Storm
Watch
Unfinished Business, #3
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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