Tender Is The Night(52)

"Oh, I intend to," she said purposefully.

He laughed at her candor. "I like that you never play games. You say what you want when you want it."

"How else will I get what I want? I'm just glad you want what I want. Otherwise, it would be a little embarrassing."

"You don't have to worry about that. I always want what you want."

"I have to get inside. We're almost ready to start."

"Of course." He paused, looking into her gorgeous blue eyes. "One day we're going to do this, too, Kate. You know that, right?"

"Real-" She stopped herself just in time, then grinned. "Yes, I know that. I love you, Devin."

"I love you, too. Now go get your sister married."

"And then we'll start working on our life," she said, giving him one last kiss to savor before she headed back into the church.

He followed her inside, feeling over-the-moon optimistic about just what kind of life they were going to have.



# # #





Dear Reader:

I hope you fell in love with Devin and Kate as much as I did! I loved  writing their intriguing love story, and I can't wait to bring you more  books featuring Kate's siblings. Keep an eye out for CLOSER TO YOU,  coming in the fall of 2016.

In the meantime, check out any Callaway books you've missed, and if you  haven't discovered my new romantic suspense trilogy, you have more fun  in store. The Lightning Strikes Trilogy begins with BEAUTIFUL STORM,  which is available now. Book #2 LIGHTNING LINGERS is also available and  SUMMER RAIN will be coming in July of 2016.

To stay up to date on book releases, parties and giveaways, please sign  up for my newsletter! You can also visit me on my website at  www.barbarafreethy.com. And if you're a super fan and would like to be  part of my street team, join here!

I'm attaching an excerpt from BEAUTIFUL STORM for your reading pleasure! Enjoy!

Barbara





EXCERPT - BEAUTIFUL STORM


(Lightning Strikes Trilogy #1)

© Copyright 2015 Barbara Freethy

All Rights Reserved (V1)

ISBN: 9780996117142



From #1 NY Times Bestselling Author Barbara Freethy comes the first book  in a new romantic suspense trilogy: Lightning Strikes. In these  connected novels, lightning leads to love, danger, and the unraveling of  long-buried secrets that will change not only the past but also the  future …



When her father's plane mysteriously disappeared in the middle of an  electrical storm, Alicia Monroe became obsessed with lightning. Now a  news photographer in Miami, Alicia covers local stories by day and  chases storms at night. In a flash of lightning, she sees what appears  to be a murder, but when she gets to the scene, there is no body, only a  military tag belonging to Liliana Valdez, a woman who has been missing  for two months.



While the police use the tag to jump-start their stalled investigation,  Alicia sets off on her own to find the missing woman. Her search takes  her into the heart of Miami's Cuban-American community, where she meets  the attractive but brooding Michael Cordero, who has his own demons to  vanquish.



Soon Alicia and Michael are not just trying to save Liliana's life but  also their own, as someone will do anything to protect a dark secret …          

     



 





Chapter One  –  Beautiful Storm





The clouds had been blowing in off the ocean for the last hour, an  ominous foreboding of the late September storm moving up the Miami  coast. It was just past five o'clock in the afternoon, but the sky was  dark as night.

Alicia Monroe drove across Florida's Rickenbacker Causeway toward  Virginia Key Park, located on the island of Key Biscayne. Most of the  traffic moved in the opposite direction as the island had a tendency to  flood during fierce storms. According to the National Weather Service,  the storm would bring at least six inches of rain plus high winds,  thunder and lightning.

Alicia pressed her foot down harder on the gas. As her tires skidded on  the already damp pavement, a voice inside her head told her to slow  down, that a picture wasn't worth her life, but the adrenaline charging  through her body made slowing down impossible.

She'd been obsessed with electrical storms all her life. She'd grown up  hearing her Mayan great-grandmother speak of lightning gods. Her father  had also told her tales about the incredible blue balls of fire and red  flaming sprites he'd witnessed while flying for the Navy and later as a  civilian pilot.

Their stories had enthralled her, but they'd been an embarrassment to  the rest of the family, especially when her father had begun to tell his  stories outside the family. Neither her mother nor her siblings had  appreciated the fact that a former Navy hero was now being referred to  as Lightning Man.

A wave of pain ran through her at the memories of her father and the  foolish nickname that had foreshadowed her dad's tragic death years  later in a fierce electrical storm.

She'd been sixteen years old when he'd taken his last flight. It was  supposed to be a typical charter run to drop a hunting party in the  mountains and then return home, but after dropping the men at their  destination, her father's plane had run into a massive storm. When the  rain stopped and the sun came back out, there was no sign of her father  or his plane. He'd quite simply disappeared somewhere over the Gulf of  Mexico.

Everyone assumed he'd crashed. They'd sent out search parties to find  him or at least pieces of the plane, but those searches had returned  absolutely nothing. How a man and a small plane could completely vanish  seemed impossible to accept, and she'd spent years trying to find an  answer, but so far that hadn't happened.

What had happened was her increasingly obsessive fascination with storm photography.

Her sister Danielle thought she was looking for her dad in every flash  of lightning. Her brother Jake thought she was crazy, and her mother  Joanna just wanted her to stop challenging Mother Nature by running  headlong into dangerous storms. But like her dad, Alicia didn't run away  from storms; she ran toward them.

While she worked as a photojournalist for the Miami Chronicle to pay the  rent, her true passion was taking photographs of lightning storms and  displaying them on her website and in a local art gallery.

It was possible that she was looking for the truth about her dad's  disappearance in the lightning, or that she just had a screw loose. It  was also possible that she was tempting fate by her constant pursuit of  dangerous storms, but even if that was all true, she couldn't stop, not  yet, not until she knew … something. She just wasn't sure what that  something was.

Her cell phone rang through her car, yanking her mind back to reality. "Hello?"

"Where are you?" Jeff Barkley asked.

"Almost to the park." Jeff was the weather reporter at the local  television station and had become her best resource for storm chasing.

"Turn around, Alicia. The National Weather Service is predicting the  possibility of a ten-to-fifteen-foot storm surge, which would make the  causeway impassable, and you'll be stranded on the island."

"I'll get the lightning shots before that happens. How's the storm shaping up?"

"Severe thunderstorms predicted."

"Great."

"It's not great, Alicia."

"You know what I mean," she grumbled. She didn't wish ill on anyone. But  the more magnificent the storm, the better her pictures would be.

"You keep pushing the limits. One of these days, you'll go too far," Jeff warned.

"That won't be today. It's barely drizzling yet. The island is the  perfect place to capture the storm in two places-over the ocean and then  as it passes over Miami. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"You always say that."

"And it's always true."

"So far. Text me when you get back."

"I will."

Ending the call, she drove into the parking lot. The attendant booth was  closed, and a sign said the park was closed, but there was no barrier  to prevent her from entering the lot.

She parked as close as she could to the trail leading into the park.  She'd no sooner shut down the engine and turned off her headlights when  lightning lit up the sky. She rolled down her window and took a few  quick shots with her digital camera. She didn't have a great angle, so  she would definitely have to find a higher point in the park to get a  better picture.         

     



 

Putting her digital camera on the console, she grabbed her waterproof  backpack that held her more expensive film camera and got out of the  car.

The force of the wind whipped her long, brown ponytail around her face.  She pulled the hood of her raincoat over her head. It was just misting  at the moment, but the sky would be opening up very soon. With tall rain  boots and a long coat to protect her jeans and knit shirt, she was  protected from the elements, not that she worried much about getting  wet. She was more concerned with keeping her equipment dry until she  needed to use it.

This was her second trip to the island, so she knew exactly which path  to take, and she headed quickly in that direction. While the trails were  popular with walkers, hikers, and bikers on most days, there wasn't  another soul in sight. Anyone with any sense had left the park to seek  shelter.