“Were you in on this?”
He took a step back. “What do you mean?”
“Did you know Seb was going to leave the Beacon to both of us?”
Her outrageous accusation chased away all thoughts of offering comfort. “No. If you’re suggesting I somehow influenced him, you’re dead wrong. Why would I want a mess like this?”
“Half owner is better than being totally cut out, isn’t it?”
“Not if I have to work with you,” he ground out.
Dear Reader,
I love visiting small towns and making up stories about people who might live there. What are their lives like? What are their hopes and dreams, their joys, their disappointments and tragedies?
Eva’s Deadline is such a story. The drama takes place in Willow Beach, Washington, a fictitious town on Washington’s coast. Many times I’ve driven the same route that my heroine, Eva Sinclair, drives as she travels from her new home in Seattle to her hometown of Willow Beach. But, unlike Eva, I have always made these trips in happy anticipation.
Eva makes the trip to Willow Beach not for a vacation, as I have done, but because her father, Sebastian Sinclair, has suddenly passed away, and so for her, the trip is a sad one. The one saving grace is that she will soon be back in Seattle, where she can continue her promising career as a writer for a prestigious magazine.
Imagine her distress when Eva learns that her father had found a way to keep her in Willow Beach. Why, she wonders, would he do this, when he knew that what happened there eleven years ago caused her so much pain?
Mark Townson’s life has also been changed by Sebastian’s death, for it throws him and Eva together in ways that he finds difficult, if not impossible, to accept. But Mark loves his life in Willow Beach, and his job as editor of Seb’s newspaper is the fulfillment of a dream he’s not about to abandon. But, like Eva, he has a past that haunts him.
How these two deal with their challenges and, oh, yes, manage to fall in love, too, is what I envisioned happening in Willow Beach. I hope you enjoy reading the story.
Visit my website at www.lindahopelee.com. Email me at [email protected] or write to me at P.O. Box 238, Edmonds, WA. I am also on Facebook and Twitter (@LindaHopeLee).
Linda
Eva’s Deadline
Linda Hope Lee
LINDA HOPE LEE lives in the Pacific Northwest. She likes traveling to new places, especially to small towns that might serve as settings for her novels. In addition to contemporary romance, she writes in the romantic suspense and mystery genres, as well. When she is not writing, she’s busy creating watercolor paintings or drawing in colored pencil or pen and ink. Another pastime is photography, which she uses as inspiration for her art and for her stories. She also collects children’s books and anything to do with wire-haired fox terriers.
To my new friend, Billy.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
“I’M SORRY TO BRING you bad news,” Mark Townson said, “but your father is dead.”
“What?” The pen Eva Sinclair held slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her desk. When she’d answered the phone, the last person she’d expected to hear on the other end of the line was someone from her hometown. “No, no...”
“I’m afraid so.”
“When? How?”
“Early this morning. When he didn’t show up at the office or answer his home phone or his cell, I came over here to his house. I found him and called nine-one-one.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Not for sure. He was slumped over the kitchen table where he’d been eating breakfast. My guess would be a heart attack. I’m sure someone official will be in touch with you soon. I just thought you should know right away.”
“Yes, but a heart attack... I didn’t know he had a bad heart.”
“I suspect there’s a lot you didn’t know about him.”
His reproachful tone stung. Yet, the statement was true. She hadn’t spoken to her father more than three or four times in the past five years, and those occasions had been short and strained.
“He told me about your, uh, disagreement,” Mark Townson said. “And that you chose moving to Seattle over staying in Willow Beach and working for him at the Herald.”
The Willow Beach Herald. Why would she want to write for a small-town weekly newspaper when she could work for a prestigious magazine like Seattle’s Best? But, of course, that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t want to stay in Willow Beach.
She wondered how much Mark Townson knew about the reason for her leaving. Not the entire story, she’d bet, because her father didn’t like to talk about the past any more than she did.
What Mr. Townson knew or did not know was not important now. His shocking news took precedence. At the age of fifty-two, her father, Sebastian Sinclair, was dead.
“I’ll drive to Willow Beach right away.” She checked her wristwatch. “If I leave by noon, I should be there by six.”
“Come to the Herald’s office