Excerpt Tour: Tea & Primroses by Tess Thompson
Tea
and Primroses
Legley
Bay Collection Book Two
By:
Tess Thompson
Blurb
Nothing
is as it seemed in calm, quaint Legley Bay.
Famous
novelist, Constance (last name) lived a seemingly straightforward –
if private – and somewhat predictable life. Friends, beloved
daughter Sutton, a beautiful home, and all the success an author
could wish for. A perfect life….but was it?
When a
hit and run accident suddenly takes her mother’s life, Sutton finds
hidden secrets with her heartbreak. Emotional walls she assumed
Constance had built to protect her privacy may have been to protect
something – or someone – else entirely. Family and friends return
home for support, including her own lost-love, Declan. He’s the
first thing she craves to help her cope with her loss and the
questions she’s left with, but he’s also the last person she
wants to see. Will he be able to put down roots at last?
Can
the loss of true love be the making of a life or is it destined to be
the undoing of everything? When money, power and love combine across
time, anything is possible.
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Excerpt
2
Declan
Treadwell, napping during the warm Italian August afternoon, with the
shades drawn in his small apartment, was dreaming of Sutton. They
were children and playing on the beach in Oregon. Their mothers were
in low chairs, chatting like they did, sipping glasses of white wine,
more friends than employer and employee. Roma and Declan are
family, he often heard Constance say to Sutton. They’d all been
together since before Declan could remember. His mother, Roma, had
come to work for Constance when Declan was only eighteen months old
and Sutton wasn’t yet born. Roma ran the
house
and took care of both Sutton and Declan while Constance wrote stories
in the big office. But today was Saturday and they were all enjoying
a day of play.
The
sun was warm on his face. The waves crashed back and forth in
nature’s music as Sutton buried him with sand, patting it with her
tanned hands, her light brown hair in curls down her back. She wore a
pink sundress; one strap kept falling off her shoulder. He counted
the freckles scattered over her nose and cheeks, like flecks of
nutmeg in a bowl of cream with a tad of vanilla. She was laughing, in
the way she did, like cascading bells, and her face was alight,
giving the world more air. “I need water to complete my evil plan,”
she said, patting the sand near his chest.
“You
have to be evil to have an evil plan,” he said, grinning. Sutton
was his best friend even though she was a girl. She was such a girl.
All she cared about was cooking and wearing pretty dresses. It should
disgust him but she was so pretty. And sweet. When she smiled it was
like the sun.
She
threw her head back and let out a cackle, imitating the witch they
saw on the movie, Wizard of Oz. Just last week they’d watched
huddled together in her mother’s television room. Sutton was afraid
of the monkeys and the wicked witch. She’d been sleeping in her
mother’s room every night since. Sutton was afraid of things and
Declan was brave. He was two years older and it was his job to
protect her, his mother told him over and over. Sutton grabbed their
plastic bucket, the red one with the broken handle, and ran toward
the water. She knelt down, waiting for the water to come, the wet
sand soaking through the thin material of her dress. After a moment,
she fell to her knees, putting her face in her hands. Her body was
shaking. Was she crying? Had he made her cry? Then he saw it. A wave
was cresting, larger than it should be. A tsunami, like the
signs
warned. This way, the signs said. The giant wave would come and carry
her out to sea, away from him. She would be crushed into the bottom
of the ocean, mangled and broken. He called out to her as he
twitched, trying to lurch his body from the sand that weighed him
down. But he could not. He was stuck, as the girl he loved, the girl
he’d loved all his life, was overcome by the wave and carried away.
She screamed as the wave pulled her under, “Declan! Declan!” And
then she was no more.
He
awakened, his T-shirt wet with sweat. Sutton. Something was
wrong.
Author
Info
Tess
Thompson is a novelist and playwright with a BFA in Drama from the
University of Southern California. In 2011, she released her first
novel, Riversong, which subsequently became a bestseller.
Like the characters in Tea and Primroses, Tess is from a small town in Oregon. She currently lives in a suburb of Seattle, Washington with her two young daughters, Emerson and Ella, where she is inspired daily by the view of the Cascade Mountains from her home office window.
Like the characters in Tea and Primroses, Tess is from a small town in Oregon. She currently lives in a suburb of Seattle, Washington with her two young daughters, Emerson and Ella, where she is inspired daily by the view of the Cascade Mountains from her home office window.
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