Blurb:
Nolan Riley can’t believe his eyes when woman in historical dress lands on top of his lighting van while they’re filming a Western. She claims she’s from 1891. He knows he shouldn't believe her. He’s stayed away from women after a disastrous relationship, but something about the lost look in Phoebe’s eyes makes him feel protective, despite his distrust of women and Phoebe's unbelievable claim. Against his better judgment, he takes Phoebe home and gets her a job on the movie set.
As they explore their relationship, they discover that old wrongs need to be righted before they can move on. Phoebe’s fledgling faith demands she go back to 1891 Nebraska to ask forgiveness from her family and obligations she left behind. Nolan has to deal with his inability to trust a woman. Separated by time, both are uncertain of their lives, but they throw themselves upon God’s mercy.
But love transcends time. Is their love is strong enough to secure a future together?
extract:
Psalm 138:8 ~ The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your love, O Lord, endures forever.
Washington County,
Nebraska, 1891
Phoebe slipped out the back door of the ranch
house and eased it shut. She lifted the hem of her skirt and flew down the
knoll to the chicken coop. The breeze she created pulled hair from its knot and
whispered against her neck like a bothersome spidery web in the barn.
On level ground, she glanced over her
shoulder and caught the curtain flutter against the porch window. She went ahead
and lifted the hook on the wood frame of the gate made of woven wire. Hot
moisture built in the back of her throat. How dare Mandy Totten spy from the
house?
She
ruined my life. Now she has the nerve to peek at me through the window? Let her
guess what I’m doing with the chickens.
Phoebe annihilated the hot tears trying to
form and pushed inside the pen. Hens scattered as she re-latched the gate.
Take
a breath. Hold it. Don’t inhale with your nose.
Focus on the reason you’re here.
She stepped gingerly. It was hard to get beyond the smell of the chicken coop,
but she had no choice.
She slanted another look over her shoulder.
Mandy’s stance on the back stoop added to Phoebe’s haste to begin her search.
She held her breath, made sure no hens sat in the boxes, and then plunged her
hand beneath the straw in the first nest.
Where
else could that thing be?
Not too long ago she would have done any
chore, outside the barn, rather than enter this awful place. She shuffled through the
next hen box, recalling the event that turned her world askew.
Life
changed less than a year ago. She and her parents returned from a neighbor’s
home to find Gavin with a strange woman dressed in what looked like a youth’s
tight trousers. The woman hadn’t made sense. She said her name was Mandy,
reported she’d taken a fall and knocked her head.
Gavin
claimed Mandy had dropped through the barn trapdoor at his feet. From the
twenty-first century, of all things. Her showing up changed life on the ranch
forever.
Wilder
yet, her tale included traveling from the future by means of a box-shaped
object called a cell phone.
If it worked for Mandy, Phoebe needed the
cell phone as her own means of escape. She’d watched Mandy carry it from the
barn to the coop. Out of her desperation to leave, Phoebe searched the laying
boxes.
“Where is that box?” She had tried not to
admit her curiosity regarding the cell phone, the supposed device that enabled Mandy
to travel through time.
Phoebe
wouldn’t be in this position if life had remained the way she’d always known it
would lead. As in, as long as she could remember, she’d dreamed Gavin loved her enough to plan a life together.
The spunky redhead with the green eyes showed
up and made the family welcome her with open arms.
Not
me.
Phoebe’s
future evaporated with the sudden appearance of a stranger on the ranch. Now
Gavin and Mandy’s marriage loomed on the horizon.
Phoebe
rummaged through another box and touched a broken eggshell covered in thick,
stinky yolk. Intolerable.
She
couldn’t change any of what had happened. Her life would never be the same. “I
don’t belong here any longer.”
All
her life, her parents had made her feel loved. Until a stranger fell from the
sky. Had Mama and Papa even missed Phoebe while she’d visited family? She
wrinkled her nose and moved the straw, dug into the next box along the low
wall.
Mandy
had fit right in. She’d helped Mother in the kitchen, where Phoebe lacked
skills. The interloper didn’t mind gathering eggs. Phoebe had always been
scared to death of a hen pecking her hand. She rubbed the back of her dirty
fingers against her skirt.
A
fat hen spread its wings. Phoebe flapped her skirt. “Shoo, you nasty thing.”
Adjusted
to the odor, she licked her lips, and then fumbled in the corners of the third
box. Three more to go. She couldn’t help it if the rugged side of ranch life
had never appealed to her. The miles of endless grass and the animals weren’t
her idea of a lady’s station in life.
Mandy,
though, took to ranch life like a cat to cream. She’d showed op out of nowhere.
Could she really have traveled from the future? Now of all things, she planned
to marry Phoebe’s man.
I don’t know if I can stand
attending the marriage ceremony.
“I’m
so glad I ran off to stay with family in Chicago.” Her aunt and cousins
introduced her to live theater. Upon her return, she’d tried to express her
feelings to Mama, who said, “You have so much potential, Phoebe, God has a plan
for you.” Then she had to go and spoil it by adding, “I doubt that involves a
bawdy theater.”
Mama always told her to find the place God
planned, not go after something sinful, such as the bowels of the theater. Phoebe
wanted excitement. Personally tailored party gowns to attend plays and operas.
She’d longed for the thrill of her own chance at acting on stage. Who cared
about her reputation?
Hens grew quiet as she gritted her teeth and
rustled beneath the straw in the fourth box. Countless times she’d tried to imagine
how to work a cell phone. Mandy claimed it was the key, she called it a portal,
which enabled her to travel through time. She'd disappeared twice more to
return to where she’d come from. Mandy at last put her twenty-first-century
world behind and chose to stay, basking in her newfound love Gavin.
Gavin was orphaned as a boy, and then came to
live with her family. Phoebe had loved him ever since. He proclaimed to love her
as a sister. That fairy-tale longing turned out as the lovesick dream of a
girl. He’s lost to me. Stop being a ninny.
She turned her head for a gulp of fresher air
near the one open window, then faced the fifth box. Hens squawked. The gate
clicked. Couldn’t she be left alone? Her fingers dislodged a feather that
drifted through the air. She blew it away from her face.
“What are you doing out here?” Mandy’s kind
voice grated against Phoebe’s nerve endings.
She froze. “Gathering eggs.”
“I’ve already gathered them.”
Phoebe’s hand hesitated in mid-air. She then
swished her hand through the last box, squared her shoulders, and turned
sideways to reach behind the box.
Mandy shrieked. “No.”
Purchase links:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Heart-Hearts-Across-Time-ebook/dp/B08CMN28MX
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Heart-Hearts-Across-Time-ebook/dp/B08CMN28MX
Pelican: https://pelicanbookgroup.com/ec/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=37_46&products_id=1500
Bio:
Nebraska country girl LoRee Peery writes fiction that hopefully appeals to adult readers who enjoy stories written from a Christian perspective, focusing on the romance. These include novels and novellas for women and men in the Contemporary, Romance, Historical, Time Travel, and Mystery/Suspense categories. She writes of redeeming grace with a sense of place. Her Frivolities Series and the book based on her father’s unsolved homicide, Touches of Time, are available on Amazon. She is who she is by the grace of God: Christian, country girl, wife, mother, grandmother and great-, sister, friend, and author. Connect with LoRee through these links: www.loreepeery.com
https://twitter.com/LoreePeery
https://www.facebook.com/LoReePeery
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