They say still waters run deep.
In the tiny lakeside town of Midnight Cove,
still waters harbor dark secrets.
Writer Bree Blaylock just wants a chance to catch her breath. Having finally escaped an abusive relationship, she’s relieved to have found a quiet place to finish writing her new book.
From the moment she arrives, she realizes that she’s not alone in her rented cottage on the lake. But she’s okay with that. In her experience, the living are always more dangerous than the dead.
Meeting handsome local lawman, Jake Hanson wasn’t even remotely on her radar. Now that she has, maybe it’s time to take another chance on love.
But can he keep her safe when the past comes calling?
If you love your romance with a little bit of spooky, you’ll love MIDNIGHT COVE!
Read the Prologue:
He wasn’t sure just when he’d known that he was dead.
That realization had taken a while, although the precise concept of time was now rather nebulous in his conscious thought, more a collection of seasonal impressions than an actual awareness of the passing of days and months and years.
But the knowledge that he had somehow slipped his mortal coil had been an adjustment, to say the least. He had no idea how he’d arrived at this state. He’d been going along living his life and then he simply…wasn’t.
His current existence seemed to be limited to the house in which he’d grown up, although there were times when he wasn’t anywhere at all. He wasn’t sure which situation he preferred.
On the one hand, he’d been happy to be near his family, at least at first. But they couldn’t see him or hear him. Not even when he screamed in their faces.
That was when he’d known. He’d loved his parents and his brother dearly. Seeing them, being near them, but being unable to connect with them had been frustrating as hell.
Always nagging him was the question of what had happened. He’d been a healthy, strong 23-year-old man, one with no bad habits like smoking or drugs. Okay, yeah, the occasional beer, maybe, but nothing that should have led to his death.
It seemed odd, too. Although he was stuck in his family home, he was almost certain he remembered living on his own in an apartment, maybe. That part of his before was foggy to him.
At first, knowing he was dead was terrifying. But after a while, he’d settled into a sort of non-routine. He’d watched as his family moved on, his parents and his brother, all eventually abandoning the family home. Maybe they were dead too, his parents anyway, but if they were, he hadn’t seen them. Apparently, the afterlife didn’t work like that.
After his family was gone, it seemed to him that the house sat empty for a long time, and he’d enjoyed the solitude. The way he saw it, if he was going to be alone, he might as well actually be alone.
But then he’d watched as one day, a slightly stooped white-haired man had arrived. The man had thrown the doors and windows wide open, carried out piles of useless old things, and spruced up the place, top to bottom.
The next thing he knew, the house was overrun with strangers. They just came tromping in with their suitcases and their inflatable rafts and their bathing suits.
Summer folk. He’d have recognized them anywhere.
While he and his family had been permanent lakeside residents, most of the other houses were used as summer rentals, vacation retreats for families who spent the rest of their year somewhere in busy cities like Columbia or Greenville or Charlotte. The kind of people whose idea of a perfect vacation was a week or two spent in a cottage by the lake.
He hadn’t been happy to share his space, and he’d made his position known. And he’d sent more than one family scrambling back to wherever they’d come from, dropping snorkels and beach towels in their hurry to leave.
Of course, there had also been the ones who’d been too absorbed with themselves to notice they were shacked up for the week with an unhappy spirit. That was annoying. During those times, he did his best to just stay out of the way. Because eventually, the seasons would turn, and he’d be alone again.
Gazing out the attic window at oak leaves that were just beginning to take on a kaleidoscope of fall colors, he sighed with satisfaction. If he couldn’t be happy about his existence, he could at least be content.
The crunching of gravel caught his attention, and he watched a work-worn white pickup truck pull up the long drive and stop in front of the house. An older man, the one he’d seen before, got out of the truck and stood staring down the driveway.
A minute later, a pale-yellow Volkswagen beetle puttered up to the house, pulling alongside the pickup. The driver’s door swung open, and a pretty redhead stepped out, pulling a dark green hooded sweatshirt more tightly around herself against the cool of the fall afternoon.
She moved her sunglasses to the top of her head and glanced up in his direction. For a moment, he’d have sworn she saw him. Alarmed, he stepped away from the window.
What was this? Another renter? It wasn’t summer. Cautiously, he peered out the window, checking to see if the seasons had switched on him again without notice. No, the trees were still just beginning to shift into their fall hues.
Now he heard voices downstairs. This was an unforeseen circumstance. What now?
He shrugged to himself and smiled. A woman alone? He would have her out by nightfall.
MIDNIGHT COVE by Pandora Spocks
Pandora Spocks 