Title: Butterfly Sisters Author: Jenny Hale Genre: Contemporary Fiction
“When emerging from its cocoon, a butterfly needs the struggle to push the fluid from its body into its wings. So essentially, without the struggle, it never flies.”
From the USA Today bestselling author of The Beach House comes a story about family bonds, second chances, and finding out who we really are. Butterfly Sisters is the perfect escape for fans of Susan Wiggs, RaeAnne Thayne, and Susan Mallery.
About to land her biggest deal yet, Leigh Henderson is on her game. She’s prepared for this, and nothing can get in her way. Except Rebecca Mayer, who’d sashayed in a few weeks ago with a former client list that would fill the entire hallway to Leigh’s office if she laid it out end to end. When her boss unexpectedly offers the deal to Rebecca and tells Leigh he’s letting her go, Leigh finds herself without a job.
But that’s the least of her worries.
Her mother has some news that will change everything. She’s asked Leigh and her sister Meredith to meet her at the family cabin on Old Hickory Lake. Not only has Leigh been unable to pin her sister down in years, but going back to the cabin would mean dealing with the loss of her beloved grandmother and also chance running into her old flame Colton Harris, the one love she’s never been able to completely let go of.
Will confronting her grief, speaking to her estranged sister, and being forced to face the love she’d left behind help Leigh to learn who she really is?
A heartwarming story that will have you laughing, crying, and rushing to those you hold dear.If you loved the Christmas movies based on Jenny’s books and are looking for more feel-good, small-town romance, look no further!
There was only one what-if in Leigh Henderson’s life. She didn’t think about it often, because when she let it into her consciousness, it swarmed her: the lost opportunity for a totally different life.
It had been the spring of her senior year in high school. She was hardly old enough to make her own decisions then, let alone to know what was right in front of her. The weather had turned considerably warm that year, the springtime rushing in with summer flare, temperatures in the eighties sending all her friends running for the Gulf Coast beaches of Seaside and Watercolor for spring break, but Leigh had chosen to spend the week at her grandmother’s cabin on Old Hickory Lake—her favorite place in the world. She spent every summer and holiday at the lake house with her grandmother.
No matter how hard her schoolwork or whatever she might be going through with her sister Meredith (and they were always going through something), her nan could always help her to see a different perspective. That year, Leigh knew she would be saying goodbye to a side of herself that she wasn’t sure she was ready to give up, and she’d needed the comfort of Nan and the cabin to soften the blow.
Taking full advantage of the spike in temperature, Leigh’s bare feet hung off the edge of the dock, her pink toenails dipping under the cold lapping water below her. She leaned back and turned her freshly bronzed face to the sun, her locks of golden hair puddling on the dock at her back, her fingers spread out on the old wood, taking in the final moments of her youth.
A long, slow whistle caught her ear, sending her reaching for her towel to cover last year’s pink bikini that tied at her hips and behind her neck. She twisted around to find Colton Harris walking toward her—no shoes, no shirt, wide smile. She rolled her eyes to stifle the flutter in her stomach that she got whenever he was around. She twisted toward him, taking in the smooth gait of his walk, the olive bare chest, and the square of his jaw, a pang hitting her right in the gut.
“Whatcha doin’?” he asked, plopping down beside her, those dark-brown eyes with gold flecks sparkling as he took her in.
She set the towel back down beside her on the dock.
“It’s Sunday. Don’t you have to pack to go back home?”
Leigh sighed. “I don’t want to,” she replied honestly, turning her gaze to the broad lake in front of her. If she looked at Colton too long, she might change her mind about leaving.
Jenny Hale is a USA Today, Amazon, and international bestselling author of romantic contemporary fiction. Her books have sold worldwide, have been translated into multiple languages, and adapted for television. Her novels Coming Home for Christmas and Movie Guide Epiphany Award winner Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses are Hallmark Channel original movies.
She was included in Oprah Magazine’s “19 Dreamy Summer Romances to Whisk You Away” and Southern Living’s “30 Christmas Novels to Start Reading Now.” Her stories are chock-full of feel-good romance and overflowing with warm settings, great friends, and family. Jenny is at work on her next novel, delighted to be bringing even more heartwarming stories to her readers.
When she isn’t writing, or heading up her romantic fiction imprint Harpeth Road, she can be found running around her hometown of Nashville with her husband, two boys, and their labradoodle, taking pictures—her favorite pastime.
For nearly 400 years, the Veil has protected us from the Fae of Alfheimr. In their absence, our lives have shifted from decadence and sin to survival and virtue under the guidance of the New Gods. I’ve spent my entire life tending to the gardens next to the boundary between our worlds, drawn to the shimmering magic like a moth to the flame.
Then, we died on their swords.
All of that changes the day the Veil shatters, unleashing the fae upon our world once again. The magic of faerie marks those of us they mean to take, but the Mist Guard protecting Nothrek will kill us all before they let the fae have us. There’s no choice but to flee everything I’ve ever known, not if I want to live to see my twenty-first birthday as a free woman.
Now, they’ll claim what’s theirs.
But before they capture me, Caelum saves me from the Wild Hunt. Fae-marked and on the run, he is able to fight back in ways I only dream of. From tentative alliance to all-consuming passion, our bond strengthens as the fae close in and evil lurks ever nearer. With my life on the line, he is everything I shouldn’t dare to want and a distraction I can’t afford. I can’t seem to stay away, not even with something greater on the line.
My heart.
Author’s Note: This book is intended for readers who are 18 and older. It contains mature language, graphic violence, and explicit content with darker elements. This is book one in a series and ends in a cliffhanger.
He sighed, leaning in until his breath touched my cheek. True to his word, he didn’t touch me, keeping a thin layer of distance between us as I turned my head to look at him. My hair slipped out of his hands, my lips hovering so close to his, if I moved in the wrong way, they would touch.
Caelum’s stare drifted down to my mouth, lingering there before those piercing dark eyes lifted back to mine. “It was as bad as you can imagine.” His words hovered on the air between us as a wall cracked inside my heart.
Not all scars were visible.
“But it taught me one thing,” he said, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear and smooth the tangles on the side of my head. “No matter what my future looks like, nothing will keep me away from the woman I love. Not even death will keep me from her.”
I cleared my throat, suddenly overcome with the need to retreat from the intensity of his words. Even barely knowing him, the thought of him one day having that with someone else filled my chest with lead.
With heartache I hadn’t earned.
What difference did it make to me if he touched another woman with those gentle fingers that so often stroked my skin? If his breath washed over another woman’s cheek while he murmured in her ear? If he tore another woman in two with his monumental cock?
It didn’t. It couldn’t.
“She’ll be a lucky woman,” I said, running my hand through my hair as he finished with the tangles. My fingers were pruney, my toes tender as they scraped the bottom of the hot spring.
“I hope she sees it that way,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with a smile. As if he knew he was both impossible to deny and impossible to tolerate, all in the same breath.
“I should get out. Do you mind?” I asked, smiling sheepishly as he stepped away. He turned his back to me where he stood in the middle of the pool, leaving me to heave myself out of the water and onto the edge of the spring.
The sudden burst of cool breeze pebbled my skin, everything in my body going still in response. I turned to look over my shoulder, finding Caelum’s tense face staring back at me. His gaze wasn’t on mine, instead fixated on my naked flesh and the scars covering my back in thick white lines.
When his eyes raised to mine finally, the menace in them stole the breath from my lungs. His jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring, as he took that first step toward me. Water sloshed at his sides as he prowled through the hot spring with a look of pure rage etched into his handsome features. I scrambled, gathering my dress in my hands and covering my body with it as I spun to face him, tearing the sight of my scars away from him and hoping I could somehow defuse the situation and calm the monster that seemed to rattle at the cage of Caelum’s skin.
He placed his hands on the stone edge of the spring and, with an animalistic grace I would never hope to achieve lifted his nude body out of the water and unfolded to his full height. Through the steam, his dark eyes glimmered with the promise of violence and retribution. “What the fuck are those?” he growled, something darker echoing in his voice.
As if he was truly part beast, his rage made him vibrate as he stalked toward me. The Fae Mark on his neck glowed with his anger, the black and white swirls of ink pulsing in time with his steps.
I wondered if the Mark stole our humanity, if it made us more feral, like the Fae who claimed us.
“It’s nothing,” I said, swallowing and forcing a lame smile to my face. Shame heated my cheeks, leaving me wanting nothing more than to pretend the last few moments had never happened. That he’d never seen the consequences for my disobedience as a girl.
“That is not nothing.” He crossed the remaining distance between us, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. All thoughts of his promise not to touch me until I begged for it forgotten, I backed away from him in a panic. Clutching my dress to my body, I shielded myself from his view when he was lost to the anger that danced in his face.
My back struck the rock carvings on the side of the mountain, the stone figures of the Old Gods digging into my spine as Caelum pressed his body flush against the front of mine. His forearm curved above my head, resting against the rock above me as he leaned down and surrounded me.
“Caelum,” I whispered, watching as the first snow of the season fell behind him as white flecks against the fading light of the evening sky.
“Who the fuck hurt you?” he growled, his chest rumbling in front of my face as I stared up into his obsidian eyes. Something shifted on his face, a rage like I’d never seen taking over as he gritted his teeth when I didn’t give him the answer he demanded. “Who?”
“I was a difficult child,” I said, shaking my head to try to justify what I knew now had been just another way of the lord grooming me to become what he wanted. “Always getting into trouble. Playing with the boys instead of sewing with the girls. Lord Byron thought it would force me to behave more appropriately for a young lady.”
“Is he still breathing?” Caelum asked, tilting his head to the side slightly as he stared down at me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, swallowing against the dread threatening to close my airway. “I fled Mistfell when the Veil shattered. It was the only way to survive.”
Caelum grasped my chin between two fingers and tipped my head up, dropping his face lower until his mouth was only a breath away from mine when he spoke the vow I didn’t doubt he had every intention of keeping. “He won’t be for long.”
I swallowed, unable to come up with any kind of response in the face of his wrath. No one in their right mind would threaten to kill a Lord for disciplining a girl.
“He will suffer for every mark on your skin, every moment he frightened you, every tear you shed, before I finally put him out of his misery.” He leaned forward, brushing his lips against the corner of my mouth. Not quite a kiss, not quite not. Everything in me tightened, the fear of the moment dissipating as I shifted with sudden desire to feel that full mouth on mine.
He stared down, as if he knew exactly what pulsed through my mind, how the thought of him murdering my tormentor turned me on just as much of the feel of him hard against my belly.
My whole life is one tangled lie. A horrible deception. All my past choices steered by the woman who hunts me without pause.
She’s powerful, vicious, and cruel, feared by the entire supernatural community. She’s also an immortal. Yeah, she can’t be killed—supposedly. Nothing like an insurmountable challenge, right?
I’ve trained for years to defeat any opponent, and this time, I have my mate Bruno, my sister, my pack, and a pair of strange mages at my side, ready to go down fighting with me.
My enemy might be invincible, but that won’t stop us from doing everything we can to take her down. Better to live in a world without her in it than to keep going when she’s controlled everything I’ve ever done. Either way, I’ll secure my freedom.
With nothing to lose, and everything to gain, I will find the way to kill her before she ends me. With magic, the impossible is never quite what it seems.
* The Rocky Mountain Pack series is gritty, sexy, and action-packed urban fantasy paranormal shifter romance.
* Wolf Destinies is a full-length novel recommended for mature readers due to language, sexual situations, and graphic fighting scenes.
Clove was rushing all her words together as if they’d been bottled up, desperate to break free: “Cassia is an immortal. A fucking immortal who can do all sorts of scary shit. Ni told me Cassia actually exploded a vamp. Blew him the fuck up. And that was a master vamp. And she can fly. I mean, what the hell’re Ni and Mei supposed to do about a crazy-ass bitch who has no heart and can fucking fly?”
Bruno’s cheek twitched; he didn’t think that had ever happened before. He trained his focus on Naya and Mei as they danced around the ring, so equal in skill that they had to work harder to find an opening for a strike that might actually make a difference.
For a few moments, he pretended Clove’s concerns didn’t pierce him straight in the heart.
Then he spun on her, jaw clenched tightly, until he whisper-shouted at her, “Don’t you think I know all that? I can’t sleep or eat, and whenever I manage to do either it’s only because I’m forcing myself to so I can be strong for her. Mierda, Clove. I know, I know, I know all that. I’ve been all but begging her not to do it.”
Lucía Ashta is the Amazon top 20 bestselling author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal women’s fiction filled with wild magic, spicy romance, and quirky characters that make you snort-laugh.
A former attorney and architect, she’s an Argentinian-American who lives in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains with her husband and daughters.
