Bonnie bit her lip, her eyes shifting.
With perfect timing, Peter interjected, “Grampa, let’s play with the boat.”
Ian checked his watch and whispered to Leila, “Why look at the time!”
Leila rose from the table, collecting plates and cutlery. “We’ll take care of the dishes.”
With his own armful of leftovers, Ian pulled the door open and followed Leila in as Bonnie followed Clarence and Peter to the water.
Leila shook her head and moved to the sink. “Is this why it’s supposed to be good for families to eat together?”
“That’s the theory.” Ian scraped plates.
Leila rolled her eyes. “She seemed a tad hostile, don’t you think?”
Ian chuckled as warm water filled the sink. “Oh, did you pick up on that, too?”
“Well, at least she’s not repressing, right?”
“No. I’d say she’s very good at expressing herself.”
With her hands in the suds and Ian beside her, Leila gave him a sidelong glance. “Speaking of which, it looked like the two of you were having an interesting conversation earlier.”
Ian turned to her as she passed him a dripping plate. “Yes. She was testing the water, so to speak.”
“Do tell.”
“Well ….” He wiped the dish and set it aside. “She implied that you don’t consider our relationship serious.”
“I can’t believe her!” Leila tossed her dishrag into the sink with a splash and an exaggerated eye roll. “And what did you say?”
Ian wiped suds from Leila’s chin. He grinned but then turned pensive. “I told her you have an endearing way of understating things. I assured her that I am very serious about you, that in fact, I have never been more serious about any woman.”
With wet hands grabbing her waist, he pulled her close and kissed her with tenderness, reassurance, and even passion. He was wholly devoted to her, of that Leila was certain. The weight of his past dissolved as they continued washing dishes the way they often had—a domestic ritual performed together, a sampling of conjugality.
Other novels
by
J. B. Chicoine
Portrait Series
Book II
Portrait of a Protégé
Four years after the close of Portrait of a Girl Running, Leila is twenty-two and living on a pretty little lake in New Hampshire. A new set of circumstances throws her into a repeating cycle of grief that twists and morphs into unexpected and powerful emotions. Leila must finally confront her fears and learn to let go while navigating the field of cutting-edge psychology, protecting herself from the capricious winds of Southern hospitality, playing in the backyard of big-money art, and taming her unruly heart. Even her ‘guardian’ has a thing or two he must learn about love and letting go.
Available as a trade paperback and e-book
Portrait Series
Book III
Portrait of a Girl Adrift
Just when Leila thinks she has everything under control, her deepest insecurities resurface when she must confront her unresolved issues surrounding the mother who abandoned her as a baby, and the men who raised her. Not even Clarence Myles can show her the way, and so Leila embarks on a journey of self-discovery that sends her drifting from place to place in search of answers.
In the process of zigzagging her way between North and South, Leila encounters a series of intense psychological twists and turns that send her reeling, grappling with more questions about her identity. Embarking on a final quest for what it means to be ‘whole,’ Leila risks everything she knows about maintaining control; on a calculated whim, she boards a boat with a young woman who is everything Leila is not. While navigating her own heart, nothing could prepare Leila for the biggest truth she’s about to learn.
Available as a trade paperback and e-book
Uncharted
Story for a Shipwright
When a peculiar young woman shows up at the Wesley House Bed and Breakfast with a battered suitcase and stories to tell, shipwright Sam Wesley isn’t sure if she’s incredibly imaginative or just plain delusional. He soon realizes that Marlena is like no other woman he has ever met. Her strange behavior and far-fetched tales of shipwrecks and survival are a fresh breeze in Sam’s stagnant life.
Sam isn’t the only one enchanted by Marlena. With his best friend putting the moves on her and a man from her past coming back into her life, the competition for Marlena’s heart is fierce. In the midst of it all, a misunderstanding sends Marlena running, and by the time Sam learns what his heart really wants, it may be too late to win her back.
“Uncharted tells a story within a story. Readers will be forced to skate along the edge of suspended belief, eagerly turning the pages, hoping it all turns out to be true. A great read that will appeal to armchair sailors, romantics, and real adventurers.”
~Carol Newman Cronin, author of Cape Cod Surprise
Available as a trade paperback, audio-book, and e-book
Blind Stitches
Talented young seamstress Juliet Glitch has been putting the finishing touches on a client’s wedding dress when the father of the bride dies unexpectedly two weeks before the wedding. Mother of the bride—former prima ballerina and Russian expatriate—asks Juliet to hem her blind son Nikolai’s trousers for the funeral.
Juliet and Nikolai embark on a psychological and emotional journey into family dysfunction and repressed memories surrounding his mother’s defection from the Soviet Union twenty years earlier.
Available as a trade paperback and e-book
Spilled Coffee
Benjamin Hughes is on a mission. He has just bought back the New Hampshire lake cottage his family lost eighteen summers ago, in 1969, just before he turned fourteen—just before his life blew apart.
Still reeling from a broken engagement, Ben has committed himself to relive that momentous summer for the next twenty-four hours.
Every summer as a boy, Ben has gawked at the pretty redhead Amelia, granddaughter to the richest man on the lake, Doc Burns—owner of a Cessna floatplane and the Whispering Narrows estate. During the summer of ’69, Ben not only sneaks around with Amelia, but he learns how to fly with Doc, and meets an eclectic cast of characters that will change him forever. The best summer of Ben’s life turns out to be the worst as the Burns’ family dysfunction collides with his own family’s skeletons.
Also available in trade paperback and e-book
About the Author
J. B. Chicoine was born on Long Island, New York, and grew up in Amityville during the 1960s and ’70s. Since then, she has lived in New Hampshire, Kansas City, and Michigan. New England is her favorite setting for her stories.
When she’s not writing or painting, she enjoys volunteer work, traveling and working on various projects with her husband.
Her novel Portrait of a Girl Running placed as a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She blogs about her writing, and can be contacted via her website, www.JBChicoine.com and her J.B. Chicoine author page on Facebook, and Amazon Author Page
Portrait of a Girl Running Page 34