Thirty-year-old Lelia Snyder is devastated when her aunt Tressie dies after a battle with ALS; now she’s the last living member of her family, and she feels truly alone. Even so, she manages to find joy in starting her life over, thanks to the generous inheritance Tressie has left her.
Life only gets better for Lelia when she meets a blond Adonis named Jason Ferguson. The honeymoon is planned, and everything seems perfect—until Lelia discovers a shocking truth about Jason. She flees her home, driving frantically into a blinding winter blizzard and losing her way on a narrow mountain road. An avalanche of snow and rock then pushes her vehicle over the edge of a cliff, burying her in a grave of snow. But Lelia is not ready to die.
Trevor Howard rescues Lelia and cares for her in his mountain cabin. As she awakes in his bed and looks into his smoldering gray eyes, she knows the two will never part. When Leila and Trevor return home, they reach new heights in their sensuous discovery of each other—only to find the demons of death have stalked them from the their idyllic mountain retreat.
Thirty-year-old Lelia Snyder is devastated when her aunt Tressie dies after a battle with ALS; now she’s the last living member of her family, and she feels truly alone. Even so, she manages to find joy in starting her life over, thanks to the generous inheritance Tressie has left her.
Life only gets better for Lelia when she meets a blond Adonis named Jason Ferguson. The honeymoon is planned, and everything seems perfect—until Lelia discovers a shocking truth about Jason. She flees her home, driving frantically into a blinding winter blizzard and losing her way on a narrow mountain road. An avalanche of snow and rock then pushes her vehicle over the edge of a cliff, burying her in a grave of snow. But Lelia is not ready to die.
Trevor Howard rescues Lelia and cares for her in his mountain cabin. As she awakes in his bed and looks into his smoldering gray eyes, she knows the two will never part. When Leila and Trevor return home, they reach new heights in their sensuous discovery of each other—only to find the demons of death have stalked them from the their idyllic mountain retreat.
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Overview
Thirty-year-old Lelia Snyder is devastated when her aunt Tressie dies after a battle with ALS; now she’s the last living member of her family, and she feels truly alone. Even so, she manages to find joy in starting her life over, thanks to the generous inheritance Tressie has left her.
Life only gets better for Lelia when she meets a blond Adonis named Jason Ferguson. The honeymoon is planned, and everything seems perfect—until Lelia discovers a shocking truth about Jason. She flees her home, driving frantically into a blinding winter blizzard and losing her way on a narrow mountain road. An avalanche of snow and rock then pushes her vehicle over the edge of a cliff, burying her in a grave of snow. But Lelia is not ready to die.
Trevor Howard rescues Lelia and cares for her in his mountain cabin. As she awakes in his bed and looks into his smoldering gray eyes, she knows the two will never part. When Leila and Trevor return home, they reach new heights in their sensuous discovery of each other—only to find the demons of death have stalked them from the their idyllic mountain retreat.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781458211057 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abbott Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 310 |
| File size: | 368 KB |
Read an Excerpt
MOUNTAIN SHADOWS
By Eva Maxwell
Abbott Press
Copyright © 2013 Eva MaxwellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-1103-3
CHAPTER 1
Lelia was born to parents in their middle years having been fitted into their hectic careers. Mary and William Snyder were professors teaching at the state University in nearby Boonville. Her mother had always had numerous problems with her health and especially with her respiratory system and died of pneumonia when Lelia was only twelve, leaving Lelia and William Snyder, her devoted father, alone in a big two-story colonial house that had been her mother's pride and joy. About two months after Mary's death, William's sister, Tressie was suddenly widowed, her husband dying of a heart attack. Rather than living alone she sold her home and came to stay with them.
Tressie was a wonderful, intelligent, loving woman. She had never been blessed with children of her own so she doted on Lelia, loving her as the daughter she never had and Lelia came to love her as much as the mother she had lost.
Tressie and her husband John had owned a large department store and operated it together before his death, but when he died Tressie handed the operation of the store over to the assistant manager, who was a boyhood friend of both Tressie and John. This left Tressie free to devote her time, energy and love to her brother and niece, knowing their loss as well as her own. Tressie was lucky in her choice of managers because Bert Martin was both honest and loyal to her. He operated the store as if it were his own and always kept Tressie advised as to any important decisions needing to be made, seeking her counsel as to the disposition of these matters. But for all intents and purposes Tressie no longer had much to do with the store other than the normal weekly shopping trip or to help when the store was shorthanded to handle some of the work of inventory. At times, which were rare, she would also sit in on tax meetings just to keep up with her investments.
Lelia had a wonderful, if somewhat lonely childhood, full of love and devotion, being the center of the elderly William and Tressie's lives. Lelia had a quick intelligence and progressed at an amazing speed. Several years her abilities helped her to skip grades, making her father and aunt very proud, but the joy and pride this brought to them also resulted in Lelia being a virtual outcast during her school career. Making friends proved to be difficult if not impossible. The other children her age were intimidated by her being in a higher grade than them, and the children that were in the same grade level as she were older and didn't share any of the same interest as she. As a result of this natural if not easy breach of companionship with her peers, Lelia spent the greater part of her spare time with her small family. In essence William and Aunt Tressie were not only her family but her best and only friends, accepting and loving her for the unique person she was.
Lelia was never included in the normal range of childhood growing activities missing many experiences such as parties, dances and hour long phone calls as young women do as they grow to young adults. As a result of this lack of peer association her interests ran in other directions. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge, but her total absorption of books left out the commonsense side of her natural learning process. In essence, Lelia had missed virtually the most important part of her childhood and in some areas she was still a child trying to learn in an adult world.
When Lelia began college she elected to stay-at-home, commuting to school daily rather than taking a room at the dorm as most of the girls did, testing their wings in the adult world for the first time with no parental supervision. Lelia graduated from college at an accelerated speed with a degree in philosophy. Despite numerous offers for continued education in various fields she turned them all down choosing to stay at home living happily, if not excitedly, with her loved ones.
Lelia's life went on for the next few years a mundane study of totally uneventful but contented days. It was a standard pattern. She would help her aunt Tressie with the housework, her father in his garden and read everything she could find. She just loved to read.
Then it happened without warning, the beginning of the end of her "normal" life. One bright spring morning when Lelia was twenty-five her father went out to work in his garden before breakfast as was his habit on beautiful sunny days. When Tressie ask Lelia to call her father in for breakfast, he didn't answer. Lelia went in search of him thinking he was so absorbed in his hobby that he had not heard their calls. What she found was something so devastating to her that she all but collapsed herself. Her father was lying where he must have fallen in his rose garden, the oppressive fragrance of the crushed roses was a macabre pall hanging heavily over the scene, William's frail body twisted and drawn at unbelievable angles. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets as if drawn there by some invisible string. He had suffered a massive stroke which left him totally paralyzed complicated by slurred speech, but his mind was for the most part still alert and intact.
Lelia and Aunt Tressie decided to care for William at home for as long as possible. Although it was a silent acknowledgment it was still felt by both that when the three of them were separated, their lives would move to another sphere that could never be reversed.
For the next two years Lelia and Tressie cared for the failing William. One morning exactly two years and one day after William's stroke, Lelia went to her father's room to share breakfast with him and found that sometime during the night, her father had gone quietly to be with his beloved Mary. A smile curved his twisted mouth, his body laying in a semblance of his once proud posture.
Lelia and Tressie tried not to grieve both knowing that William was truly happy for the first time since he was widowed, but their personal feelings got in the way when it intruded on the loss of their loved one.
After William's death, Lelia half-heartedly suggested to her aunt that it was time for her to start looking for a job, but aunt Tressie was adamant in her refusal to listen to such a thing, stating in her matter of fact way that Lelia and she had adequate income to live on. She said they only had a few years left to enjoy their lives together and when she passed on to her reward there would be plenty of time for Lelia to find employment.
Having been diagnosed several years past with the disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, Aunt Tressie seemed to lose the will to live with the progression of the disease, especially with Williams death. ALS is a degenerative neurologic disease characterized by atrophy or loss of the muscle tissue. The old zest for life and constant activity was gone. As her leg, arm and hand muscles began to weaken she became less and less mobile causing her to become more dependent on Lelia. She seemed to feel she had outlived her own time and no matter what activity Lelia suggested, aunt Tressie found an excuse to sit in her chair by the window, gazing for long hours out at the rose garden William had so loved.
After Lelia's thirtieth birthday celebration in late September, aunt Tressie retired early pleading exhaustion complicated with a cold coming on. The next morning Lelia prepared a sumptuous breakfast tray complete with a beautiful late blooming yellow rose from her father's garden taking it to her room as usual. Knocking on the door she went right in not waiting for an answer and found that her aunt, like her brother William, had died quietly during the night of an apparent heart attack. As Lelia stood looking lovingly at her aunt, she felt the total desolation of loneliness for the first time in her life. With Aunt Tressie's death her entire small family unit had vanished, leaving behind in its wake the many warm memories of laughter, love and belonging that would support and strengthen Lelia throughout the coming years. She had no one on earth to turn to for help, advice, and most importantly companionship and unquestionable love. What was she going to do?
Lelia sat on the side of the bed taking her aunt's cold hand in her warm ones, cradling it next to her cheek, tears washing the entwined hands, knowing that the life she had shared with this dear warm and loving woman was over but would never be forgotten and she was stronger because of it.
After the funeral, Lelia returned to an empty, cold house with an overwhelming feeling of abandonment. What was she going to do? Her life thus far had not prepared her for a future alone such as this. True, she had never really tried to change it preferring to let it go along at its undemanding pace, but now she had to face some hard facts, with even harder answers. How was she to maintain this huge house? For that matter, how was she to pay for aunt Tressie's funeral? She had a small inheritance from her father in a savings account, aunt Tressie having always refused to hear of Lelia spending any of the money saying she could use it later for something special as a last gift from her father. True, she had one of the best educations money could buy, but she was neither trained nor qualified for any kind of employment. There was no getting around it, she would have to start job hunting soon, maybe even tomorrow, but for now all she wanted to do was have a nice hot cup of cocoa and go to bed, leaving behind the worries and uncertainties crowding her anxious world for the sweet oblivion of sleep. Tomorrow was soon enough to start going over her options, that is if she had any!
CHAPTER 2
Two days following aunt Tressie's funeral, Lelia was still in a quandary as to her options and what to do first. As a diversion, she started looking in the newspaper want ads for ideas. When it came to the specifications listed in the numerous advertisements, she wasn't qualified for even the most menial employments she thought sarcastically to herself.
She was growing more and more depressed as the days passed feeling truly defeated and useless for the first time in her life. The same question kept coming back: what was she going to do? How was she going to live? There had always been money for necessities and for anything within reason that she needed, but then her needs were few. She would have to think of something, but what? Lelia was so tired now that she couldn't get her mind to focus on anything. She would get a good night's sleep and everything would look better in the morning, she hoped.
Nine-o-clock the following morning found Lelia sorting papers at the desk where her father and then aunt Tressie had spent many hours when she heard the subdued chimes of the bell at the front door. Taking the time to glance hurriedly into the mirror by the front door before opening it, Lelia saw her shaggy reflection looking back at her. Her blue eyes were dull and red rimmed from crying with dark shadows under them. Her brown hair lay limp and lifeless to her shoulders straight as a stick, she really needed to get it cut, she thought. Lelia's complexion, always being pale, was now pale to the point of looking like a ghost. The old jeans and shirt she was wearing had seen better days, but their hanging folds did little to disguise the slim figure hiding in their worn wrinkled depths.
The bell rang again, bringing Lelia's wondering attention back to answering the door. She shook her head as she began to open the door. What had gotten into her lately? She had never cared about her appearance before. Why was she letting it bother her now, at this late date? When she opened the door she stood facing a man with a round, jovial face, showing signs of a smile never far from his mouth. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, but with the kind of bone structure he possessed his age would always be indeterminate. Dressed in a fashionable navy blue suit with a crisp white shirt, the man was carrying a black leather briefcase in his left hand and was extending his right hand for a firm handshake accompanied by the cheerful "good morning" Lelia had expected to hear coming from a man with his open friendly face. As Lelia stood regarding the stranger, he was in turn examining her in minute detail from head to toe.
What he saw before him was a young woman, who was really older than she looked. He knew she had to be close to thirty, if not that exact age, but to guess by her looks a person could easily mistake her age for being in the early twenty's. She had non-descript brown hair that fell limply to her shoulders, a pale almost translucent skin that looked as smooth as cream, and eyes the color of a robin's egg blue that showed as much life as the bewildered expression on her face allowed.
Mr. Lawrence wondered what his announcement would mean and how it would change this rather plain, bewildered appearing woman. Yet he knew looks could be deceiving. He knew her marks in school belied the intelligence behind the innocent eyes.
Although a married man for a decade, he was nonetheless a man who appreciated an attractive woman. He thought with a little effort on Lelia's part she could be pretty in a quiet way, maybe even attractive if she were to apply a touch of make-up, style her hair in a more becoming fashion and most of all, she needed a new wardrobe, dressing as she did in clothes more appropriate for a woman of less means. Yes, that would help a great deal; dress her in clothes that would fit in all the right places.
Mr. Lawrence couldn't decide if she did nothing to enhance her appearance on purpose or if she just didn't bother out of sheer neglect. He would have been truly surprised to know that neither was the reason for Lelia's lack of grooming, but that she felt it was a waste of time to try to look any differently than she did, because, although her father and aunt Tressie had always assured her she was a pretty girl, she had never believed them, as it had never mattered. After all they were her family and they loved her, but she knew the truth. When girls that were really not much different in physical attributes were turning down dates, she was never asked on one, not realizing it was her intelligence not her appearance that intimidated the opposite sex.
Right now Jacob Lawrence thought that if he was any judge of character (and he was that) Lelia was wondering just who he was and what he wanted. He knew that his visit had been a secret from her all these years for a purpose, but for the life of him he couldn't understand Tressie Beaumont's reasoning. She had always been a shrewd businesswoman and knew her own mind, but what had made her do the things he was now obliged as her attorney to inform this seemingly mousy, frightened woman of and what would she do when he did? Tressie surely saw some promise below the surface that wasn't noticeable at first glance; perhaps it was the quiet strength that could barely be glimpsed hiding beneath the insecure blue eyes.
"Well," the little man said, "I'm sure you are wondering who I am, and I'd like to introduce myself if I may Miss Snyder. I'm Jacob Lawrence, your aunt Tressie's attorney. I was both friend and advisor to your uncle John and aunt Tressie for many years, from the time they started their first business until the time of your dear aunt's death."
Lelia looked at the short, stubby, balding man with a cheerful round face and sagging chin and could well understand aunt Tressie's enjoying his counsel. But, why had she never met him before? For that matter she had never heard her speak of him! Why was he here now?
"I'm sorry," Lelia said, remembering her manners, "please come in." Leading him into the cozy little den, she asked if he would like a cup of coffee.
Mr. Lawrence smiling broadly at her said, "Yes, I would be most appreciative of a cup, thank you."
Lelia first saw him seated comfortably on the sofa, then excusing herself went to the kitchen to prepare the coffee and as an afterthought she added some chocolate éclairs to the tray before returning to the comfort of the homey den.
Mr. Lawrence rose from his relaxed stance on the antique gold velvet sofa as Lelia entered the room carrying the heavily laden silver tray.
"Let me help you with that," he said as he took the tray from her shaky grasp depositing it carefully in the center of the antique walnut coffee table with a click of china.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from MOUNTAIN SHADOWS by Eva Maxwell. Copyright © 2013 Eva Maxwell. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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