Bring It Back(list) post: A Sight to Dream Of by PG Forte

 

It's Fig Season!  And that can only mean that it's time to post the Fig scene from A Sight to Dream Of (which, as it happens, I AM bringing back--this coming Tuesday!). 

Outside in the garden her rooster was crowing. Lucy listened to the chorus of answering calls from the neighboring yards and snuggled deeper into the sheets, enjoying the warmth, the peace, the blissful luxury of sleeping in. The French doors that led from her bedroom out into the garden opened quietly, and then closed again, and she heard the soft, muffled sounds of someone moving through the room. She felt the bed sag as Dan came to sit beside her and then something cool and firm was brushed, lightly, repeatedly, across her lips.

“Wake up,” he whispered in her ear. “I brought you breakfast.”

She looked up into a pair of wicked blue eyes and felt desire stir. “Mmm. That’s sweet of you. What is it?” she asked, drowsily hopeful. She didn’t smell coffee, and there was something in his voice, and in his eyes that made her think food wasn’t all he was interested in giving her.  

“Figs.” Dan’s voice was low and gravelly. He settled himself more comfortably against the pillows. “I’ve been plundering your garden. See?” He held up a handful of the plump, bluish-purple fruit. “Just like the D H Lawrence poem. There was a flower that flowered inward, wombward: now there is a fruit like a ripe womb. C’mon...take a bite.”  

He held one out to her as he took another one, himself. Eating slowly, sensuously, his eyes never leaving hers. She felt a delicious warmth steal over her, but she couldn’t help teasing him just a little. 

“Poetry before breakfast, Dan? I don’t know about this. Are they even ripe?”  

“Hell, yes, they’re ripe.” He cocked his head at her and smiled. “Don’t you think I know a ripe fig when I see one? And just what do you have against poetry all of a sudden, woman?” He popped the last of the fig he was eating into his mouth and leaned closer, whispering against her ear as he recited, “The fig is a very secretive fruit...folded upon itself and secret unutterable...And milky sapped...sap that tastes strange on your fingers.”  His voice sent shivers running through her. 

“These are very ripe,” he continued. “And you know what the poem had to say about that, right?”

Lucy snorted. Oh, yeah. Sure, I do. She hadn’t a clue, and he knew it. She stretched invitingly and smiled. “You’re such a showoff, Cavanaugh. Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Oh, well, since you asked so nicely.” He put the figs down on the nightstand and stretched out beside her. His hand drifted slowly down the front of her nightgown.  “Honey-white figs of the north,” he recited as his fingers grazed across her breasts, she felt her nipples harden.  

“Black figs with scarlet inside, of the south,” His voice sank to the barest of whispers, a tremor ran through her as his hand traveled slowly down her stomach. She swallowed hard to keep from moaning.  

“Ripe figs won’t keep, won’t keep in any clime.” He smiled at her and she caught her breath as his hand slid over her hip, his fingers reaching for the hem of the gown.  Then she felt his hand sliding slowly back up her bare thigh, and he pulled her closer to him.  “So, you see Lucy, it’s important that we eat these...right now.”

He reached behind him to pluck one of the figs from the nightstand, and then turned back to press the ripe fruit against her lips. She let her head fall back and her eyes fall closed as she contemplated the thing with her mouth.  

First the skin. Firm and smooth and rounded, almost like the smooth, firm skin of his shoulder. She felt her breathing quicken. It was, just a little, like opening her mouth on the curve of his shoulder as he thrust himself into her. She explored the shape and the firmness of it with her tongue, her teeth just testing the surface. They pressed harder and the fig gave way beneath their pressure. The flesh inside was sweet, but not cloyingly so.  Fresh and cool.  

She felt him turn the fruit in his fingers, inviting her to explore more of it. She smiled as his hand lightly grazed her cheek. She delved deeper with her tongue, tasting the sweet juiciness of it. Almost as if she were taking his mouth with hers—but wetter even than that.  Like kissing him in the shower. Cool water mingling with the hot wetness of his mouth. Her tongue pressed further into the soft flesh, savoring the feel and the flavor of it. At last, she took the whole fruit with her mouth, eager for all of it, the sweet, juicy succulence of it bursting in her mouth. And when at last her tongue found his fingers, they were sweet with juice, sticky and dripping with it. She licked them slowly, licked them clean of the sticky juice, then let her mouth close around his thumb; sucking at it gently as she opened her eyes and stared into his. Lids heavy with desire, flames flickering in their dark depths.  

His finger slid from her mouth. His hand traveled up across her cheek, behind her ear, through her hair to grasp the back of her head. She lifted her face to him at the same time that he bent his to her; their mouths met and she licked into him, searching with her tongue for more of the taste of him and of the fruit they’d been eating.   

The bible had gotten it all wrong, as usual, she thought, faintly dizzy. What was an apple, anyway? 

This is Lucy and Dan in someone else's story. Can you imagine how they behave in their own story?  

For another teaser, download their pre-quel novella, Such Fleeting Pleasures:

Love wasn't always strawberries and cream for Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh...or was it?

In this Oberon prequel, we travel back in time to see how it all began.

Most of the material in this prequel novella (which is set some eighteen years before the series begins) also appears as flashback scenes in A Taste of Honey.

Download here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/5xxljdbblb

​ ​ 

A Sight to Dream Of

Sam Sterling is a man with problems. Including a partner who is trying to kill him, and a nosy reporter, who's just turned up dead! It's going to take a miracle to save him. Or, better yet, an angel. ​

Marsha Quinn is used to being called a witch. After all, her abilities as a psychic make a lot of people uncomfortable. But no one has ever called her an angel before!

Falling in love was not a possibility she'd ever envisioned, until Sam the skeptic arrives in Oberon, and teaches her to see past the scars she carries, and the lies he's told her, to the love that lies within their hearts and minds.

Pre-Order now at: https://Books2Read.com/SightDream

Bring It Back(list) A Taste of Honey by PG Forte

 

Since Yesterday was Earth Day, I figured a Spring-themed excerpt was in order. A Taste of Honey is the fourth book in my Oberon series--and features one of my favorite couples, Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh. Unfortunately, it's not currently in print, but you can still get a copy of the prequel (see details below).

A Taste of Honey

Oberon 4.0

Blurb:   For Lucy Greco Cavanaugh, life is a dream come true. She has it all. The perfect family. The perfect husband. The perfect marriage. What more could she wish for? Other than the chance to do it all again. To experience once more the agony and ecstasy of falling in love with the man of her dreams. To recapture the joy and uncertainty that comes with starting over.

​ As far as Dan Cavanaugh is concerned, his life has become a nightmare. His storybook marriage is on the line when Deirdre Shelton-Cooper, the runaway daughter of a former girlfriend arrives in Oberon intent on proving Dan is her father. Even though he's convinced the girl's claims are false, Dan decides his only chance to keep from losing everything lies in keeping her very existence a secret from his wife and family.

But, sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you--and those you love. When Deirdre, masquerading as a surfer girl named Monica, accidentally hooks up with their son, Seth, Lucy and Dan are left to wonder: has their perfect, fairy-tale romance, turned into a classic Greek tragedy?

Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for. And it's more than you'd ever dreamed.

*  *  *

Excerpt:   Lucy drove out to the nursery early that afternoon, with the windows rolled down. No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, an album she’d ‘liberated’ from her teenage son’s music collection several years earlier, was blasting from the Explorer’s CD player, and a plan for fixing the deteriorating relationship between her husband and her son was cooking in her head. In fact, if things worked out the way she hoped they would, she might even be able to give her own relationship with Dan some added spice.

It was a glorious Spring day. The air along the coast was warm and lushly scented with yerba buena, eucalyptus and sage. Fat, majestic puffs sailed across the sky, casting cloud-shaped shadows onto the earth and sea below, further mottling the already variegated landscape. When she turned off the coast road onto the canyon drive that led to the nursery, she saw that the hills that lined the way, gray-green, emerald, and gold for most of the year, had been transformed. They’d blossomed overnight into an almost endless expanse of orange and blue--mostly California poppies and lupine--disrupted only where the spiky silver foliage and dried flower heads of wild artichokes broke through to tower above them.

It was the same thing that happened every year, but, as always, the beauty of it took her by surprise and made her catch her breath.

It was a perfect day for a picnic, she had decided after leaving Marsha and Scout that morning; and so she had gone home and packed a basket with which she hoped to tempt Dan to join her at Seth’s ball game this afternoon.

The relationship between the two men in her life had become so strained of late. And, even though she had taken care to pack all of Dan’s favorites--marinated artichoke hearts, olives stuffed with sun dried tomatoes, roasted eggplant and goat cheese sandwiches on fresh foccacia bread, and a mint-mango salad--she wasn’t sure that even that would do the trick.

It wasn’t so much that she feared her husband’s relationship with their son was in any real danger of becoming irrevocably damaged, as had happened to Dan’s relationship with his own father; although the possibility had certainly occurred to her, and more than once. It was just that it was so very obvious how much both he and Seth were suffering from their estrangement. And it would be good for Seth to see that, annoyed as he often was with him, his father still supported his efforts.

Besides, she knew very well that her own attendance at his games was almost more frustrating for Seth than supportive. Despite all her years as a spectator, Lucy still seemed to be missing the finer points of the game. Their mutual interest in baseball had always been a passion that Dan and Seth enjoyed sharing. And really, what was the point of sports, if not to allow men the opportunity to renew their bonds with one another without shedding too much blood?

She pulled off the road before she reached the nursery’s main entrance, unlocked one of the gates that led directly into the fields, and detoured through the back of the nursery’s grounds to check on her hives. Sunlight shimmered in the air, and as she walked through the field she breathed in deep lungfuls scented with the heady fragrance of flowering plants and warm earth. 

 The bees were everywhere; crawling on the flowers, filling the air with their busy flights, and clustering around the hives’ entrances in a carefully choreographed confusion. Lucy reminded herself to keep all her movements slow as she moved among them. She was entranced by their gentleness as they detoured around her. Even without the honey, she’d enjoy keeping them. Of course, she hadn’t been stung yet, although everyone who worked with bees assured her that it was inevitable, and she hadn’t yet been forced to contend with a swarm, either. Perhaps she’d feel a little less enthusiastic after either of those occurred. But for now, it was a terrific little sideline business.

She watched the bees for several minutes longer, observing their activity, trying to take a count of the bees as they moved in and out of the hives, as she’d been taught to do; looking for anything unusual, any suggestion that the hives were ailing. Finally, satisfied that all was well, she slowly turned and walked back towards her car. She’d come back out here this weekend, with all her equipment, so she could inspect the hives properly, but right now, she had an even more interesting project to work on.

Seth was not the only one whose bonds with Dan could use a little renewing, she thought. It had been months since she and Dan had enjoyed the kind of romantic adventure she had planned for them. Altogether too many months. And man could not live by sports alone.

She’d included a jar of her honey in the picnic basket. If she and Dan could find a private, secluded little spot for their picnic, perhaps she’d find a way to increase his appreciation for her new hobby.

*  *  *

Such Fleeting Pleasures 

An Oberon Prequel Novella 0.5 

Love wasn't always strawberries and cream for Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh...or was it? 

In this Oberon prequel, we travel back in time to see how it all began. ​ Most of the material in this prequel novella (set some eighteen years before the series begins) also appears as flashback scenes in A Taste of Honey. ​ 

Although the series as a whole is not currently available, you can access a FREE DOWNLOAD of this novella when you join my Facebook group: The Crone's Nest. 

​ Read an excerpt HERE

Bring It Back(list) A Taste of Honey by PG Forte

 I was looking for a scene with an April theme, and I  found one here in the opening chapter of A Taste of Honey--a book I always associate with May. Go figure. 

A Taste of Honey

Oberon, Book Four 

by PG Forte 

Paranormal Romance/Romantic Suspense 

This title is currently out of print. However, I'm currently in the process of re-booting the entire series. Join my FB group for updates: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCronesNest and get a FREE novella (details below).

BLURB: 

For Lucy Greco Cavanaugh, life is a dream come true. She has it all. The perfect family. The perfect husband. The perfect marriage. What more could she wish for? Other than the chance to do it all again. To experience once more the agony and ecstasy of falling in love with the man of her dreams. To recapture the joy and uncertainty that comes with starting over.

​ As far as Dan Cavanaugh is concerned, his life has become a nightmare. His storybook marriage is on the line when Deirdre Shelton-Cooper, the runaway daughter of a former girlfriend arrives in Oberon intent on proving Dan is her father. Even though he's convinced the girl's claims are false, Dan decides his only chance to keep from losing everything lies in keeping her very existence a secret from his wife and family.

But, sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you—and those you love. When Deirdre, masquerading as a surfer girl named Monica, accidentally hooks up with their son, Seth, Lucy and Dan are left to wonder: has their perfect, fairy-tale romance, turned into a classic Greek tragedy?

Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for. And it's more than you'd ever dreamed.

EXCERPT:

The present. Mid April. 

In a lot of ways, Oberon is typical of any one of several small towns to be found along California’s Central Coast. Clinging to sheer, corrugated green cliffs above a windswept strand of pale, golden sand, it lacks a little of the endless sunshine boasted by its neighbors to the south, enjoying instead a milder, more temperate climate and, for much of the year, a lot of fog.

The area surrounding the town lacks one other very important California mainstay as well: the plethora of freeways that grace most of the rest of state are largely absent here. Bounded on the west by the broad, brilliant blue crescent of San Bartolo Bay, and to the east by the majestic bulk of Mt. Totawka, the ‘sacred mountain’ of local lore, Oberon is virtually isolated. Set amid a tangled network of canyons and creeks, undeveloped wilderness and—where the landscape and the environment have cooperated—acres of agricultural fields, it’s a hard place to get to. It can be an even harder place to leave behind.

But if Oberon was ever the type of funky beach town where teenaged girls with sun bleached hair, driving station wagons with surfboards tied to the roof was a common sight, it certainly is not that way anymore. So when Lucy Greco-Cavanaugh did happen to spy one, rolling down Main Street one sunny morning late in April, followed only a few minutes later, by a longhaired young man in a VW convertible rabbit, also with surfboard, she knew something strange was up. 

 Perhaps someone was making a movie, she reasoned. Or maybe—and being a lifetime resident of Oberon this was of course the theory she favored—a sudden tear in the fabric of space-time had inadvertently allowed her to take a nostalgic glimpse back in time to the California-dreamin’ fantasies of an earlier age.

Not coincidentally, this time displacement theory was one that she found herself applying to more and more events of late. She was thirty-seven years old, and she had memories that spanned most of those years, albeit, with varying amounts of clarity. But somehow, lately, it was almost as if all those memories didn’t quite add up the way they should. 

 For several months now, she had been aware of a vague sense of dissatisfaction growing within her, coupled with a worrisome preoccupation with the past. As if some invisible anchor line that had once kept her mind tethered in the present had been cut. No matter how hard she tried to stay focused, her mind kept drifting back to places it had already been.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that while everyone around her seemed suddenly immersed in fresh new lives and new loves, she’d had to content herself with more of the same old, same old. Not that there was any part of her life that she wanted to change, she reminded herself sternly. She took a moment to rap her knuckles against the side of one of the wooden half barrels that served as planters on the terrace of the tea shop where she and her two best friends were having breakfast. The same old everything she had was pretty damn great.

She had two wonderful kids, satisfying work, a comfortable house, and she’d been happily married to the love of her life for the past sixteen and a half years. It was just that, after all those years, everything seemed to have gotten the slightest bit stale. She couldn’t help but remember how things used to be—

“Okay, Lucy,” Marsha snapped, “What’s wrong? You’ve been sitting here sighing to yourself for the past half-hour. You’re driving me nuts.”

Lucy frowned as she reached across the table for the pot of lavender honey. “Nothing’s wrong,” she answered. She could feel both Marsha and Scout eyeing her curiously as she occupied herself for several minutes deliberately drizzling the honey over the buttered French baguette on her plate, but she refused to return their gazes. “And anyway, I was not sighing.”

“You were sighing,” Marsha insisted. “Wasn’t she sighing, Scout?”

Lucy looked up impatiently as Scout turned weary hazel eyes in her direction. “What can I say, Lucy? It sounded like sighing to me, too.” Scout shrugged, absently stroking her baby’s head. Three-week-old Cole, who was turning out to be one of those preternaturally alert infants who have to be held all the time, had finally fallen asleep at her breast.

“Well, you’re wrong. Both of you.” Lucy took a big bite of bread and honey, and stared defiantly at her friends: Marsha with her new boyfriend, and Scout with both a new husband and a new baby. There was no way she was ever going to discuss what was bothering her with either of them.

She couldn’t believe that, with everything she had to be grateful for, she could still be so petty. She couldn’t believe that she would actually begrudge her two best friends a little happiness. But the plain fact of the matter was that she was so jealous of both of them, it was a wonder she wasn’t as green as an avocado. She saw the way Sam acted around Marsha, the way Nick looked at Scout, and she knew that once, she and Dan had been that way, too. Somewhere along the way it seemed they had lost that.

And she wanted it back. Oh, how she wanted it back! But, after all these years— she wasn’t sure that was even possible.

You couldn’t recreate newness could you? You couldn’t expect to discover anything too different about the same old person you’d been regularly and intimately exploring for almost two decades. And how could anyone ever hope to recapture the exquisite torture of doubt and uncertainty that so often accompanied the first stages of love? She wasn’t even sure she wanted to--except when she remembered the way the agony transformed into ecstasy…

Be careful what you wish for, a soft voice seemed to whisper in her head. She shivered as a gust of wind swept across the terrace setting the wind chimes to tinkling in the trees around them. Lavender spikes swayed on their long stems and the tiny pink Cecile Brunner roses that covered the arbor over their heads shed a few more petals onto the table. Cole whimpered slightly. Lucy watched as Scout wrapped his blanket more snugly around her baby and Marsha picked the petals out of her teacup.

Such Fleeting Pleasures
An Oberon Prequel Novella, 0.5
by PG Forte
Paranormal Romance

BLURB:

Love wasn't always strawberries and cream for Lucy and Dan Cavanaugh...or was it? In this Oberon prequel, we travel back in time to see how it all began. 

Most of the material in this prequel novella (which is set some eighteen years before the series begins) also appears as flashback scenes in A Taste of Honey. But you can download it (and read it NOW) for FREE when you join my Facebook group: The Crone's Nest

Read an excerpt HERE

A Very Celebratory Month

I had the hardest time settling on a theme for this month’s post. And for once the list of “Bizarre and Unique Holidays” that I tend to consult was no help at all. For instance, did you know that today is National Cream Filled Donut Day? Yeah, me, neither. And given that cream-filled has never been my go-to donut, I didn’t really see what I could do with that. Last Sunday was National Grandparents’ Day. Um...I’m not saying I have any kind of big announcement to make or anything just yet, but it is entirely possible  I will have reason to be very excited about that particular holiday next year. But it’s a tad premature right now.  

“Maybe,” I said to myself, “I’ll have better luck if I check out the monthly holidays rather than the daily ones?” So that’s what I did. And, ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to tell you I struck gold.   

Where’s a drumroll when you need one? Oh, wait; here it is.

So September, it turns out, is National Honey Month, National Chicken Month AND National Little League Baseball Month. Which probably means nothing whatsoever to most of you. To me, however, it’s a total trifecta, a hat-trick of holidays, if you will.

See, there’s this little book I wrote a gazillion years ago (okay, it’s not that little, really, and maybe it wasn’t quite that long ago) called Taste of Honey. It’s always been one of my favorites...but, shhh, don’t tell the other stories that I said so.

The heroine of A Taste of Honey, Lucy, keeps bees, raises chickens, and has a teenage son who plays Little League Baseball. And those three things are absolutely critical to her story. I mean, seriously, if it weren’t for the bees, the chickens and the son, she wouldn’t even have a story. So that requires an excerpt, right?

If you’d like to read more about Lucy and Dan but don’t want to commit to a whole book (or a whole series) I’ve made the prequel to their story free to anyone who joins my Facebook group, The Crone’s Nest. https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCronesNest/

Unfortunately, there are no bees, chickens or son in the prequel, but young Lucy and Dan are still pretty hot. At least, I’ve always thought so.

EXCERPT:

Lucy drove out to the nursery early that afternoon, with the windows rolled down.  No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, an album she’d ‘liberated’ from her teenage son’s music collection several years earlier, was blasting from the Explorer’s CD player, and a plan for fixing the deteriorating relationship between her husband and her son was cooking in her head.  In fact, if things worked out the way she hoped they would, she might even be able to give her own relationship with Dan some added spice. 

            It was a glorious Spring day.  The air along the coast was warm and lushly scented with yerba buena, eucalyptus and sage.  Fat, majestic puffs sailed across the sky, casting cloud-shaped shadows onto the earth and sea below, further mottling the already variegated landscape.  When she turned off the coast road onto the canyon drive that led to the nursery, she saw that the  hills that lined the way, gray-green, emerald, and gold for most of the year, had been transformed.  They’d blossomed overnight into an almost endless expanse of  orange and blue--mostly California poppies and lupine--disrupted only where the spiky silver foliage and dried flower heads of wild artichokes broke through to tower above them. 

            It was the same thing that happened every year, but, as always, the beauty of it took her by surprise and made her catch her breath.

            It was a perfect day for a picnic, she had decided after leaving Marsha and Scout that morning; and so she had gone home and packed a basket with which she hoped to tempt Dan to join her at Seth’s ball game this afternoon. 

            The relationship between the two men in her life had become so strained of late.  And, even though she had taken care to pack all of Dan’s favorites--marinated artichoke hearts, olives stuffed with sun dried tomatoes, roasted eggplant and goat cheese sandwiches on fresh foccacia bread, and a mint-mango salad--she wasn’t sure that even that would do the trick.

            It wasn’t so much that she feared her husband’s relationship with their son was in any real danger of becoming irrevocably damaged, as had happened to Dan’s relationship with his own father; although the possibility had certainly occurred to her, and more than once.  It was just that it was so very obvious how much both he and Seth were suffering from their estrangement.  And it would be good for Seth to see that, annoyed as he often was with him, his father still supported his efforts. 

Besides, she knew very well that her own attendance at his games was almost more frustrating for Seth than supportive.  Despite all her years as a spectator, Lucy still seemed to be missing the finer points of the game.  Their mutual interest in baseball had always been a passion that Dan and Seth enjoyed sharing.  And really, what was the point of sports, if not to allow men the opportunity to renew their bonds with one another without shedding too much blood?

She pulled off the road before she reached the nursery’s main entrance, unlocked one of the gates that led directly into the fields, and detoured through the back of the nursery’s grounds to check on her hives.  Sunlight shimmered in the air, and as she walked through the field she breathed in deep lungfuls scented with the heady fragrance of flowering plants and warm earth.  The bees were everywhere; crawling on the flowers, filling the air with their busy flights, and clustering around the hives’ entrances in a carefully choreographed confusion.  Lucy reminded herself to keep all her movements slow as she moved among them.  She was entranced by their gentleness as they detoured around her.  Even without the honey, she’d enjoy keeping them.  Of course, she hadn’t been stung yet, although everyone who worked with bees assured her that it was inevitable, and she hadn’t yet been forced to contend with a swarm, either.  Perhaps she’d feel a little less enthusiastic after either of those occurred.  But for now, it was a terrific little sideline business.

            She watched the bees for several minutes longer, observing their activity, trying to take a count of the bees as they moved in and out of the hives, as she’d been taught to do; looking for anything unusual, any suggestion that the hives were ailing.  Finally, satisfied that all was well, she slowly turned and walked back towards her car.  She’d come back out here this weekend, with all her equipment, so she could inspect the hives properly, but right now, she had an even more interesting project to work on. 

            Seth was not the only one whose bonds with Dan could use a little renewing, she thought.  It had been months since she and Dan had enjoyed the kind of romantic adventure she had planned for them.  Altogether too many months.  And man could not live by sports alone.

            She’d included a jar of her honey in the picnic basket.  If she and Dan could find a private, secluded little spot for their picnic, perhaps she’d find a way to increase his appreciation for her new hobby.

* * * * *

For Lucy Greco Cavanaugh, life is a dream come true. She has it all, the perfect family, the perfect husband, the perfect marriage. What more could she wish for other than the chance to do it all again? To experience once more the agony and ecstasy of falling in love with the man of her dreams. To recapture the joy and uncertainty that comes with starting over. Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for... and it's more than you ever dreamed. 

https://www.amazon.com/Taste-Honey-Oberon-Book-ebook/dp/B00143YIEQ