Title: Home to River’s Edge
Author: Nan Reinhardt
Genre: Sweet Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Book Blurb:
She’s determined to start a new chapter, so why is she still drawn to a man from her past?
When Jasmine Weaver, the chief of staff to a powerful D.C. congresswoman, chose integrity, she didn’t anticipate ringing in the New Year disgraced, unemployed, and sleeping in her childhood bedroom. Now back in River’s Edge, Indiana, identical triplet Jazz has her sisters’ support while she plans her next steps. She agrees to lead the committee for their high school’s fifteenth reunion, never dreaming that her co-chair is the man who broke her teenage heart.
As the new CEO of Walker Construction, Elias Walker has taken the family business to new levels of success. He’s buried himself in work to ease the grief of losing his fiancé several years earlier and wants nothing more than to be a carpenter again. Elias grudgingly agrees to co-chair the high school’s reunion committee, but when Jazz Weaver blows into town, suddenly anything seems possible.
These high school sweethearts have lived half their lives apart. Can they reinvent themselves back in the town where it all began?
Excerpt:
She glanced up and jerked a thumb at him. The message was clear. Move your butt. So he did, allowing her the space to open the door, swing around in the bucket seat, and put her booted feet on the ground.
“I cannot believe this!” Her words rang out over the sound of cars speeding by on Riverview Road. “What the ever lovin’ . . .?” Her shoulders drooped. “Oh, what the hell? I mean, honestly, if this hadn’t already been the freakin’ holiday season from hell, I’d be more surprised, but, ya know? Why not? I swerve to avoid hitting a stupid deer who flew out across the road just as I came around the curve and I end up in the butt of a BMW SUV. Because I couldn’t hit an old beater, or turn into a deserted country road and simply land in a snowbank, or hit a fence. No, I had to rear-end a fifty-thousand-dollar automobile with my newly restored Mustang.” She stomped up to the front of her car without so much as glancing at him and glared at what appeared to him to be minimal damage to both vehicles. “And on New Year’s Eve! Seriously?”
Her front fender had grazed his rear bumper and left a light mark, while her car appeared to suffer a broader scrape to the blue paint. To absolutely no effect, she gathered some snow in her gloved hand and rubbed at the blue scuff on his bumper, then did the same to the mark on her fender, muttering the entire time. “I so do not need this. Not today, of all days.” She looked up into his face, but he was sure she didn’t even see him before she continued to pace and rant through gritted teeth. “In the past two months, I lost my job, broke up with my boyfriend of three years, and sold my house. I’ve been driving since six thirty this morning, and everything I own is packed into this car that I spent a fortune having restored last summer because I thought I had the best job in the world, and I was going to be in Washington, DC, forever. Ha! Hell, none of my friends back there even seem to be able to remember my name.”
Washington, DC?
She scowled over her shoulder at him, blinked, then her brow furrowed, and as she came closer, her tone softened. “Eli? Eli Walker? Is that you?”
Cripes! It is Jasmine Weaver!
Even after being away from River’s Edge for nearly fifteen years, Jasmine Weaver still took his breath away. Petite, in dark denim jeans and a toast-colored wool blazer over a creamy ivory sweater, and sporting a pair of tan suede, fuzz-lined boots, she was the picture of a successful career woman in spite of the fact that she was ranting and waving her arms at what he thought was a pretty minor accident. Her shiny dark hair was styled in a cut that curved just below her chin and bounced when she shook her head. He remembered it had been long, almost to her waist, when she’d been a cheerleader at River’s Edge High.
She was thin. Too thin. The Weaver triplets were all south of average height, coming to just below his shoulder, and all three of them had always been tiny, but delectably curvy—Jo and Jenny still were. He’d just seen them the other day when he stopped by the Tea Leaf Café for a to-go cup of Holly Flaherty’s Paris tea that fueled his days. This afternoon, Jazz’s jeans were a bit baggy in the behind, the knobs of her wrists stuck out below the cuffs of her sweater, and her watch slid around on her too-skinny arm.
She stood still for a few seconds, not speaking, allowing him a chance to also notice that although she was still gorgeous, she appeared . . . tired. Purple shadows smudged the delicate skin below her golden-brown eyes, and despite her red cheeks, she was pale.
He should speak. Say something intelligent, but his brain was still processing the fact that Jasmine Weaver was standing in the snow in front of him, so he simply smiled. “Yeah, it’s me. Hi, Jazz.”
With a moan, she leaned against the front fender of the Mustang and dropped her head. “Of course it’s you. Sure. Absolutely. What would cap this year off any better than landing in my hometown and slamming into the guy who dumped me three days before the senior prom—a guy I haven’t spoken to or even thought of in ages? But as fate would have it, here we are. Because my life has become a surreal nightmare that I can’t seem to wake up from.”
Suddenly, she spun around and jerked the car door open, nearly trouncing on his hiking boots in the process. After shoving the driver’s seat forward, she grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from a cloth wine carrier on the floor and unscrewed the cap. Throwing him a look that dared him to stop her, she tossed back a slug of whiskey in one quick gulp. Eyes watering, she coughed and swiped the back of her hand over her lips and then wordlessly held up the bottle in invitation.
Jack Daniels—Amy’s drink of choice, over ice and mixed with ginger ale. Jack and ginger. He only debated for a second before he accepted the bottle and took a swig, feeling the whiskey warm him from the inside out. Then it hit him with the force of the Ohio River at high-flood stage. “Oh my God! It’s you! You’re the sign!”
Buy Links:
Facebook Party:
Tule Book Club on FB April 18 at 7 p.m. EST
At the party I’ll be giving away prizes that include backlist books, gift cards, handmade jewelry, River’s Edge notebooks and other goodies.
Author Biography:
Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today bestselling author of sweet, small-town romantic fiction for Tule Publishing. Her day job is working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, however, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten and is still writing, but now from the viewpoint of a wiser, slightly rumpled, woman in her prime. Nan lives in the Midwest with her husband of nearly 50 years, where they split their time between a house in the city and a cottage on a lake.
Talk to Nan at: