Unfinished Business series, book 3
by Carole Ann Moleti
by Carole Ann Moleti
Genre: Light Paranormal Romance
Cover Designer: Wren Taylor
Mike and Liz thought they'd gotten control of the specters haunting the Barrett Inn. But things get very complicated when they're the ghosts from your past life. The Category Five Hurricane bearing down on Cape Cod appears to be headed directly for them--or has it been spawned from inside them? This may be their only chance to vanquish the specters--if they survive the storm.
Mike and Liz had survived the first round, and they’d remained hopeful the specters would settle down. But there was enough unfinished business for any cosmic disturbance to rile them up again. This storm watch was more than just a minor blip on the radar—or a coincidence.
Noisy seagulls hunted as the storm with enough power to blow them to Rhode Island threatened. Mike rolled his shoulders, flexing the stiff muscles in his back, trying to imagine he could shed his wife and his son to escape the gaping jaws of Captain Edward Barrett’s legacy. Normally a lingering vague threat, it rubbed him raw at moments like this when he had nothing to do but wait for the bay to come in around him so he could go out and make a living.
He rinsed his hands in a tide pool. The shadow sent hermit crabs scurrying. Brine stung his knuckles but stopped the oozing with that invisible layer of stickiness every saltwater fisherman learns to love. An incoming tide rolled across the flats as the storm clouds amassed.
The boat teeter-tottered on its keel as Mike climbed aboard and settled into a seat. Reassured by the glimmering water rippling in to release him from bondage, he readied his fishing gear. Chants of “ohmmmmm” from morning beach yoga carried in the breeze. At least that was connection with living spirits, as opposed to the dead, stale vestiges of lives ended too soon who were unable to give up and let go.
A woman out for an early morning walk grew larger and larger. Her broad brimmed hat dipped so low over her eyes he couldn’t see her face, though her skinny legs, matchstick arms, and pigeon chest were unmistakable once she’d emerged from the glare. That, the jangling earrings, and the purple and pink broomstick skirt hitched up and secured with a silver belt.
“Good morning, Mike.” Always oppositional, Sandra was headed out when everyone was on their way back.
“Where’re you going, Sandra? Tide’s coming in.”
She flipped up the floppy brim and grinned. “I’m headed over to check on Harley.”
The Whaler rocked in the surf. “Should be ready to roll in about twenty minutes. I’ll give you a ride over.”
Sandra didn’t break stride. “That’s okay. I’ll be sitting on the beach with the old buzzard before you even pull up anchor.”
They were both oddballs: He, wearing a Red Sox cap, a scruffy beard, a black tee shirt showing a bit of belly, while sitting like a bum in a beached boat. Sandra, like an escapee from a Harry Potter novel, headed over to check on a ninety-six-year-old hermit who lived on a dune that was cut off from the mainland at high tide.
Liz Levine is convinced her recently deceased husband is engineering the sequence of events that propels her into a new life. But it’s sea captain Edward Barrett, the husband that died over a century ago, who has returned to complete their unfinished business. Edward’s lingering presence complicates all her plans and jeopardizes a new relationship that reawakens her passion for life and love. What are Captain Barrett’s plans for his wife, and for the man who is the new object of her affections?
Mike and Liz Keeny are newlyweds, new parents, and the proprietors of the Barrett Inn, an 1875 Victorian on Cape Cod, which just happens to be haunted— by their own ghosts from past lives. The Barrett Inn had become an annex of Purgatory, putting Liz and their infant son in danger. Selling the historic seaside bed and breakfast was the only answer, one that Liz and her own tortured specter refused to consider. Were Mike and Liz doomed to follow the same path that led to disaster in their previous lives? Was getting out, getting away, enough?
Carole Ann Moleti lives and works as a nurse-midwife in New York City, thus explaining her fascination with all things paranormal, urban fantasy, and space opera. Her nonfiction focuses on health care, politics, and women's issues. But her first love is writing science fiction and fantasy because walking through walls is less painful than running into them.
Books One and Two in the Unfinished Business series, Carole's Cape Cod paranormal romance novels, Breakwater Beach and The Widow's Walk, were published by Soulmate. Book Three, Storm Watch, is due out June 28,2017.
Urban fantasies set in the world of Carole's novels have been featured in Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Seers: Ten Tales of Clairvoyance, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, and Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires.
Carole also writes nonfiction that ranges from sweet and sentimental in This Path and Thanksgiving to Christmas to edgy and irreverent in the Not Your Mother's Books: On Being a Mother and On Being a Parent.
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