Healing Hearts
By Liz Crowe
()
About this ebook
Jay Longmire had it all--a successful business, a beautiful wife, two loving children. But one normal Sunday evening in Ann Arbor everything was ripped from his arms at knifepoint. He has retreated to Traverse City to hide from the world, nursing his physical and emotional wounds and trying to cope with mind-numbing guilt over his inability to protect his family.
Abby Powers serves him coffee he never drinks and has become obsessed with the movie-star handsome but melancholy man. And the anticipation of his appearance every day takes her mind off her own messy life.
What begins as a near desperate physical connection out of the blue develops into a friendship that has the potential to heal two damaged hearts. But Jay is terrified to love again. While Abby's fierce independence forces them both to acknowledge the deeper relationship they both desire, but that remains just out of reach.
Liz Crowe
Biography Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville living in Central Illinois. She's spent her time as a three-continent expat trailing spouse, mom of three, real estate agent, brewery owner and bar manager, and is currently a social media consultant and humane society development director, in addition to being an award-winning author. With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, inside fictional television stations and successful real estate offices, and even in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are compelling and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, at times frustrate, and always linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
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Healing Hearts - Liz Crowe
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Healing Hearts
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Liz Crowe
ISBN: 978-1-61333-445-4
Cover art by Mina Carter
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Healing Hearts
The Challenge Series
By
Liz Crowe
Chapter One
The tall, handsome man took his double skim latte from Abby without meeting her eyes and sat, staring out the window, for at least an hour while the expensive coffee got cold. It was the seventh time in two weeks he’d done the same thing. He had a newspaper open on the table in front of him. But he neither drank nor read. His eyes stayed locked on the Traverse City street scene through the large window. Then he got up, threw both the full cup and the newspaper in the wastebasket, dropped a five-dollar bill into her tip jar, and left without a word.
What is up with that guy?
Lynn leaned across her to grab the chocolate syrup. Seriously. Freak job much? At least he tips. And he’s cute.
Abby’s fellow barista and best friend for the last fifteen years elbowed her in the side, breaking her reverie. Yo, snap out of it. Tall, Blond, and Creepy is gone for the day. Customers.
Lynn nodded toward the line that had formed in typical post-lunch fashion at the Cuppa Jane coffee house.
Abigail took orders on autopilot the rest of the long afternoon, managing to get through yet another boring shift before heading home to her dumpy apartment. She sipped a beer and sat, ignoring the mess in the kitchen, the piles of overdue credit card bills on the counter, and all the schoolwork she still had to do after an eight-hour shift on her feet.
She could not shake the guy from her memory banks. His bright blue eyes and perfectly chiseled face kept wafting across her vision. The thick, blond, sometimes wet hair was eye catching until you got a load of the broad, polo shirt clad shoulders, and long legs always covered with dark jeans. His hands were large, calloused looking at least from her vantage point taking money from him, and sans a wedding ring. And he never said a single word to anyone, merely nodding his thanks and sitting alone for hours at a time. He was model-gorgeous, and yet a tragic aura surrounded him like a black thundercloud. Abigail was one hundred percent smitten. She’d even agreed to pick up two extra shifts the next week, justifying it by reminding herself she could actually pay both the credit card and the electric bill that way, so why not? But she did it for another reason—she had to see him again.
The weekend away from the coffee shop was long but Abby kept busy catching up on community college homework, cleaning her apartment, anything to take her mind off the compulsion to drop by and see if he’d done the same. But after listening to her mother’s drunken for an hour on Sunday, she became so frustrated by her own silly obsession over some mystery dude who was probably a tourist anyway, she strapped on her running shoes and headed out. Determined to drive thoughts of her alcoholic mother and the tall man out of her head, she took a solid five-mile run at a brisk stride then limped home and collapsed on the couch. Annoying tears burned the back of her eyes. But she forced them down, took a shower, and tackled the last of her science assignment.
Abigail Powers had a goal. One that only a few years ago had seemed utterly ridiculous, but now lay in her crosshairs. She’d applied to the University of Michigan nursing school, later in life than some, granted, but with the grades and stamina to make it work. After one failed marriage, and carrying a pile of debt she was bound and determined to make this thing happen for herself. She was expecting the answer any day now, and by the sheer force of her will had decided it would be an acceptance.
Her phone buzzed. But she saw it was yet another creditor, so she turned it off and fell asleep on the threadbare couch, her dreams awash