'Twas the Night Before Mother's Day (Nights Before #3)

By Leigh Verrill-Rhys

Jocelyn Tavers faces her 26th birthday, falling on Mother's Day, at the same time as she wonders what happened to a certain officious lawman and a certain deserter father remembers her birthday after only fifteen years of neglect.

An ex boyfriend and the appearance of a complete stranger are not the only obstacles to disrupt Gordon Fieldcott's book launch, especially when that stranger is her next editing assignment.

Jocelyn doesn't want anything to do with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eres Books
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301123742

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

A native of Paris Hill, Maine, Leigh spent most of her childhood and early adult years in San Francisco before emigrating to Wales to marry and raise three sons. She has been a writer, editor and lecturer for most of her life, intermingled with career portfolios in marketing, finance and community arts projects. Leigh's debut novel, WAIT A LONELY LIFETIME, was released in April 2012, published by Avalon Books. She is a member of the Authors Guild, a former member of the Welsh Academy and the Arts Forum and admits to running with scissors and leaping before she looks.Leigh also publishes as an entrepreneurial author with Eres (eresbooks.com). In 2012 and 2013, she released the romantic comedy novel by installment, NIGHTS BEFORE, in six episodes set in Portland Maine, beginning with TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE NEW YEAR, followed by stories set during celebrations and commemorations during the year, ending with TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE. These six stories are available individually as ebooks. A print edition, NIGHTS BEFORE: THE NOVEL, is now available.For Leigh's third novel, SALSA DANCING WITH PTERODACTYLS, released in March 2014, she first had to learn how to spell ‘pterodactyl’! THIS CAN'T BE LOVE, her fourth novel and the second in the ‘Americans in Love’ in foreign places, is set in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival.An award-winning editor, she has published three volumes of women's autobiographical writing about their lives in Wales and during World War II: ON MY LIFE; PARACHUTES & PETTICOATS; and IANCS, CONSHIS a SPAM (all published by Honno Welsh Women's Press). She has released a collection of her mother's adventures on her travels during the Second World War, FOLLOWING THE TROOPS.Leigh’s first American history novel: PAVANE FOR MISS MARCHER, set in post-civil war Maine, inspired by her brother’s, Thomas, passion for American history, many historians, including Shelby Foote, Thomas A. Desjardin, Lochlainn Seabrook, Michael Shaara, her family’s part in the Battle for Little Round Top as well as authors Louisa May Alcott and Elswyth Thane.More about all of Leigh’s independently published novels are available through her website, leighverrillrhys.com and eresbooks.com, Smashwords, as well as KDP: Amazon and most independent online booksellers.

Book preview

‘Twas the Night Before Mother’s Day

A Short Story

#3 in the Serial Novel

Nights Before

by

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

‘Twas the Night Before Mother’s Day

by

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

#3 in the Serial Novel

Nights Before

eresaur

EresBooks.com

Published by Eres @ Smashwords

May 2013

1st Reprint December 2015

with minor corrections

978-1-3011237-4-2

Copyright 2013 & 2015 © Leigh Verrill-Rhys

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design: Gwion Dulais

Cover Photography: © 2013 Leigh Verrill-Rhys

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Eres Books, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Downloading this book from a ‘free books’ or pirate site is in breach of copyright law and the moral rights of the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

‘Twas the Night Before Mother’s Day and the Nights Before serial are works of fiction. The characters, descriptions, events and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, either living or dead, is coincidental.

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One

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A pound of dark chocolate covered cherries doesn’t give you nightmares. New knowledge base item. A pound will make you too sick to sleep. With that hard won information well ingrained, Jocelyn had lost her craving for chocolate of any kind.

In spite of the excessive obsessive revisions, Moonstalker had come in under the wire and tonight her dubious pleasure was to escort Gordon Fieldcott to the Book Launch and party at his department’s library. Suggesting to Daven he was a better choice had earned her double duty. Not only did she have to chaperone, she had to chauffer.

As was his wont, Gordon was too nervous to drive. With only a shelf full of books to his credit, he couldn’t face the drive to Brunswick or be trusted to get there on time on any alternative mode of transport.

Jocelyn wanted to push him out of her snazzy 4x4 and make him hitch. He wasn’t talking. He was staring. And staring. And staring.

There wasn’t much fun in the fact that this year of all years her birthday fell on Mother’s Day when she didn’t have a mother. Last year hadn’t been all that great either, coming on the heels of her mother’s diagnosed death sentence.

The bouquet of lilies and calendula had sat on the table in the front room. Neither of them could endure looking at it for long. It was too beautiful, too hopeful, too life-affirming and Jocelyn was sorry she had done such a thoughtless thing. The bouquet became a funeral wreath and by the time the water dried up and the flowers wilted and browned, the front room door had been shut for a month.