Now to get to know Liz a little better…

TheHealingSummer_w13732_med (3) (1).jpg — **It’s a summer romance--what happens come September?**

When Steven Elliott accidentally rides his bike into Carol Whitney’s car at the cemetery, the summer takes on new and exciting possibilities. Long friendship wends its way into something deeper when their hearts get involved. Feelings neither of them had expected to experience again enrich their days and nights. But what happens when the long summer ends? When Carol wants a family and commitment and a future, Steven isn't so sure. He’s had his heart broken before—can he risk it again?

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The following excerpt won’t tell you much about the story, but you’ll meet Steven, and maybe get to know Carol a little bit, too.

Excerpt:
He walked her to the back door and spent a long time kissing her goodnight even with Fred winding impatiently around their legs. Barney had given up and fallen asleep on the porch swing.
A few minutes later, Steven was back at Miss Abigail’s. He, Dillon, and the sub-contractors he’d hired had made a lot of progress in a short time. The house was well on its way to becoming a warm and welcoming place.
He walked through the night-light enhanced rooms to the kitchen, which was taking shape due to Carol’s input. “If I’m going to cook for you, which you seem convinced I should do a lot of,” she’d told him, waving a spatula in his direction, “you need to make it cooking-friendly. Put an island here with barstools around that side the way it is in Grace’s kitchen and don’t get countertop for pretty—get it for indestructible.”
He’d listened. He didn’t see himself ever falling in love again, but that certainty didn’t apply to food—he loved Carol’s cooking.
He poured a glass of milk and studied the cozy area. The open shelves stacked with brightly colored dishes, the cookie jar shaped like a surgeon complete with scrubs and a scalpel, the coffee mugs that fit into a row of cubbyholes above the coffeemaker—everything was comfortable and warm. Carol had chosen almost everything in the room, and it looked like her. Felt like her.
He couldn’t feel Promise’s presence in Miss Abby’s house, because she’d never been there, he supposed. It had been hard to get used to that—she’d been a part of him most of his life. The emptiness he’d felt without her was finally going away. He still missed her and thought he always would, but “getting a life” was starting to seem like a possibility.
There were no curtains over the big mullioned window in the dining area beside the kitchen. He went over to it, gazing out at the stars. “You’d like it here, Prom.” But he wasn’t sure that was true. Promise had been a small-town girl, but there was a world of difference between small-town and rural, and she’d never been interested in stepping to the country side of the equation.
He located the Big Dipper and searched for the other one, the Little one—he could never find it. “No, you wouldn’t like it, would you, darlin’? But you’d like it that I do.”
She’d be glad he liked Carol, too. That thought, although he was positive of its accuracy, was unsettling.
He sat at the island and opened the newspaper that had come that day, smiling because Peacock’s tabloid-size weekly was one of the things in life that never changed. It still had the column “I Can See from Here…” wherein a nameless reporter wrote about who and what he or she had seen through the office window. This week, Grace Campbell had been to the Clip Joint more than once, Deac Rivers had jumped double Dutch on the sidewalk in front of the church for donations to the church camp fund, and the Cup and Cozy had set little bistro tables and chairs outside—which meant reporters could snoop and enjoy a sandwich and a cup of the blend du jour at the same time.
Steven laughed softly to himself there in his empty kitchen. He’d come a difficult and winding way from reading the financial and sports pages in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on the run to reading every word—including the classifieds—in the Peacock Chronicle as he sat in unhurried and unlonely solitude in Miss Abigail’s House.
An advertisement for the Clip Joint caught his eye. “Cut up with Carol, color and croon with Kay, lowlight and laugh with Lynn. Or just stop by to talk. We love to talk!” There were silhouettes in the ad that suggested the profiles of the stylists—a ponytail for Carol, dangling earrings for Lynn, a subdued chignon for Kay. The design of the ad had to be Carol’s work. It smiled at you.
And it made you smile back. Just like she did.