“Don’t you get it? You’re in those pages. It’s that part of you mentioned in your emails. The part you said you lost and were trying to find. That’s why I loved them. That’s why I wanted you to tell me the truth about Axel.”
“You knew I was Axel when you asked to meet him?” She pressed her hands to her head and stepped away from him. “No more games, Gabriel. No more metaphors or . . . or puzzles or secrets. Once and for all, just say what you mean.”
Every muscle in his face twitched and tightened and then relaxed into happiness. Then he formed the words Avery had tucked in her heart, never expecting to actually hear.
“You really can’t see when somebody loves you, can you? Okay, then let me say it plainly. I love you, Avery,” he said as he stroked her hair. “I think I’ve loved you since the first day I met you. I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I’ve hurt you. I know that, and I’m ready to spend as long as it takes to help you trust me again.” His finger slowly slid along her cheek and to her chin, tipping her face toward his. “I’m not trying to replace Paul or Lucia, and I’m not challenging the promises we’ve already made, but there’s so much of this life left for each of us. I’m ready to open my heart again. To you. Every inch of it. I’m asking you to fill it. To teach me. In return, let me help awaken that part of you written into Axel’s books. That piece of you you’ve been trying to find. Avery Xandra Elkins Thompson, could you possibly learn to love a proud, stubborn man like me?”
Wes was on the dance floor with Emilia when Ian abruptly approached him, carrying Avery’s wrap and purse as he frantically searched for his missing date.
“Have you seen your mother? I left her on the terrace with some silver-haired wolf, and now I can’t find her.”
Emilia and Wes exchanged curious glances. “On the terrace, you say?” Wes repeated as he raised a surprised brow in Emilia’s direction. He feigned indifference as he turned back to Ian. “Have you checked the gazebo on the west side of the house? Mom loves the view from there.”
Ian nodded. “Thanks.”
Wes crooked his elbow for Emilia. “Some silver-haired wolf, huh? Maybe we’d better find them before they kill each other.”
She took his arm, and the pair strolled off the dance floor and onto the almost vacant terrace. “I wonder where they went,” Wes mused as they scanned the area. “They’re obviously not here, but the music sure sounds great out here, under the stars.”
Wes looked down at Emilia. “May I make a casual observation?”
She smiled flirtatiously at him. “I’ve been waiting all night.”
“You look beautiful. I’m glad you called me, and, as guilty as I’ll feel tomorrow for saying this, I’m glad Muscle Beach dropped a barbell on his foot.”
“We almost had a good thing going, didn’t we?”
“Not good enough apparently, but too good to walk away from easily.”
“I’m grateful for the time we had together. You made me think about some things. You might be pleased to know that I registered to vote in the next election.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you. And you might also find some pleasure in knowing that my dad has a new interest in religion. He officially asked me to attend a few times with him.”
“And?”
Her head titled to the side, and she smiled. “I think it was important to him that I just explore that experience. I’m not prepared to say more on the topic right now.”
Wes nodded thoughtfully. “You helped me grow as well. I’ve attended town hall meetings for candidates on both sides of the aisle. It’s been a positive experience.” He brought his face within inches of hers. “It seems we were good for each other after all.”
She closed her eyes and stepped back. “Don’t, Wes. We’ve been through all this.”
“Shhhh. All right. Let’s just enjoy tonight.”
Familiar laughter, bubbling up from below, sent them to the terrace’s railing where they looked down and found Avery and Gabriel locked in a tight embrace, kissing.
“Mom?” shouted Wes.
“Daddy?” shrieked Emilia.
“Hello, angel! Hi, Wes!” Gabriel looked at Avery and kissed her again.
“Uh,” Wes began, “do you guys want to tell us what’s going on?”
Avery pulled away and covered her mouth with her hands while she composed herself. She pointed to Gabriel with widened eyes. “He says he loves me!”
“What?” Wes and Emilia cried out.
Gabriel tightened his arms around Avery. “Give us a few minutes, will you? Then we’ll be up to tell you all about it.”
Wes and Emilia turned around in utter disbelief. “What just happened here?”
“Weren’t they at each other’s throats the last time they were together?”
Wes slumped against the balustrade. “Now I’ve seen it all.”
“They’re the last two people I’d ever imagine together.”
“I know.” They stood in stunned silence until Wes laughed. “Huh!” he uttered. “I guess this proves that anything can happen.” He looked down at Emilia and smiled. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
She studied his face for several seconds. “You mean ‘anything’ as in ‘us anything’?”
“Why not? You said it yourself. They’re the last two people you’d ever imagine together. That means there’s hope for us, wouldn’t you say?”
She took his hand and placed it on her waist. “Let’s just start with a dance or two, okay? And give me your best stuff. I suddenly feel like being dipped.”
Avery and Gabriel climbed the steps and found their children in one another’s arms.
“This could get complicated,” Avery joked.
“I think we should discuss it,” Gabriel said with feigned seriousness.
“What did you have in mind?” Avery nodded as she linked her arm in his.
“I still owe you some key lime pie. I know a place that makes the best in the world.”
“What about Ian? I should tell him about us. Besides, he’s got my purse and my wrap.”
Gabriel pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ve waited twenty-four years for this moment. We’ll call him later, or better yet, he can read about it in the literary section.”
– THE END –
Acknowledgments
Awakening Avery holds a special place in my heart. This edition is a remake of a story with this title, first published in 2010 to a small niche market. I’ve always wanted to launch it to a wider audience, and I hope I’ve done justice to these tender topics.
Like the characters in Awakening Avery, our family experienced the loss of two loving fathers in a short amount of time. Three years after my father’s passing, my husband, Tom, experienced a mild heart attack from which, thankfully, he made a complete recovery. Still, those first few days impacted me profoundly. For weeks, I looked at my life differently, wondering what I would do, who I would be, and where I would go if anything happened to him. Questions about the impact losing great fathers has on families, and the resulting anchor I found in my faith, became the inspiration for this book.
Many thanks to you, the reader, for setting other things aside and escaping with me for a while.
I’m grateful for my children by birth and marriage—Tom and Krista Lewis, Amanda and Nick Long, Adam and Brittany Lewis, and Joshua and Sidney Lewis. And to my grandkids, my masterpieces—Tommy, Keira, Christian, Brady, Avery, Desmond, Chase, Wes, Noah, Kenzie, and a little one I’m excited to meet very soon—you are the grand prizes of life and you make growing older a reward.
Thanks, Josh, for four magical trips to Bradenton to watch IU baseball. It was then that I first fell in love with Anna Maria Island.
Thank you, Tom, for all your love and support, for sharing my first tour of the Cá d’Zan, and for being the man with whom I want to watch old westerns and take the long way home.
I can spin a good yarn, but I rely heavily on gifted editors to smooth out t
he bumps. I’m immensely grateful to my mind-bogglingly brilliant editor and friend, Elizabeth Petty Bentley, who makes me a better writer every day. Thank you, thank you, Beth!
I can’t begin to measure the impact my generous, talented award-winning critique partners have had on this story and on my career. Thank you, Elizabeth Petty Bentley, Lisa Swinton, Sarah Lee, and Lisa Rector.
I have no visual talents, so I’m very grateful for talented colleagues like best-selling author Victorine Lieske who designed Awakening Avery’s beautiful cover, and who modified the covers of The Dragons of Alsace Farm, and Sweet Water, for the Second Chance Romance Series.
Thank you to my VIP Readers who helped choose the cover deign, and whose support makes the writing process fun. Sincere thanks also go to my Willowsport Crew of eagle-eyed beta readers and proofers who faithfully read this manuscript multiple times, catching mistakes—Khadra Michaelson, Shauna Joesten, Bruce Morse, Laura Lewis, Lisa Lee, Christine Clark, Becky Davies, Pam Jacobs, Cyndy Packer, Vicki Johnson, Teresa Denkers, and Judi Stull. Their help was absolutely invaluable.
Like The Dragons of Alsace Farm and Sweet Water, Awakening Avery was planned to be released as a solo novel. The theme of getting a second chance at love ran so clearly through all three novels that I decided to tie them together as a series of books featuring characters who, for various reasons, knew love, lost love, and took a second chance at finding it again. I hope you’ll enjoy all three novels in the series. Wishing you love wherever you are.
— Laurie Lewis
About the Author
Laurie (L.C.) Lewis will always be a Marylander at heart—a weather-whining lover of God, crabs, American history, and the sea. She admits to being craft-challenged, particularly lethal with a glue gun, and a devotee of sappy movies.
Love on the Line, (2019) is Laurie’s eleventh published novel. Her women’s fiction/romance novels include Awakening Avery, (2018), Love on a Limb, (2017), Sweet Water, (2017), The Dragons of Alsace Farm (2016), and Unspoken (2004), written as Laurie Lewis. Using the pen name L.C. Lewis, she wrote the five volumes of her award-winning FREE MEN and DREAMERS historical romance series, set against the backdrop of the War of 1812: Dark Sky at Dawn (2007), Twilight’s Last Gleaming (2008), Dawn’s Early Light (2009), Oh, Say Can You See? (2010), and In God is Our Trust, (2011).
Laurie's real treasure is her family, but since she can't keep them on a shelf, she'll tell you about her awards. Laurie is a 2017 RONE Award Winner (The Dragons of Alsace Farm), and she's won four New Apple Literary Awards, winning Best New Fiction 2018 for Love on a Limb. She is also a BRAGG Medallion honoree, and she was twice named a Whitney Awards and USA Best Books Awards finalist.
She would love you to join her VIP Readers’ Club so she can share writing tips, swap recipes, share chapters, and keep you informed of upcoming releases: https://www.laurielclewis.com/newsletter
She also loves to chat with readers, but she’ll talk your ear off, so trust us, it’s safer to visit her through any of these sites:
Website: www.laurielclewis.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurielclewis
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1743696.Laurie_L_C_Lewis
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaurieLCLewis/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurielclewis/
An Excerpt from Love on a Limb
The sheer audaciousness of the mission Matthew Murray Grayken was about to embark upon exceeded the thrill of riding Chile’s white-water roller coaster—The Terminator—and loomed more soul-satisfying than skydiving over Dubai’s man-made archipelago, Palm Jumeirah.
Matt Grayken was about to ask a total stranger to marry him.
He pulled the pocket square from his Brooks Brothers jacket and wiped his sweaty palms, staining the unforgiving silk. It and the nerve-soaked suit would need to go to the cleaners now. He pulled his phone out to add that task to his packed schedule, then stopped, chagrined, and put the device away. The task could wait.
The cause of the day’s mission amplified the ever-present lump in his throat. He returned his focus to the woman with the nametag that read Mikaela Compton. She was the embodiment of compassion that served those on the other end of the room. Her peace washed over him again as it always did when he watched her from afar. He loved the way she leaned in when speaking to someone, beginning and ending each encounter with a caring smile and a touch. Compassion beamed from brown eyes that crinkled when she turned a sober moment to laughter, as she did nearly every minute as she joked with patients and cheered their progress at each station.
From the first day that chance allowed him to see her, only recalling her soft brown eyes, that smile, and those gentle hands could calm him as he lie awake, shivering from night sweats, staring at the ceiling. In order to see her, he moved all his future appointments to the last slot when it was easier to linger, soaking up more of her optimism and hope. And then he decided to shoot for the moon and propose to her, a total stranger.
Matt waited for her to check on the patient nearest to him, and then he cleared his throat and said, “May I ask you a question?”
She moved to him with a dancer’s grace, her brown hair bouncing within a tousled lump atop her head, as if she had gathered it while turning a somersault. Somehow the way the stray pieces fell seemed elegant, perfect, stylish around her delicate, unadorned face. He waited for it, and then it came, the caring lean-in followed by a gentle hand on his shoulder and that smile that warmed his chills away.
“I’m not your oncologist’s nurse, but I’ll try.”
Matt imagined what it would be like to hold her close, to fill his arms with her comfort, and then he realized how long he’d paused, soaking in the humanity she offered in a place of plastic and poison.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Actually, I . . . uh . . . I have a . . . uh . . . a proposition for you.”
He cringed. His smooth, well-practiced proposal fled from his mind leaving that crude string of words in its place. He waited for her to slap him or, worse, to turn on her heel and leave.
“A proposition, eh?” A momentary show of skepticism erupted into a sunburst of pleasure that illuminated her face. She placed her hands on her hips, tipped her head askew, and offered him a wondering scowl. “You’re the third one today, and I have to warn you, you’re up against some tough competition.” She pointed down the row of chemo stations to a bald older man and his smiling wife, who were intently listening to the exchange. “Mr. and Mrs. Davenport keep me stocked in fresh vegetables from their garden on the chance I’ll let them adopt me. Isn’t that right?” The Davenports supported her claim enthusiastically.
“And Mr. Fitzhugh whistles, ‘I Love You Truly’ to me every appointment, and calls me his best girl.”
A rail-thin arm raised and waved to her.
Nurse Compton shot the man a smile and turned back to Matt with a playful shrug. “What can I say? They’ve set the bar pretty high.” She gave Matt’s shoulders a pat, followed by another of her thousand-watt smiles, dismissing with grace and caring what he assumed was another of a hundred daily come-ons.
She turned to go, and Matt reached for her hand, brushing his fingers over her skin. She turned, as if sensing something different in this exchange which likewise restored feelings long dormant in Matt. “Dinner then?” he asked.
Their eyes locked as she studied him, weighing the invitation. “It’s not allowed. Nurses can’t date patients.”
He was prepared for that response. “The administrators agreed to . . . bend the rules . . . for a substantial donation. We could go after your six o’clock class—”
She jerked her hand back. “How’d you—”
Guilt flooded Matt at being the cause of the sun’s eclipse. He knew she was not a woman who would enjoy being scoped out and studied. He wanted to kick himself. “I’m sorry . . . I . . . I overheard you telling the other nurses.”
The tension in her face and shoulders eased, but did not dis
perse. From behind her he heard two of the other nurses whistling a tune he couldn’t immediately identify. It clearly had meaning for Nurse Compton. She shot a scathing glance over her shoulder at them, but the volume only increased, and her scolding slipped into a smile before stiffening again, giving Matt’s hope renewed footing.
“What are they whistling?” He chuckled as her face burned with embarrassment.
“WDM, Baby!” cheered a nurse with a Jamaican accent.
Matt’s hands spread wide in surrender as he pled with the sheepish nurse. “Oh, come on. You’ve got to tell me now.”
Nurse Compton capitulated after one last glance back at the encouraging twosome. “Well-Dressed Man.” When nothing registered on his face, she added. “By ZZ-Top? Surely you’ve heard it before.” Her head bobbled back and forth as she sang an off-key rendition of “‘Cause every girl crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man?”
Matt leaned back and tipped a salute to Nurse Compton’s backup singers. “Thank you, ladies.” He returned his attention to the only one whose opinion of him mattered and found her twisting a loose lock of hair. “It appears I have their vote. What do you say?”
A slow nod began. “Are you sure you’re up to it? After treatment, food is the last thing on most of our patients’ minds.”
“I could do something light.”
“All right. Something quick. Before class. I know a place down the block—Meriwether’s. I’ll meet you there at five.”
It wasn’t the romantic dinner he’d hoped for, but Matt nodded and said, “Perfect. I’ll get us a table.”
The moisture from the harbor added to Maryland’s already oppressive August humidity that left everyone sweat-soaked and limp after a few minutes outdoors. His limited tolerance for hot weather was further diminished since his treatments had begun, rendering the adventurer an AC-loving indoor dweller who spent less and less time outdoors.
A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET Page 80