her eyes closed. But she still saw sparkles. Hundreds of them. Lighting up her life. And this wasn’t the end of a miracle, she thought as their lips met. This was just the beginning...
-The End-
Dear Reader,
I’m delighted that you’ve read STARDUST MIRACLE, the second Miracle Interrupted story. MUST WORSHIP CATS, a novella, introduces the series. MIRACLE LANE and MIRACLE PIE are the next two books. I have more Miracle Interrupted novels on the way.
If you enjoyed STARDUST MIRACLE, I would appreciate it if you would help others enjoy it by posting a review at your favorite places.
Read on for an excerpt from MIRACLE LANE and MIRACLE PIE, along with an excerpt from SECOND CHANCES by Leigh Morgan.
I love hearing from readers. You can reach me at [email protected].
Author updates can be found at http://edieramer.com. You can also sign up for my newsletter and find samples of my other novels.
Happy Reading!
Edie Ramer
Miracle Lane
a Miracle Interrupted novel
Edie Ramer
She forgot how to hate, and now she’s learning how to love...
Brain-damaged Nia Beaudine can’t remember her life before The Accident. Someone intentionally ran over her and left her for dead. Now she’s living in the ‘witch’s house’ she inherited in the village of Miracle, relearning how to live on her own. Well, almost on her own – the talking cat helping her cope is a bonus. But when a hate-filled family member shows up with a gun, Nia knows she needs real help.
Former Army Sergeant and PTSD sufferer Rob Ackerman regularly covers for his identical twin, the village constable, and answers Nia’s emergency call. This strange young woman immediately sees he’s not his brother. In return, he sees that the only way she can fully live in her new life is to find out why someone in her old life tried to kill her...and might try again.
As they dig up Nia’s past, the attraction between them grows. Their brains may be damaged, but their bodies and hearts are working just fine.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
The thin man wearing the tan constable uniform at Nia Beaudine’s front door was a liar.
People told Nia she’d been a liar in her old life. Those memories had been lost along with pieces of her skull and brain matter. Her new self couldn’t understand why people lied. Truths were hard enough to remember.
Why would this man – any man – want to pretend he was a constable in this village of only 629? Most of them odd. A place she should fit right in.
This man...he didn’t look odd, but she knew he must be very odd. Not dangerous, though. For one second she considered closing the door on him, but every instinct told her she could trust this man.
Instead, she said, “I think my cat is trying to talk to me.”
Her words seemed to hang in the air like bubbles. She studied his face, waiting for his reaction. Ready for anything.
He studied her back. Just watching.
Yesterday Nia had learned the word cryptic while doing a crossword puzzle in an exercise to expand her word skills.
Her cat was cryptic. A cryptic, talking cat.
The man blinked. Not talkative like her cat. Perhaps even more cryptic. The silence stretched out between them. Nina heard the birds chatter and small rustles of leaves. Probably a squirrel or animal running across the wooded lawn of the house her mother’s aunt had bequeathed to her.
“Why do you think that?” he finally said.
Nia’s arms prickled. She was sensitive to sound – as if to compensate her for losing twenty-five years of memories – and his resonating baritone made her skin itch from the inside out.
“Because I understand what she’s saying,” she said.
He nodded, his expression serious.
Better than she’d expected when the words tumbled out of her mouth. Any other person would frown, a conviction of her insanity stamped on their disbelieving face, and step back, as if fearful that crazy was catching.
She always wanted to tell them it was catching only if someone was trying to run them over in a car.
And to make sure it worked, that someone would back up and run them over again.
But instead of giving her the loco look, this man stared at her steadily. His full lips closed and pressed into thinness, his eyes steady on her face. Mournful brown eyes that matched his nut-brown hair.
He made her think of a tree. Solid but not broad. One that would bend but not break. And his face... Like his body, his face was long and lean. Deep lines of pain scored each side of his mouth, though she guessed he wasn’t more than thirty. He couldn’t be much older. Not with his skin clinging tightly to his bones. His nose was blade-like, half a triangle. His jaw resolute. His eyebrows and hair thick.
He was a man’s man, making up for his few words with an excess of testosterone.
Pheromones shot straight at her. She could smell them. They twirled around her like invisible dust motes, capturing and captivating her, putting a magical spell on her, bringing to life senses that had been sleeping since she woke up in the hospital bed, the world fuzzy, her mouth dry, and no thoughts in her mind.
But her mind hadn’t been silent, not with a scream shrieking through it that no one could hear but her.
Later, she recognized the scream must have been her own voice. Even later, she realized that must have been the last sound she made as the car ran over her.
She shivered, the memories upsetting, but not as upsetting as the way he made her feel.
This was not the kind of help she’d hoped for when she’d called the constable’s number.
Maybe this was the trouble her cat had been warning her about.
If only Bast had been more specific.
This cat and human communication was new to both of them. They’d been living together for only three weeks. She’d just started to understand Bast’s yowls and meows and mrows and an entire orchestra of sounds yesterday. Like the first few pieces of a thousand-piece puzzle coming together.
Maybe they would get better with time.
She shifted her feet, the silence pressing down on her. Early on in her recovery, she discovered other people hated silence. The need to fill the wordless void compelled them to speak. To say things they later wished were unsaid. To say the truth.
Apparently he’d reached the same conclusion, since he kept his gaze on her, not moving a muscle. As if the loser would be whoever spoke first.
The silence was like a chewed piece of gum...growing longer and longer and longer...
“What’s the prize?” she asked.
“Prize for what?”
“For talking last.”
His lips stretched slowly then ki
cked up at the edges. “You talked first. You tell me what my prize should be.”
She glanced down at his shoes. She’d amused him. Maybe there was a prize for making him smile.
Maybe there were no prizes in life.
“Something’s crawling on your shoe.”
He glanced down, not twitching. The most unmoving man she could remember. Since her memory went back only eighteen months, she supposed there might have been others.
“Caterpillar,” he said. “A monarch.”
She peered down at the yellow, black and white stripes on the fuzzy thing. “How do you know?”
“By the colors.”
She nodded. That made sense. Every day she found out something new. “I’ll look it up on my computer.”
“When you called, you said someone was trying to kill you.”
Her head came up. “I called the constable, but you’re not him.”
His stillness became different. More than just holding his breath. As if his blood stopped pulsing through his veins and his heart stopped beating and even his soul closed up, hiding itself.
Then a shudder shivered through him. Like a car that wouldn’t start, coming to life. He blinked and his lips parted. “Jerry and I are twins. Identical. How did you know?”
She’d learned about twins. Her therapist had advised her to watch TV to learn about life. And she did learn. One twin could be evil. The other could be good. But by now she knew not everything on TV was true, and she guessed most twins were neither good nor evil, but just people trying to get through life without being killed and not wanting to kill anyone else. People like her.
“You aren’t identical. You have deeper lines on your face.”
He frowned, as if the thought displeased him. She looked him straight in the eye and didn’t take it back. Pretending to be what she wasn’t was too complicated. Life – with all its strange scents and flashing colors and loud sounds – was already too complex.
“You’re thinner than he is,” she said.
His frown didn’t smooth. “Anything else?”
“Your voice is deeper.”
“No one’s said that before.”
“My hearing is very sharp.”
He looked at her oddly. A look she got often. One that said what are you?
If they asked her, she would tell them she was like a book with most of the pages blank, the words wiped off.
“My sense of smell is sharp, too.” Smells could be awkward. And unpleasant. Except food. Most of the time, the smell of food cooking was wonderful. If there really were a heaven, she wanted it to smell like an Indian restaurant. Or Italian. Or pumpkin pie baking in an oven.
If it were heaven, the smells could alternate days. Every soul could walk around in its own cloud of scent.
This man’s scent wasn’t unpleasant. She wanted to lean in and give him a good sniff to identify the smell. To imprint it in her memory. But the thought of getting too close to him made her skin prickle again.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She scratched her head on the left side. The thinking hemisphere, Dr. Whitcomb called it, the reason her thoughts weren’t quite normal. As she scratched, she avoided the area where her head indented.
“I think I should wait for your brother to come. He’s the real constable.”
“My brother’s sick today.”
His deep voice snapped her gaze back to his face. Though he still looked into her eyes, she could tell he was lying. Maybe because he was staring too hard, watching to see if she believed him.
“If this was a TV show,” she said, “he would be with a woman.”
The shadows in his eyes lifted and the skin around his eyes crinkled, while the corners of his lips curled up. She warmed inside, an unusual feeling. She tried to figure out what it was so she could explain it to Dr. Whitcomb.
Happy. That’s what it was. An ice-cream-melting-on-her-tongue feeling. Only this melting happened inside her chest, warming her heart.
Maybe she wouldn’t tell Dr. Whitcomb after all.
She’d tell Bast instead.
Bast didn’t say, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” after every sentence, as if she were analyzing her words like they were math problems. Instead, she had a way of saying mrrow. Meaning: That’s interesting. Go on.
“So you came instead,” she said.
“You said someone was trying to kill you.”
“I didn’t actually say that. I said someone had tried to kill me in the past. And someone was on my property last night.”
The crinkles around his eyes deepened, as did the creases on the sides of his face. “Did you see anyone?”
“Bast heard whoever it was first. And then I did.”
“You didn’t call last night. You called this morning.”
“I heard them leave last night.” She paused. This was when the way he looked at her would change. But she had to say it because it was the truth. “I only called this morning because Bast told me trouble was on the way.” His expression didn’t change, but Nia didn’t allow herself to relax. There was more. “What if it was the person who tried to kill me?”
The sense of lightness coming from him turned suddenly dark. Though no clouds dimmed the sun above them, the air around Nia chilled as she looked at the hardness of his face, as if his outline from the chin up were carved on a sword hilt.
“I’ll protect you,” he said. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Now Nia relaxed. For this second, she thought she wouldn’t want to be the person he caught on her property. For this second, she was fiercely glad he seemed to be on her side.
Miracle Pie
A Miracle Interrupted novel
Edie Ramer
Katie Guthrie has pie magic. No special ingredients required…intuition tells her what to bake. Whether it’s a Goodbye Pie or a Welcome Home Pie, it’ll turn out perfect and be waiting for the person who needs it most.
But when her best friend begs Katie to film a cooking show, there’s no pie in the world that can help Katie out of her predicament—she’d never let a friend down, but she doesn’t want to go in front of a camera. Especially when the man wielding it is the boy Katie left behind when she started her life over in Miracle, Wisconsin. The boy she used to call angel.
Gabe Robbins is no angel, and he’s no boy anymore. Burned out after a three-year stint building a hospital in Africa, Gabe ignores his demons by living day-to-day and filming wedding videos. Nothing deep, nothing he has to become invested in. Nothing that will get under his skin, until…
Watching Katie create her pies from behind his video camera makes him realize what he’s missing. He’s put his life on hold for too long, wasted too much time. Thanks to Katie and her pies, Gabe discovers his passion again. But will it lead him to his heart’s desire…or will this miracle take him away from Katie forever?
Excerpt:
Gabe bent over the keyboard. Mumbling that he didn’t want to show the cooking part, he fast-forwarded to the end of the show. The video moved again at regular speed, showing her standing stood behind the counter. But he was the one talking on the video, asking, “Tell us, why pies? Why not cakes or cookies or cupcakes?”
He must have edited Rosa’s objections out, because she was wrinkling her nose then leaning over the counter and saying, “Pies are love.”
He laughed softly. “Tell me how pies can be love.”
Sitting next to her tormentor while she watched the screen, Katie groaned and laughed and covered her eyes and then uncovered them. Finally, the video ended, freezing with her bemused face looking back at her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He twisted in the chair, so close she could see three shades of blue in his eyes. See that his eyelashes were golden brown, darker than his hair. Close enough that she could lean forward and kiss him.
She drew in her breath.
“I thought it was great,” he said. “So did Taz. Viewers w
ill love it.”
“You mean...” She sat back in her chair and shook her head. Shaking the thought of kissing him right out of her mind.
“I can’t promise it will go viral, but I can promise a lot of views. Not with just this one—we’d have to do a series of similar videos to build your viewers. We can do it. You’re passionate about pies. People love passion. They can get recipes anywhere, but what you have is unique. They’ll love you. They’ll want to watch you. They’ll tell their friends about you.”
She shook her head again. Sometimes she thought she might be a little insane, but she was nowhere near as insane as this man.
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Leave it to me. I’ll do it.”
She shifted her gaze. Not toward the camera but toward the back door. Wishing she could step outside. The sun was out. Coming home this morning after delivering pies to the truck stop and the Italian restaurant in Tomahawk, she noticed a few yellow and orange leaves on the sugar maple tree in the front yard. In the dawn redness it looked like an old painting. She had an urge to go outside and see them now, in full sunlight.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
Her head snapped around. “No.”
His eyebrows lifted. “It’s very common. Some people are afraid of greatness.”
“I bake pies.” Her tone was sharp. What didn’t this man understand about baking a pie? Anyone could do it. In fact, everyone should do it. If all the leaders of all the countries in the world went into their kitchens and made at least one pie every day, the world would no doubt be a better place.
Slowly, her breaths shallow, she turned her gaze back to him. He watched her. Unmoving. Implacable.
She wanted to kick him.