Stolen by a Star: Dawn and Tom Series, #1

By R.G. Winter

A SIMPLE GIRL SUDDENLY COURTED BY A MOVIE STAR?

Dawn Bailey has the life she always wanted; working with her father in their bookshop; her dream job and her passion.  When she feels an instant connection with a mysterious shopper, a famous actor in disguise, her quiet life begins to open and flourish like a dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.G. Winter
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533727312

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Stolen by a Star Copyright © 2016 by R.G. Winter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

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CHAPTER ONE

To Dawn Bailey, it was just another Tuesday. Little did she know her entire world was about to be turned upside down. Life as she knew it was never going to be the same; she was sheltered from how the stars were aligning themselves but that was actually the way she preferred life to be. She did her job, used the money to live a simple life, and then went to bed and started the day the next morning like everyone else. She had no need for Twitter, Snap Chat, Facebook, and all the other rubbish that took her away from the one thing she loved more than life itself...books. She loved that smell that invaded her petite nostrils whenever she walked into the store. What everyone would consider a grueling nine-to-five was her dream come true. Her love of books came from her father, who loved them almost as much as she did. He would read to her every night from the moment she was old enough to lie there in bed and pay attention. From Babar and Charlotte’s Web all the way to Jayne Eyre, Dawn slowly began to discover her true love, which was her undying affection for literature. When in school she didn’t want to make real friends, as she was content to live in her books, spending every recess and lunch hour in a secluded stairwell, face down in a new story. When she graduated from high school Dawn was conflicted on what she wanted to do. She made an attempt at higher learning but clashed with her professors. These alleged teachers really didn’t want people to learn but rather to merely memorize and regurgitate their own opinions back at them. It wasn’t the place for her and for the first time in Dawn’s short life she felt lost. It was at this point in time when her father came to the rescue.

Her father was a well-known Barrister, the famous Gerald Bailey. Everyone called him Gerry, but rarely dared to meet him in a courtroom. Despite his talents for litigation the life was getting to Dawn’s father. He had lost his hair, his wife, and almost his life when the stress of his profession caused Gerry to have his first heart attack. Dawn’s old man quickly realized that he had to make a change or his next medical issue could be his last. Dawn didn’t want to lose her father and had hoped that the old man would do the right thing and make the changes he needed to hang around a bit longer. He did just that and then some. The first thing Gerry did was remove the number one source of his stress; which happened to be his job. He sold his share of the firm he had built from the ground up to his partners for a very reasonable price. It was an offer so generous the partners almost felt bad for taking it, but the old man didn’t care. Gerry had more than enough to retire on and there was only one thing he wanted to do with that money. It took less than half of his payout to purchase a used bookshop. Gerry’s first decision as the owner of the bookshop was to offer his daughter a job, which she happily accepted. They would both be living the dream, selling and promoting the one thing that they both loved with all their hearts. To Dawn and her father working at the bookshop was not a job and they always showed up each day with smiles on their face. Dawn would always show up first, opening the shop at nine in the morning, cleaning up and taking care of the first customers of the day until her father showed up, usually an hour or so after opening. He would always make up for his tardiness with lattes and croissants, and they would spend most of their morning talking books and selling them to the patrons who were always there to chat and find something new to consume. Soon word-of-mouth made Dawn and Gerry’s bookshop the go-to place for those who truly loved literature and its vessels.

While some would have called Gerry crazy for walking away from such a lucrative job to just sell books, they truly didn’t know what kind of man he was. After the heart attack his family was all that mattered. He knew that Dawn needed somewhere to work that at the same time gave her a place to read and be herself, like the staircase at high school, and this was it. He loved spending everyday with her, overpaying her more than enough to live off of, so they only spent their days together at work and went about their way to their own flats when the day was done. This allowed Dawn to spend a lot of post-work time with her mom and not feel bad about it because it was nothing compared to the immense amount of time she spent with the old man at work. Gerry’s bookshop’s finances, while in the red, didn’t matter to him at all. The other half of his payout was invested very wisely and he knew that he never had to worry about money again. He never told that to Dawn and that always kept her inspired to work hard and do her best to make their bookshop the best in the entire city. Their hard work started to pay off over time and seven years into being in the book business Gerry’s shop eventually turned a profit. In the ten years since then, the shop had never been in the red. Word-of-mouth about their shop and the two amazing book lovers who ran it started to make their business the go-to place for book nerds who wanted to browse for something old or order something new. Gerry was never afraid to sell more than just old books; keeping a variety of old and new material as he was aware that one day the new stuff would eventually graduate into the old territory anyway. It never made sense to deny a new story the chance to shine. Both he and Dawn understood that and never judged any book or its writer by their covers and their customers returned the