My first inspirational romance, Standing On The Edge Of Goodbye will be released November 17th.
She gave up everything in the name of love and it almost cost Kate Alexander her life. Now alone and pregnant, can Kate accept the second chance at happiness Matt Stevens is offering. Can she trust him when he tells her love isn’t supposed to hurt?
After the death of his son, Matt Stevens checked out on life and God, but when Kate shows up at his doorstep desperate and sick, Matt instinctively wants to help her and in the process finds himself thinking about things he’d written out of his life. Things like love and a future with Kate and her child.
Here is an excerpt:
She opened her eyes to a darkness so intense it had fused itself with her soul, embracing her like a suffocating blanket. Her head throbbed. Pain sparked from her left temple and throughout her body. It felt as if a lightning bolt had struck her. Kate struggled to bring her scrambled thoughts into focus. Somewhere in the distance, a car horn blared, penetrating the fogginess in her head. Then she remembered. He’d made good on his promise not to let her go. Josh had taken her by surprise outside of the low-‐‑class hotel room where she’d gone to escape him, mere inches away from freedom. She hadn’t seen his face before the blackness descended. There was no need. She knew who had taken her. The man of her nightmares. Her husband. He’d promised to love and honor her until death parted them. He’d broken that promise in so many ways, including this final shattered vow. Death wouldn’t part them. She would be with him forever, even to the end. Kate lifted her hands and felt around in the darkness; her fingers touched cold metal, above, to the side. All around. A car’s trunk? It made sense. He wouldn’t want anyone to see her fear. After a few more minutes of grasping, she recognized matted carpet, a spare tire…and something far worse. A shovel, what felt like plastic bags, and a tire iron? A death kit. Her death kit. The once distant, blaring horn grew closer. The car she was in swerved on the road, not to the right, but left. He wasn’t trying to avoid the accident. He was deliberately heading into the oncoming lane, making good on his promise.
The impact of the crash sent her body slamming against the back of the trunk. What followed was the deafening sound of metal scraping against metal as the two cars barreled into each other and locked together like dancers united in a macabre dance. Spinning, then sliding, until all sense of direction was lost. The unsuspecting vehicle made contact with something: a tree, a guardrail, some unknown titan. Josh’s vehicle broke free, accelerated, then propelled onto its side, plowed across asphalt, sending her somersaulting within the confines of the trunk. Her head bounced against the top as the car came to rest at last. Silence followed. Then an explosion like nothing she’d ever heard. Then the smell of acrid smoke as the tiny car burst into flames. **** “Ten thousand angels listen while I pray…” Matt Stevens barely recognized his own voice as he said those familiar words aloud while the casket of the woman who had become closer than a friend was slowly lowered into the frozen Colorado ground. He knew the poem by heart. In fact, he’d lost count of the number of times he’d heard it in the past. After all, it was Rachel Bowers’ favorite poem. She had recited those words to him so many times in the past. Rachel never got tired of hearing those simple, childlike words. But today she wouldn’t be smiling as he spoke them aloud to the group of people gathered to pay their final respects to a woman who had touched everyone she met, including Matt. “Ten thousand angels watch over me through my days.” Rachel had all but forced her way into his life and his heart, and she’d almost accomplished the impossible. She had almost convinced him to start living again. Almost…until death had taken her away. “Ten thousand angels bring God’s smile on morning rays, Ten thousand angels will lead me home and guide me on that final
day.”
The stark noise of chunks of earth hitting the casket brought it all home to Matt once again. Just like that time a little more than a year earlier when he’d stood over his son’s grave in this very cemetery. Death was final and lacking in dignity, yet no one, no matter how innocent, got out of it. This was it. This grave was to be Rachel’s final resting place. There was no future for her beyond that sound. Just a few words said over a grave. Matt’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he thought about how Rachel would react to hearing that. He could almost hear her arguing with him. She’d argued about God and eternity right up until the very end. Yet in spite of Rachel’s belief in a loving God who sent those angels she loved so much to guide His children into eternal peace, none of those things had been true for her. Her final hours had been spent with only the shell of the man Matt had become to comfort her. Not even her granddaughter, the love of her life according to Rachel, had been there with her to ease those final moments. As much as he wished she was right about God, in the end, Rachel had been wrong. There wasn’t any such thing as a loving God, or eternity for that matter. There was only this life. This end. Surely the final proof of all those things had been an old woman dying alone. The truth was that poem, like all of Rachel’s beliefs, was little more than faded words tucked away in a worn out Bible that had once belonged to a dead woman.
