The Art of Love: A Woodbeach Romance, #2

By Tilly Muir

Follow Megan & Alex as they both find their lives unexpectedly changing.

Megan Floyd has grown up never knowing her father, so when her somewhat eccentric mother lets slip his name she endeavors to search him down. When she finally comes face to face with him it is certainly not how she pictured their reunion would be, at no time did she ever expect him to be NAKED when they first met!

Alex Russell dreams of living a bohemian artist's life with his long term girlfriend Lindsey. Opening his art studio in Woodbeach was his first step. He then discovers that Lindsey has very different ideas for his future!

Megan and Alex both live in the picturesque coastal town of Woodbeach and their lives become intertwined with Megan's search for her father and Alex's quest to discover himself and his purpose in life.  They are both very distracted by their personal searches, but cannot fail to feel an attraction to each other. Is the universe trying to send them a message?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tilly Muir
• Release date: Jan 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507019764

Tilly Muir

Tilly Muir is a romance writer and avid reader of all types of books, fiction and non-fiction. Her books are short romance stories and always end with a happy ever after… Eventually! When she is not writing you will find her running around after her husband or cocker spaniels.

Book preview

Chapter 1

MEGAN FLOYD SQUINTED at the printing on the paper and then opened her eyes wide, forcing them to refocus on words and make sure that she was reading them correctly.  Sure enough, they hadn’t changed and she found herself staring at the name of her long lost father, Daniel Blackstone. 

Her mother, Tamara, had only told her his name less than a month ago.  After she’d found out she had looked him up and had been a little interested to find out that he was a street performer and model.  For more than thirty five years she had daydreamed of meeting him and reconnecting with him, and now her chance to do just that was staring her in the face.

It turns out that Daniel was going to be the model for an art class that was going to be held in one of the artist’s studios at the Opal Tree, just a half mile away from her mother’s shop. 

This would be the perfect chance to get to know her father without having to come up to him directly and expose the fact that she was his daughter.  She could see what kind of person he was and how he acted around other people, and that would help her decide whether or not to approach him.

She turned and looked at the only photograph she had of him.  It was a picture of him holding her mother’s hand as they walked along the beach, the setting sun blaring behind them and turning their bodies into two living shadows.  There was no way to see his features or try to piece together who he was.

No matter how often she’d pestered her mother, Tamara had held onto her secret.  Then, without warning a month ago, she’d suddenly come up and started a conversation over the photograph.

It’s really a shame that you can’t see his face, Meg.  He was a beautiful man.

Who?  What...? the question had trailed off when she’d looked up and noticed that her mother was staring at the photograph of her father.

Beautiful man with a beautiful name, she commented to no one in particular.  Meg was used to her mother’s flights of fancy.  In fact, the quirkiness of her mother bordered on insanity and the unstable nature of her thoughts were such that if you interrupted her while she was speaking you were likely to never have your questions answered. 

So, she had remained perfectly still while Tamara looked wistfully at the photograph.  Even though she was working hard to maintain her giddy insides and her normally talkative self into a calm, cool exterior, her insides had been humming with electricity.  Each muscle was tensed and coiled inside of her, each breath ratcheting up the tension that she felt as she waited to see if her mom would say something else.

Daniel Blackstone. Her mom had whispered under her breath as she stared at the photo.  Meg had been sure that at the moment she said the name her mother was not even sure that she was in the room.  It was far more likely that Tamara was wrapped up in her own memories and had not even realized that she’d said anything. 

Nevertheless, the intensity of the sigh that slipped through Meg’s lips a moment later when her mom wondered out of the room and down the hall was amazing.  She felt her entire body unwinding as all of the years of wondering and worry had slipped from her when those two little words were uttered. 

As she sat there staring at the advertisement in the Woodbridge paper Meg tried really hard to think of a reason why she shouldn’t take that course, but the deep longing that she’d always had about wanting her father to come into her life had not dissipated over the years.  She knew that if she didn’t take this chance she would likely regret it forever.  Even though she hadn’t heard of the artist before, she found that she was suddenly excited about taking a class from the up and coming artist, Alex Russell.

Pulling the flyer from the paper and tucking it into her leather satchel, she headed out the door to work.  Megan worked as a PR rep at a large marketing firm that specialized in social media advertising.  She was aware of how connected the world was, and had immediately set out to find out as much as she could about her father as soon as her mother had let his name slip.

However, despite his presence in the art community she had not been able to find too much information on him.  He did not have a traditional account set up with social media, but rather an old school website that was rather plain and dull.  The only way to contact him had been through a site administrator’s email address or a phone number for booking.

Neither of those had seemed like a good way for her to try to contact him.  This, it appeared, was going to be her only viable option.  As she caught the train and headed to the city to go to work she found herself thinking about her mom working in her little Bric-a-Brac shop, crocheting her hats and chatting away with her clients as if nothing had ever changed. 

Meanwhile, Meg was about to turn her whole life upside down on a whim.  If living with her mom had taught her anything, however, it was not to discount the power of living life on the edge of sanity.

She smiled to herself and hummed her favorite song under her breath as she pulled out the flyer once more and ran her fingers lightly over her father’s name as the train sped through Woodbridge and out into the great unknown.

Chapter 2

ALEX RUSSELL WALKED up to the front door of his condo and immediately noticed that something was wrong.  The first thing that tipped him off to this was the fact that the scarf he’d purchased for Lindsey last year in Paris was pinned to the door, its edges fluttering in the breeze as it rolled in off the ocean. 

The second was the fact that the door was ajar.

No story that starts off this way ever has a good ending.  Alex told himself as he reached up and took the scarf down, its bright blues running through his fingertips as he let the silky material slip to the ground.  The nail that had held the scarf in place also held a piece of paper with her handwriting on it. 

Before he even opened it up, he pushed open the door and saw that almost everything that had belonged to her had been cleaned out of the apartment.  Even things that they had purchased together had been caught up in the massacre when she left. 

The door creaked heavily on its hinges as he pushed it open the rest of the way.  The salty sea air had done a number on the metal over the years, fatiguing it to the point that it was no longer a solid substance. 

That was the thing about living at the edge of the ocean, he thought, eventually everything withers under