Monday Morsels: The Gingerbread Heart

The Gingerbread Heart
The Gingerbread Men: Novella 1

by Liz Flaherty

Cass drove west into the tie-dyed sunset, keeping her eyes on the two-lane road that stretched before her after she took the exit for Christmas Town, Maine. The audio book that had played for the last twelve hours of driving time held her interest, but she had to work at it, backing it up sometimes when she lost track of Cyrus Wisdom’s latest adventures. This never happened—Cyrus was her favorite mystery protagonist since Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher. Cass called the self-professed “nosy preacher” by his first name and laughed out loud at his self-deprecating humor even when she was alone. But her mind wandered in spite of herself to places she didn’t want it to go.

She couldn’t bear to think about the empty spaces she’d left behind, but she didn’t want to think about her destination, either. Other than her girls, who didn’t need her anymore, there was nothing left in Christmas Town for Cassandra Logan. There was nothing left anywhere.

She supposed she’d been deep-down lonely at some previous point in her fifty-few years. Maybe in high school before Paul asked her out and ended their first date by giving her his class ring, but she’d been sixteen then, and even now she remembered the kind of barren separateness that went with being that age. She’d felt profound grief after Paul’s death eighteen months ago, but the move to Indiana to care for her mother in the end stages of Alzheimer’s came so soon after it that there hadn’t been time to feel lonely. At least not the bone-hurting kind she felt now.

The road was cleared of snow, but she still slowed her speed to a few miles an hour below sedate. Twilight was the trickiest part of the day when it came to seeing where you were going, and no one was behind her to sigh and look at the time because they had something or someone to go home to and they were in a hurry.



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Widowed Cass Logan has done her time as a caregiver. But when her boss, mystery-writer Eli Welcome, needs surgery, Cass is faced with following her heart...or walking away.

This sweet holiday romance novella is set in Christmas Town, Maine, and shares characters and storylines with 11 other PG-rated romances written by Harlequin Heartwarming authors. It was featured in A Heartwarming Christmas anthology.






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