Sapphire Falls: Going For It (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Erin Nicholas. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Sapphire Falls remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Erin Nicholas, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  GOING FOR IT

  A Sapphire Falls Kindle World Novella

  By

  MARILYN BRANT

  Table of Contents

  About Going For It

  Dedication & Thanks

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  A Note from the Author

  Other Books by Bestselling Author Marilyn Brant

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Mirabelle Harbor meets Sapphire Falls...

  Journalist Trevor Cayne is working on the biggest feature story of his career, and he’s on a road trip from his home in the lakeside Chicago suburb of Mirabelle Harbor to Colorado Springs to get the final details. But a quick stop to see his grandmother in Sapphire Falls threatens to derail his carefully constructed plans. Between Gram and her friends, the weather whims of Mother Nature, and the most stunning redhead he’s ever laid eyes on in his life, he may not make it further than the western edge of Nebraska.

  Aspiring singer-songwriter Tina Marie Moran has vowed to leave Sapphire Falls for Nashville after this week’s big fireworks—she’s not even waiting for the Annual Town Festival to come to an end. She’s put her music dreams on hold for long enough and has no intention of postponing her plans yet again, least of all for another potentially untrustworthy man. But between her loving but meddlesome relatives and friends, a broken heart that’s in desperate need of mending, and a handsome stranger who can play her body like a virtuoso lead guitarist, she may find herself engulfed in a new passion that’s as strong as her love of music.

  When it comes to their creative lives, both Trevor and Tina Marie know all about GOING FOR IT—but are they willing to put that same drive into what just might be the love of a lifetime?

  **Learn more about New York Times & USA Today bestselling author Marilyn Brant on her Amazon page www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Brant/e/B003B2BGBG and her website www.MarilynBrant.com**

  Dedication & Thanks

  For my friends and family, as always...

  With great appreciation to my lovely early readers—Gina Paulus, Brandy Morrison, and Kimberly Dawn. I’m so grateful for your kindness and helpful feedback!

  And with special thanks to Erin Nicholas, whose delightful Sapphire Falls series inspired this story. Thank you for inviting my Mirabelle Harbor characters to be a part of your wonderful Sapphire Falls Kindle World!

  Chapter One

  Trevor Cayne had only a handful of unrequited loves in his life:

  1. Pro basketball. Despite being six foot four inches tall and having excellent hand-eye coordination, a ligament tear to his left shoulder in high school, followed by a series of sprains and a broken ankle in college, put an untimely end to his NBA fantasies.

  2. His Grandma Bernadette’s famous Cheesy French Onion Soup. He loved it but—thanks to a sensitivity to onions—it didn’t love him back.

  3. Epic World. He’d been trying for five years straight to get a byline in this premiere magazine but, in spite of his extensive writing background and literary mettle, this was one publication that had eluded him.

  4. Elizabeth Matthews, Pattie Palomino, Alicia Winchester, and every other gorgeous redhead he’d had a crush on since kindergarten. Considering the way his love life was going, he might have a better chance of getting signed to the Chicago Bulls as a first-round draft pick (at the ripe old age of thirty-four, no less) than finding a woman he was attracted to who reciprocated his love.

  As he thought about this at work on Friday afternoon in Mirabelle Harbor—the June issue of Epic World in his hands—he decided Happy Hour couldn’t come fast enough.

  He flipped through the opening pages of the magazine and skimmed several of the latest features:

  “Livin’ La Vida Low Crime: Safest Cities Around the World.”

  “Beachcombing Treasures of the Atlantic Coast from Bar Harbor to Hilton Head.”

  “Hands Across America 30 Years Later—A Retrospective.”

  They were good articles. Really good.

  But Trevor had worked his way up from staff writer to senior editor at the Mirabelle Harbor Gazette. He’d had dozens of freelance pieces published in the Chicago Tribune, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Washington Post, and even a couple of short clips in Newsweek.

  He was good, too.

  He just needed to figure out how to break into his dream magazine.

  “Did you check the copy for the Saturday print edition?” his boss, Lillian King, asked him.

  “Every word.”

  “Even Declan’s piece? We just got it in this morning.”

  “Dec’s pieces need the least editing of anyone’s on staff,” he informed her. “But, yes. His, too.”

  Trevor’s friend, Declan Night, despite having been successful as a real jock, albeit in professional hockey, not in basketball, was a damn talented freelance sports writer. Dec might forget the occasional comma or dangle a modifier every now and then, but it was rare that the Gazette had to clean up any of Dec’s prose.

  Lillian peered over his shoulder to glance at the magazine in Trevor’s hands. “Still mooning over Epic World and hoping for a byline?”

  He turned to glare at her. “I’m not mooning, but...yeah. Maybe.”

  She pointed at the page number. “You’re not at the good part yet. Skip ahead to page one hundred and fourteen.”

  Trevor jumped to that section and—whoa.

  Top of the page read:

  International Feature Contest

  Why not write for us?

  Submission Deadline is June 30th

  4,500 - 5.000 words

  Show your scope and prove you can be a contributor to EPIC WORLD!

  Top 5 selections to be printed in the October issue, so don’t delay. Read the submission guidelines below and send in your article...

  Trev blinked at the page. Read the whole thing over. Read the fine print, and then read it a second time. He looked up and met Lillian’s gaze.

  “You should go for it,” she said gently. “Got yourself a story idea?”

  He grinned at her. “You know I do. But, um...I might need to finally take some vacation time to pull the threads together.”

  His boss raised a thin silver-gray eyebrow. “I can’t cope without you here for long, Trev. Not more than a week. At most. But why don’t you knock off a couple hours early tonight? And if you can promise to be back by next weekend—”

  “Lillian, I think I love you.”

  “Naturally. Too bad I’m not twenty-five years younger or single,” she said tartly.

  He was already collecting his things and compiling a mental list of the arrangements he’d need to make to get the story he wanted. One with the kind of “scope” that would impress the Epic World editors and final judges. He had a location for the feature in mind. An angle that would be creative and unique. Favors he could call in. And just enough days off to make some writing magic happen.

  He paused, though, and glanced at his boss, appreciating for at least the three hundredth time t
his week how great it was to work for someone as smart and supportive as Lillian King.

  He leaned in, kissed the top of her silver-gray head, and said, “Our age difference wouldn’t matter. Tell Amir that he’d better be good to you. I’m not above trying to steal you away.” Then he grabbed his car keys and raced to the door.

  “Stay out of the chicken coop, Trev,” she called after him. An old joke they’d shared, going back a decade at least.

  “Okay,” he called in return. “But no pole dancing while I’m gone,” he added, which was the expected response. They both laughed. Long story.

  She waved him off, and he got to the parking lot and hopped in his car before anyone in the building could think to delay him.

  After a speedy pit stop at his apartment for a week’s worth of clothes, his laptop, and a few supplies, he hit the highway.

  Colorado Springs...here I come!

  ~*~

  In Sapphire Falls, Nebraska—roughly five hundred miles west of Mirabelle Harbor, Illinois—Tina Marie Moran flexed her fingers and then wiggled them above the body of her Fender acoustic guitar.

  “Trying to make it levitate?” her friend Phoebe Sherwood Spencer asked.

  Tina laughed. “No. Just trying to encourage the music to flow. I need to write one more upbeat song to have a decent set of twelve for the demo I’d like to cut.”

  “You’ve written more than eleven other songs in your life,” her friend said. “Haven’t you?”

  She nodded. “I’ve written hundreds,” Tina admitted. “But the earliest ones weren’t mature enough structurally, and most of the later ones have been...oh, how should I put it? Kind of angry rants.”

  Phoebe winced. “Well, David did behave like an ass. And your old friend Lori wasn’t exactly...” She let the thought trail off.

  “Right. And I’m a contemporary folk/country artist, so ‘You Lyin’ Ho, Get Your Effing Hands Off My Cheating Fiancé’ could work for some recording labels, but it isn’t really the musical style I’m going for.” She sighed. “Besides, any producer who heard that song might want to send me to therapy, not on tour.”

  Phoebe grinned. “At least you’re developing a healthy sense of humor about it.”

  “It only took eight months.” She shrugged. “But enough’s enough. I’m leaving for Nashville after Tuesday night’s fireworks during the festival next week, and I’m not changing my plans for anyone this time. Definitely not for a man.”

  “You go for it, sister!” She reached up and gave Tina a fierce hug and Tina, not for the first time, felt a wave of gratitude for her fellow redhead. Despite their difference in height—Phoebe was petite, while Tina was five foot ten in stockings—Tina looked up to the woman.

  Phoebe was a Sapphire Falls native, but she had a broader perspective than many of Tina’s childhood friends. She’d faced down her own battle with romance and come out ahead in the game. Her husband, Joe Spencer, was a good guy—one who’d slay dragons and crisscross the globe for her. It warmed Tina’s heart that men like that still existed in the world. If only Tina had been smart enough to fall for one of them, rather than for David Reece—the cheating prick—who decided, after being friends for twenty years and lovers for six, that Tina’s (now former) BFF Lori Monroe would make a better main squeeze.

  Tina picked up her guitar and strummed a few angry chords.

  “Hey, don’t let them get to you anymore. You’re going places, Miz Tina Marie,” Phoebe drawled, leaning against Aunt Debbie and Uncle Carl’s porch post, the silver buckles on her brown leather cowboy boots glinting in the Friday afternoon sunlight. “But you’ll be missed around here.”

  “I’ll miss you, too, Phoebs.”

  “Any chance your aunt is dragging you to the book-club meeting at Bernadette’s house tomorrow? If not, you should come.”

  Tina wrinkled her nose. “She keeps telling me it’s the neighborly thing to do, but—”

  “But I’ll be there. And Jolene is bringing her famous Mocha-Cherry Lava Cakes. And Bernie said she’d actually found film clips on YouTube from the uncensored Italian version of this new novel we’re reading.”

  “I don’t think I can stomach another one of her racy international romances,” Tina said. “Or another tray of ‘Hot Sausages Under Wraps,’ or whatever the featured treat will be.” Bernadette “Bernie” Cayne might be an eighty-five-year-old Southern Baptist widow, but that woman had the taste in literature of an oversexed, jet-setting college girl.

  L’Amore di Due Uomini, aka The Love of Two Men, was just the latest book-club selection. Tina would never forget the week they read some Londoner’s debut novel—Bed & Breakfast & Bondage—complete with recipe ideas. She hadn’t been able to look at a breakfast sausage the same way since.

  “But I’ll be there,” Phoebe repeated. “And between taking care of Kaelyn, who’s been a toddler terror this week, and you leaving for Tennessee so soon, we won’t have many opportunities to hang out together for a while. Plus, have I taught you nothing about books? Romance novels are awesome, especially the ones with those hot, sweaty, shirtless cowboys, who ride bareback across the open Western plains and—”

  “Okay, okay!” Tina said, covering her ears and laughing. “I’ll come to the book club tomorrow. With both you and Aunt Debbie hounding me, it’s useless to keep fighting.”

  “Good. See you there. And between now and then, write yourself an upbeat song. ‘Cause, baby, you’re going to Music City!”

  “I sure am,” Tina agreed. Nashville...here I come!

  ~*~

  At his budget hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, just off I-80, Trevor put his mother on speakerphone, set his cell on the bedside table, and tried his best to bury his head in the Sunnyside Inn’s fluffy off-white pillow.

  Escape, however, was futile.

  He couldn’t muffle his mom’s insistent voice or the determination with which she hammered home her message.

  “You grandmother would love to see you, Trev! Even on short notice like this. And you’re going to be driving right by her house.”

  “Not exactly right by, Mom. That’s a definite detour, actually. Sapphire Falls is at least twenty miles off the Interstate—”

  “It’s close enough,” his mother said.

  “But it’s more than that. I have a meeting in Colorado Spring on Monday at noon. If I stop to see Gram, I’ll only be able to stay for a few hours tomorrow, at most. So wouldn’t it be better to just wait until—”

  “She’ll make you a hot meal, Trevor, and you can sleep in a nice, clean bed and be well-rested when you start driving again on Sunday,” his mom said, effectively ignoring every word he’d spoken to her. He got a sudden flashback of being sixteen and the never-ending lectures she gave him whenever he drove anywhere during those first few years after he’d gotten his license.

  “I really shouldn’t stay overnight.”

  “It’s not good to be tired when you’re on the road,” she added. “It’s downright dangerous.”

  “Mom, it’s after ten p.m. We don’t want to disturb Gram so late at night. Or mess up her plans for the weekend. Why don’t I just give her a quick call in the morning, and if she’s free—”

  “Nonsense. You know your grandmother. Since when does she go to sleep before midnight, let alone by ten p.m., hmm?” His mother cackled on the line. She was enjoying this. “I just told your father to text her, and he—”

  “You did what?” He sat up in the hotel bed and rubbed his forehead, achy as hell after nearly six straight hours of driving from Mirabelle Harbor through the busy Friday night traffic in the Chicago metropolis to the western side of Iowa. “When did Gram start texting? And why can’t we just wait until—”

  “Too late! She’s already replied,” his mother said, unable to disguise the smug note of triumph in her tone. Trevor could hear his dad’s voice through the line, too, laughing as he relayed the message. “Your dad says his mother is ‘ecstatic’—her word—about getting to see you. So, you should get some sleep,
honey. Gram will be expecting you by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  ~*~

  Sapphire Falls, Nebraska.

  Oh, man. Trevor hadn’t been here in this small-town hamlet for ages. Not since Grandpa Kent’s funeral eight years ago.

  He’d seen his Grandma Bernadette since then, of course. Many times. But always in Illinois. She’d come to visit during the major holidays—usually flying from Omaha to Chicago, staying for a week or so with his parents in Glenview, and then visiting another few days with his sister Pam, her husband, and their kids in Lincoln Park. In recent years, she’d even meet him for lunch a few times in Mirabelle Harbor, just the two of them.

  Trevor loved his grandmother.

  If it were any other day and he were out this way for any other reason, he wouldn’t hesitate to drop by and spend as long with the lively woman as she was willing to have him. But this wasn’t that day or that situation.

  “Oh, Trev! Just look at you,” Gram exclaimed when he knocked on her screen door and she ushered him inside.

  He’d noticed a few extra cars in the driveway and along the side of the road, but their significance hadn’t immediately registered. But as his grandmother squeezed him with her wiry but surprisingly strong arms, he realized with a start that they weren’t alone in the house. In fact, in the living room, there was a gathering of at least a dozen women of varying ethnicities, sizes, and ages. Including, quite possibly, the hottest redhead he’d ever laid eyes on in his life. And that was saying something.

  His jaw dropped, but he was a man of letters, and if ever there was a time to put his extensive vocabulary to good use, it was now.

  “Um,” he managed to say. “Am I interrupting something?”

  His grandmother shook her head so vigorously that her stark white curls jiggled around her face. “Not at all. I was hoping I’d get to introduce my darling grandson to the Sassy Sapphirettes—the ladies belonging to our very own Sapphire Falls Book Club. We’ve had our discussion about the book already and even watched some related film clips—”