“The mayor wants to get started.”
Maggie sighed and reluctantly handed the baby back to Tom.
Simon took her hand, and she followed him back to where the mayor stood.
“Good morning, everybody,” the mayor began. “Thank you for coming out today to welcome a new, yet familiar, business to our town.”
Maggie squeezed Simon’s hand and, as had become her habit, she rubbed her thumb against the gold wedding band on his left ring finger.
“Simon’s uncle, Pete Walker, would like to say a few words,” the mayor announced.
Maggie looked at Simon. “Did you know he was going to say something?”
He shrugged. “No.”
Pete stepped up next to the mayor. “Thank you, mayor. If someone had told me a few years ago that we would all be standing here together now, I never would have believed it. Maggie and Simon’s relationship didn’t exactly get off to the smoothest start, but I have to officially take credit for everything.”
Maggie smiled. It was true. Had it not been for Pete asking for Simon’s help with the studio, things might have been very different.
“My nephew Simon has been such a joy in my life and a big part of my business for a long time now. And I need to thank him. For being there for me and for helping to bring my studio back to life after all these years. Thank you, Simon.”
Simon walked over and hugged his uncle.
Pete held a hand out to Maggie. She joined them and took Pete’s hand as he continued.
“Now, Simon lived many years as a bachelor and, honestly, I worried about him. I couldn’t let him end up like me, of course.”
That brought a little laughter to the audience.
“But Maggie was different. I knew it from the moment Simon told me this feisty girl had turned him down.”
Maggie and Simon both laughed at that.
“And I was right. There was something special between them. I have had the privilege of watching them work together on several occasions now, and they are the perfect team. They’re photography styles are quite different, but they compliment each other in every way. So when they came to me last fall and told me they were not only joining their lives, but also combining their wedding photography businesses into one, I knew it was the right decision. And I was also a little relieved Simon wasn’t going to end up a bachelor forever.”
The laughter erupted again.
Simon put his arm around Pete and squeezed.
“So congratulations to Simon and Maggie. I’m very happy for you, and I wish you much success.”
Maggie glanced up at the new sign above the shop that read, “Walker Wedding Photography”. It felt good to finally have their last name up there, to say goodbye to her old business name and all its baggage.
The mayor approached the red ribbon that was fastened across the front of the shop. He held out the scissors. “Here you go, Maggie.”
Maggie glanced over at Simon and smiled. “I love you.”
He squeezed her hand. “And I love you.”
They took the handle of the scissors and cut through the ribbon, officially marking the grand opening of their new studio and the beginning of a very bright future. Together.
She looked at her family and friends surrounding them, then at the man she adored standing next to her.
The big picture. I see it now.
Hello, Forever
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COMING NOVEMBER 15, 2016
Maggie James spent years all-consumed by her wedding photography business, hiding out from love after a painful breakup. When fellow photographer and consummate rogue Simon Walker came into her life, she held him at arms length to protect her fragile heart from being broken again. But after discovering how he selflessly helped her business in a very big way and admitting her mistaken assumptions about him, she is finally ready to open her heart again.
From small town Michigan to the sunny shores of Malibu, California, Maggie and Simon must navigate their budding relationship, survive family drama, and come face to face with the past to see if their faith and ever growing love are enough to get them to forever.
Until Then
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Growing up with a distant mother and absentee father, Michelle's childhood has been far from idyllic. Her only attention comes from her partying friends and the guys who are more than happy to give her the affection she longs for. But when one party goes wrong, Michelle's family hatches a plan to get her out of Chicago and away from her so-called friends.
College plans are low on Michelle's priority list, especially with no money to pay for it, until her grandparents offer to foot the bill for her entire tuition. There's just one catch. Michelle must choose between three schools - all hours away from Chicago and all Christian colleges.
Michelle's reluctant choice leads her to an unfamiliar place, where she's faced with new relationships and unexpected decisions that could change her life and her heart forever.
An Excerpt from Until Then (Cornerstone Book 2)
Chapter 1
August 1994
“There is NO WAY I’m going to a Christian college!”
The old, rickety table in the kitchen of the tiny two bedroom apartment was covered with brochures and catalogs from Cedarville, Cornerstone, and Grace — three religious colleges in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana respectively. All were addressed to Miss Michelle Harrison.
“Well, you better get used to the idea.” Her mother, Louise, stood across the table from where she sat.
Michelle shoved the papers across the table toward her mother. A few slid over the edge and floated to the floor. She flipped her dark, silky hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest in defiance.
Mom shot her a warning look.
Her father had been mostly quiet since he arrived with his parents for this special family meeting. “This is important. This is your future, Michelle.”
Michelle wished he would have remained quiet. “You didn’t have to come all this way, Dad. Mom and I will manage. Just like we have all these years.”
Her grandmother piped in at that. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”
Michelle raised an eyebrow. “And I don’t need your help either.”
“Well, I never,” Grandma huffed.
Grandpa shook his head. He was a man of few words, but Michelle could sense his disappointment in her behavior.
“I’ll just go to a community college,” Michelle stated.
“We can’t even afford that.” Louise reached for the papers and retrieved them from the floor. She looked weary. Michelle couldn’t remember a time when her mother hadn’t looked that way.
“Well, I’ll get a job and pay for it.” She was determined to stand her ground, even if it meant working multiple jobs like Mom always had. “I can do this on my own.”
“You could do that and struggle your way through school.” Louise sat across from her and placed the fallen papers with the others. “Or you could accept your grandparents’ generous offer to pay for your tuition and not have to worry about the money.”
“You guys don’t even like me.” She picked at the chipping paint on the edge of the table, not making eye contact with her grandparents.
“That’s not true.” Grandma took two steps closer and laid her fingertips on the edge of the table. “We love you. But you haven’t made it easy.” She paused with eyebrow raised. “For any of us.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “You’re just doing this because you feel guilty.”
Grandma’s mouth fell open a little. “What do we have to feel guilty about?”
“That your son is such a horrible father.”
Dad took a step forward and addressed her sternly. “You need to learn a little respect, young lady.”
“Don’t yell at her, Robert.” Louise glared at her ex-husband like a mama bear protecting her cub.
“Well, maybe if you had done a better job with her, she would
n’t be acting out like this.” He poked the bear.
“Are you kidding me? If anyone’s to blame, it’s you! She needed a father, and you walked out.”
Michelle covered her ears as she had always done when she was little. There had never been a shortage of raised voices in their home. It was how they communicated. When he bothered to be there, that is.
Almost since the day she took her first steps, he had been out the door on this business trip or that, rarely spending more than a couple weeks at home at a time. Her mother was a cold, paranoid sort of woman. Not once in all of her childhood could she remember Mom showing affection to Dad. She didn’t know if that was how she had always been or if her father’s lengthy absences and suspected rendezvous had caused it. She often wondered why they had married in the first place, because there seemed to be no love there.
They divorced when she was six, and she saw him once, maybe twice a year after that. He was a stranger, and he made no real effort to get to know her, which made their visits awkward and, in her opinion, completely unnecessary.
Mom did the best she could, but she struggled to pay the bills, every spare moment consumed by work. No time for her young daughter, who so desperately needed a mother’s guidance.
So Michelle was left to figure life out on her own. With a lack of positive female role models, no real girl friends in her life, and the absence of her father, she gravitated toward the company of boys, which inevitably led to boyfriends at an early age. And where her mother was cold and distant, steering clear of men after the sting of divorce, Michelle was the opposite, almost to the extreme. She was overly warm and affectionate, drawn to the opposite sex like a moth to a flame. And the attention she had never received at home was found in the arms of whatever guy would have her.
Michelle squeezed her eyes shut. Harsh insults and rude remarks overwhelmed the small space. Grandma had joined in, slinging opinions of her own. Her grandfather stood quietly in the corner, staying out of it.
“Stop!” Michelle finally cried. “STOP IT!”
The yelling ceased, but tension still hung heavy in the stale air.
Michelle felt a sudden urge to run. She would rather be with Tyler and Eddie than sitting there reliving the fights of her childhood. It was like the worst deja vu moment ever.
Louise gently pushed the papers in Michelle’s direction. “Look, I don’t care why your grandparents wanna do this. This is your ticket out of this place.”
Michelle didn’t want out of Chicago. She was happy there. She had a life there. “I’m not leaving my friends,” she snapped.
Her mother snorted. “Friends? Those boys are a bad influence, Missy.”
She hated being called “Missy”. And she knew exactly what her mother’s comment was referring to — a certain party Mom would never let her forget.
Almost two years had passed since that night at Ray’s with Tyler and Eddie, her closest guy friends. They were the guys she grew up with, the ones she felt most herself with, the ones who taught her how to play basketball. They also told her all about sex and introduced her to drinking and smoking pot. Eddie was like a brother to her, but Tyler was the one she wanted. She wanted him to look at her the way he looked at all the other girls, not just like one of the guys. Tyler had been with a lot of girls since she had known him, but she longed to be the one he wanted. She wanted to be the one he kissed behind the school during lunch. She wanted her first time to be with him. And that night at Ray’s, thanks to many beers, she got what she wanted.
Ray’s was always the place to be — the place to hang out and hook up, among other things. The crowd was larger than usual, the noise level higher than it should have been. It was not uncommon for Ray’s parties to be broken up by the cops, and Michelle and her friends were usually among the first to bolt when trouble came knocking. But they’d been drunk — very drunk — when she led Tyler up the smoky staircase to one of the bedrooms and clicked the door shut behind them.
“What are you doing?” he had asked when she pushed him back onto the bed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
He didn’t complain or try to stop her. And it finally happened. She lost her virginity to Tyler.
And then they spent the night together … in jail.
If they hadn’t been upstairs when the cops came, they never would have been caught. And if Eddie had warned them sooner, none of them would have. She totally blamed Eddie.
This incident, her continued association with these boys, and her constant sneaking out of the house led to many fights at home. Mom constantly held the party over her head. She even went so far as to forbid her from seeing any of them, but it didn’t work.
Sleeping with Tyler didn’t work either. She had hoped it would propel her to girlfriend status, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he saw them as friends with benefits and got physical with her whenever he was in the mood.
Sadly, she let him.
Her mother walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll find new friends. Better friends.”
She shrugged her shoulder away. “I don’t want new friends, and you can’t make me give them up. I’m not a little kid any more.”
“You’re sixteen. In my book, that’s still a kid.”
“Well, your book is old and out of print.” Michelle stood, her chair scraping loudly against the dingy linoleum floor. “And I’m almost seventeen.”
“Seventeen is not an adult.”
“Close enough.” She walked to the wall phone, and picked up the handset.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Michelle looked at her mom like she was totally clueless. “I think we’re done here. I have a phone call to make.”
“Those boys have no say in this.” Her mother walked across the kitchen, grabbed the phone from her hand, and slammed it into place. She grabbed Michelle’s arm and tugged her toward the table. “And we aren’t done talking yet.”
“Hey!” Michelle cried. She twisted her arm from Mom’s grip and pushed past, knocking her backwards into the wall.
Her mother’s eyes widened with anger.
Dad slammed his hands on the table. “Sit down! NOW!”
Michelle flopped down in the nearest chair and rolled her eyes. She knew her dad wasn’t there because he actually cared about her or what was going on in her life. He was only there because his parents had summoned him.
Dad pointed at the brochures. “You will apply to these three schools. You can choose which one you wanna go to when you see which ones accept you. If you don’t, we’ll pick for you.”
She crossed her arms again. Despite her rebellious ways, she was smart and got decent grades. She knew she would inevitably be accepted to all three.
“Why these?” She glared at the brochures in disgust.
“Your Uncle Brian is a professor at Cedarville, and Grandpa and Grandma both went to Grace. It’s where they met.”
Michelle wondered how her dad grew up in such a religious family yet still turned out the way he did. Neither of her parents ever had much to do with God, except maybe the occasional use of His name in vain, and He had never done anything to help their family. It was for this reason that the idea of God and religion seemed pointless to her.
She motioned to the last brochure for Cornerstone College. “And this one?”
“It’s another good Christian college, so you have options.”
Michelle flipped each catalog over and noticed the very obvious pattern. “All out of state.”
“Yes.”
“To get me away from my horrible friends,” she said sarcastically.
“To give you a chance at a better life,” her grandmother interjected.
“This sucks.” Michelle hated that they were ganging up on her like this. “I love Chicago. It’s my home. I don’t wanna live anywhere else.”
“You’re going,” her mother demanded.
“Screw you!” The fury bubbled up within her.
�
�You are out of control, Missy!”
“You can’t make me go!”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Watch me.”
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The Truth About Drew
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At fourteen, Claire Thomas leads the average life of a teenage girl, living in the shadow of her popular older brother, maneuvering her way through family, friendships, and first love. But her childhood best friend, Drew, is not your average teenage boy. In fact, he's downright unusual. Sometimes he disappears, almost before her eyes. He speaks in clichés, quotes and Bible verses, and is always writing in his worn leather notebook.
Drew seems to have the inside track to all things spiritual, but Claire lives in a family that does not go to church, with a mother who hates God. It seems Drew is trying to tell her something important, but she isn't sure what that is. After years of wondering why she is the only person to ever see or speak to him, thinking maybe he isn't real and it's all in her head, she is determined to discover The Truth About Drew.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I thank God above all else for giving me this creative mind and guiding my writing journey. Also for the life He has given me and all I’ve experienced to get to this point. There would be no book if not for that.
I must thank my wonderful Launch Team ladies. These girls helped in so many ways — from reading the manuscript and giving feedback to sharing on social media to knocking down the doors of local coffee shops and libraries and passing out bookmarks — to get the word out about this sweet little book, and I couldn’t be more grateful to them. Special thanks to Anita, Blanche, Carrie, Dianne, Heather, Jen, Kay, Kim, Laura and Nicole.
Thanks to my beautiful cousin, Sarah, who so graciously allowed me to use one of her wedding photos for the cover of my book.
Goodbye, Magnolia (Cornerstone Book 1) Page 23