The Good Luck Sister (Wildstone #1.5)(27)
Acknowledgments
To Coop The Poop, who was the inspiration for Leo and also a failed foster pup turned forever fur baby by my oldest daughter.:)
Announcement to Rainy Day Friends
Keep reading for a peek at Jill Shalvis’s next full-length women’s fiction novel
RAINY DAY FRIENDS
Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers she isn’t the only one grieving his sudden passing. A serial adulterer, he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife.
Rocked by the infidelity, Lanie is left to grapple with searing questions. How could she be so wrong about a man she thought she knew better than anyone? Will she ever be able to trust another person? Can she even trust herself?
Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. At first, she feels like an outsider among the boisterous Capriottis. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Especially Mark Capriotti, a gruffly handsome Air Force veteran turned deputy sheriff who manages to wind his way into Lanie’s cold, broken heart—along with the rest of the clan.
Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Brown changes all that. The fresh-faced twenty-one-year old seems as sweet as they come . . . until her dark secrets come to light—secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie’s only just begun to build.
On Sale June 2018!
An Excerpt from Rainy Day Friends—Chapter 1
Chapter One
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time karma was a bitch, but every once in a while she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her time. Seize the day and all that. She drew a deep breath as she exited the highway at Wildstone.
The old Wild West California town was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine and ranching country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she added tricky and slick to her growing list of its issues. She was already white-knuckling a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country driving.
Never leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed its direction, but before Lanie could relax a trio of deer bounded out right in front of her. “Run, Bambi, run,” she cried, hitting the brakes, and by the skin of all of their collective teeth, they missed one another.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been instructed.
And went completely still as her world darkened. Not physically, but internally as her entire body braced for all hell to break loose. Recognizing sign número uno of an impending anxiety attack barreling down on her like a freight train, she gripped the steering wheel. “You’re okay,” she told herself firmly.
This, of course, didn’t stop said freight train. But though she’d been plagued with overactive fight-or-flight preceptors, all of which were yelling at her to run, she couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Not this time. Which didn’t stop the dizziness or sudden nausea, or make her lungs work properly. And that was the hardest thing about these attacks that were new to her this year, because it was always the same fears. What if it never stopped? What if someone saw her losing it and realized she was broken? And the worst part . . . what if it wasn’t an anxiety attack? Maybe this time it was a seizure or a brain aneurism.
Or a stroke. Hadn’t her great-aunt Agnes died of a stroke?
Okay, stop, she ordered herself, damp with sweat now and doing that annoying trembling thing where she shook like a leaf. Breathe in for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four.
Repeat.
Repeat again, all while listing the meals she’d had yesterday in her head. Peanut butter toast for breakfast. Tuna salad for lunch. She’d skipped dinner and had wine and popcorn instead.
Slowly but surely, her pulse slowed. It’s all good, she told herself, but because she wasn’t buying what she was selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five-year-old starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand-new job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car ride—only to find out the destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream, all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching under her shoes, she headed through the entrance, beneath which was a huge wooden sign that read: