The Sandcastle Sister

By Lisa Wingate

From the #1 New York Times author of Before We Were Yours!
I want to be like this stretch of freshly cleared shore. At times I think, I’m ready. Let the waves wash over me. But then I catch myself running from the tide just before it happens . . .

New York editor Jen Gibbs knew when she bought Evan Hall’s next blockbuster book, it would change her career. She didn’t know it would change her life. But after being sent along on the European book tour, at Evan’s request, she has made a promise she’s not sure she can keep—she’s crossed professional lines and accepted Evan’s surprising engagement proposal. Now she’s scared to death. In Jen’s family, marriage represents the death of every dream a woman holds for herself.

Can the revelation of her mother’s long-held secret open the doors to Jen’s future and change her beliefs about life and love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
• Release date: May 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496407634

Lisa Wingate

Lisa Wingate is an award-winning journalist, a magazine columnist, a popular inspirational speaker, and a national bestselling author of nineteen books. Her works have been featured by the Readers Club of America, AOL Book Picks, Doubleday Book Club, the Literary Guild, and American Profiles, and they have received numerous awards. She resides with her family in Texas.

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Visit Lisa Wingate’s website at www.lisawingate.com.

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The Sandcastle Sister

Copyright © 2015 by Wingate Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of girl copyright © Dmitri Maruta/Dreamstime.com. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of boats taken by Lisa Wingate.

Designed by Dean H. Renninger

Edited by Sarah Mason

Published in association with Folio Literary Management, LLC, 630 9th Avenue, Suite 1101, New York, NY 10036.

The Sandcastle Sister is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

ISBN 978-1-4964-0764-1 (Apple); ISBN 978-1-4964-0763-4 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-8830-4 (Kindle)

Build: 2017-03-21 10:45:02

For Sandy and Sharon,

sisters by the sea

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

About the Author

Preview of The Sea Keeper’s Daughter

Preview of The Prayer Box

Preview of The Sea Glass Sisters

Preview of The Story Keeper

Preview of Tidewater Sisters

CHAPTER 1

Paris, he says, and his blue eyes slant my way, accompanied by a contemplative smile as a few almost-black curls whisk his forehead. His tongue touches his teeth, as if he’s sampling the idea and likes the taste of it. Springtime in Paris, Jen. It has a ring to it, you have to admit.

Evan . . . I give him the look. It’s meant to be a gentle reminder to focus on business. We’re at the Bath Literature Festival in the south of England, for heaven’s sake. Home of Jane Austen. Setting of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. The crowds here are huge. The books are many. Evan’s readers have come in droves. It’s literary paradise. Is there a better place to be fully present in the moment rather than thinking ahead?

Yet there he sits, on the other side of the table in a sidewalk coffee shop, his mind on Paris. Of course I know why, but I’m trying not to bring it up. I don’t want to argue. Not here. Not in this gorgeous place.

He sulks in his seat, and for a moment he looks like a little boy who’s been told he can’t have what he wants at ToysRUs—the sort of boy who’s used to getting what he wants and doesn’t take no for an answer. If I didn’t fully understand that about him before Vida House Publishing sent me along on this three-month book tour—which has somehow stretched into an off-and-on six months—I know it now.

When Evan Hall wants something, he pursues until he gets it.

And he wants me.

The feeling is mutual. I’d have to be crazy for it not to be. He’s the devastating trifecta of talented, gorgeous, and smooth. Not to mention rich, famous, and nice to be with.

For all those reasons, he scares me to death.

I suppose I convinced myself that the chemistry brewing between us as I edited The Story Keeper, the novel for which he’s now on this multinational book tour with only short breaks back home, was a passing distraction. I saw it as a misty, nebulous thing, thickened by too many after-hours talks about the manuscript. I thought it would dissipate once the book hit the shelves and Evan left on the tour, vast distances separating us. The completely unprofessional attraction would then stretch thinner and thinner until it finally broke. Evan would be busy with crowds of adoring readers. I’d be in my small, safe corner office at Vida House, looking for my next bestseller and telling myself we were all better off this way.

Then my boss sent me on the tour—flat informed me that, if I valued my editorial position, I’d go. Evan wanted me along for the ride; he felt I deserved it, after all the hard work to bring the book to print. I wasn’t given the option of saying no, so I packed my suitcase and told myself that the stresses of travel and book events would kill this romantic undercurrent deader than a fly at a state fair bake-off.

Put two people together in a pressure cooker long enough, and they’ll get tired of one another.

Yet here we sit.

He’s waiting for an answer, and I know the question without his having to repeat it. He’s suggesting that, as soon as he’s done speaking at the lit fest’s Afternoon Tea with Evan Hall, we blow off the evening cocktail soirees and hop on the Eurostar. In just over two hours, the high-speed train could deposit us in the City of Love.

The perfect place for a wedding.

Something romantic and wildly impulsive.

Come on. Don’t overthink it, he urges, and his eyes twinkle, curls falling over them again before he leans closer across the table. Say yes this time.

My heart hammers. I can’t catch my breath. I’m scheduled for the Jane Austen walking tour tomorrow, I blurt.

He cocks a brow, trying to make light of the excuse, as in, Seriously? Did that just slip out by accident? But there’s something deeper in that look. He’s disappointed. And hurt. He desperately wanted me to jump on board the train this time and leave all the baggage behind.

The baggage is exactly the problem. No matter how hard I try, I can’t let go. I can’t make the commitment he’s asking for. I’ve backed myself into a corner, and I don’t know how to get out.

"That’s your excuse? The Jane Austen tour? That’s all you’ve got? He says exactly what I thought he’d say. He’s joking, but he’s not. A twitch of frustration tightens the muscles between his neck and jawbone. Come on, Jen. He takes my hand, folds it between both of his on the table, so that our fingers intertwine, flesh to flesh. What’s really going on here?"

His gaze pierces me through, searching for an explanation. He popped the question in Florence a month ago, at the top of the campanile, as we stood taking in the ancient city in all its glory. There’s magic in a sunset view of Florence. I was mesmerized by it. By him. I turned from the cityscape, and there he was, down on one knee with an antique sapphire ring he’d bought while I wasn’t looking. Marry me, Jen, he said.

Yes, I answered in that dreamlike moment and then panicked before we made it down the 414 stairs to the ground. By then, Evan was already talking about the tour schedule and when and where we could slip off and make it official.

I started tossing out the road spikes to slow things down and haven’t stopped since. In my family, marriage represents the death of every far-flung girlhood dream a woman has for herself. It’s the end of planning for college or thinking about your fantasy job or deciding what you’d like to become. In the Church of the Brethren Saints, a woman’s role is to mind her family, keep pleasant at all times, have children as fast as possible, and submit to everything her husband may demand of her, no matter what kind of man he is. Growing up, I’d never even seen a marriage that didn’t include threats, intimidation, and abuse.

How can I possibly know how to create one?

Evan deserves so much more.

Letting my head fall forward, I exhale a long breath, shuddering without meaning to as long, wavy strands of dark hair fall over my shoulders and draw lines between us. Close up, they seem solid, like prison bars.

Just explain. Tell him. It’s not like he doesn’t know some things about the Church of the Brethren Saints. Evan Hall has lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains all his life. Of course he’s aware that the Brethren Saints are cultish, odd, exclusionary, that they practice a perverse, twisted form of religion. Evan has seen my sisters in their old-fashioned, handmade dresses and carefully plaited hair and black stockings. He knows how worried I am that, while I’m away on this book tour, the Brethren Saints and my family will reclaim my youngest sister, Lily Clarette. I’m terrified that they’ll steal her from her first semester in college and spirit her back to the holler and the church.

The picture taunts me even now—Lily Clarette, with her bright golden eyes and long dark curls. She looks like me as a teenager, and she’s teetering on the same precipice I was at her age, after a scholarship to Clemson offered me an escape from our life in Appalachia. From where Lily Clarette stands right now, it’s either fall back into the pit of all that is familiar or walk the hard road to the outside world.

If I marry Evan, it’ll stir up a hornet’s nest. The family will be that much more determined to lure Lily Clarette home, to march her down the church aisle, re-baptize her, and marry her to a man of the Saints before she can follow my example and permanently break the faith. I can’t protect her from half a world away. If Evan and I wait, take a while, hopefully I can ease things along when the time comes.

There’s so much to think about, Evan. So many decisions to make. I chicken out, settle for the easier issues and use them to eclipse the harder ones.

For instance? I can feel him analyzing me. His doubt is palpable. He’s adept at speed-reading people. It makes him a fabulous writer . . . and a frustrating fiancé.

Okay, for instance: You’ve got Hannah to raise. Following the DUI prison sentence of his black-sheep brother, Evan has assumed responsibility for his niece, which has made this book tour that much more trying. Long-distance parenting isn’t ideal, even with the dedicated support of extended family. "It’s her first year in middle school. She’s excited about softball and about going out for cheerleading this spring. You can’t move her away from Looking Glass Gap, not when she’s finally starting to open up and make new plans. But my job is in New York. I love Vida House. I love the publishing business. I love being in the middle of it. I’m a New York City girl." These things are all true, but they’re so far from the heart of the problem, an arrow through the middle of them would barely be a flesh wound.

He scoffs softly, his fingers toying with mine. Jen, you can work remotely. And you can go to New York anytime you need to. Or want to. There are these things called airports. . . .

Very funny. I look up at him, bite my lip against a smile. He has a way of making me laugh, then skillfully catching me off guard. I love and hate this about him. He’s just so bloomin’ . . . good. Yes, there are airports.

Exactly.

Touché. He knows he’s just rendered that argument dead on the field of battle. Several team members at Vida House cyber-commute. Editors and literary agents all over New York are doing it now.

Jen, it’s not like I can’t afford—

"And there’s that, too. Evan, I bring almost nothing to this marriage right now. Financially, I mean. It’s all yours. The house in Looking Glass Gap is yours. If I move there, even the vehicle I’ll be driving will be yours. I don’t own a car. After putting the money aside to help Lily Clarette with college, I can’t buy one, either. I can’t even pay for a wedding. And it’s not like my family’s able to do it . . . or would if they could."

He gives me a look that’s older and wiser. Every once in a while our ten-year age difference bothers me. He’s been through so much, had so many experiences, traveled the world, been a superstar since he wrote his first novel in college and hit it big with the Time Shifters series. We’re at completely different places in life.

Jen . . . The single word envelops me, and I’m struck with one undeniable fact. I love Evan Hall down to the marrow of my bones. Do you really think I care about any of that?

No.

Is it that you want to take the time to plan a real wedding—big church, guest list, flowers, the whole nine yards? If that’s what you want, Jen, we can do it that way. I understand how important all the pomp and circumstance is on the female end of this thing.

"Evan Hall, you know me better than that. I am so not a girly girl."

Good. Then let’s go to Paris and get married in jeans. We’ll say our vows barefoot. In the park. That’s how my mom and dad got married. We’ll follow the hippie tradition.

I probably have relatives who got married barefoot too . . . but not because they were hippies.

The two of us laugh together and fall back in our chairs, breaking the tension. A

Reviews for The Sandcastle Sister

[judithdcollins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Inspiring, contemporary storyteller, Lisa Wingate returns with another installment of her addictive and charming, Carolina Series, set in the stunning coastal, Outer Banks, NC area – THE SANDCASTLE SISTER, (# 2.5) a short novella bridging the gap between The Story Keeper (#2) and upcoming The Sea Keeper's Daughters (#3). Having read all the books in this engaging series (once you read one, there is no stopping), I almost missed this one. I started reading The Sea Keeper’s Daughter, and realized there was another novella, so stopped to catch up.If you have followed the saga of Jen and Evan, and the famous book, The Story Keeper — author and editor; while crossing the line between personal and professional, Jen agrees to the accompany Evan on the book tour—then the exciting engagement proposal. However, is marriage what she really wants, or will the secrets from her past, keep her from her dreams, of the future?As always, no one can tell a story like the gifted and talented Lisa Wingate! From emotional, complex, and heartwarming; mixed with mystery, intrigue, suspense, romance—secrets, and much soul searching— she delves into the hearts, minds, and souls of her characters, pulling you into a magical and compelling world of hope, and dreams, while facing shocking revelations of the past, mistakes, and flaws --making them stronger for their journey. Fans will love catching up with familiar characters, and new ones--setting the stage for the exciting upcoming, The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, coming Sept!