Flora's Wish
Authors: Kathleen Y'Barbo
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scriptures are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version
®
, NIV
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. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011, by Biblica, Inc.⢠Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
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and the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
Cover photos © Chris Garborg; iStockphoto/adpower99; Bigstock/msv, Elenamiv;
Back cover author photo by Robert C. Turner
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370,
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
FLORA'S WISH
Copyright © 2013 by Kathleen Y'Barbo
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Y'Barbo, Kathleen.
Flora's wish / Kathleen Y'Barbo.
p. cm. â (The secret lives of Will Tucker ; bk. 1)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5210-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5212-5 (eBook)
I. Title.
PS3625.B37F57 2013
813'.6âdc23
2012027222
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherâexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
To My Bonus Kids
Clint and Katie Turner
Emily and Josh Miller
Alex and Liz Turner
Austin Turner
Bailey Turner
Kyle Turner
Logan Turner
I love you like my ownâ¦
Over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
C
OLOSSIANS
3:14
“I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
~ Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
“To believe every man to be honest till he is found out to be a thief, is a motto most self-respecting men cling to; but we detectives on the contrary would not gain salt to our bread, much less the bread itself, if we adopted such a belief. We have to believe every man a rogue till, after turning all sorts of evidence inside out, we can only discover he is an honest man. And even then I am much afraid we are not quite sure of him.”
~ Andrew Forrester,
The Female Detective (May 1864)
May 1887
The Crescent Hotel
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
T
he last thing Flora Brimm needed was to lose another fiancé. While there was no evidence to prove Will Tucker had met the same unfortunate fate as the other fourâan early and untimely demiseâthere was also no prospective groom in residence at the Crescent Hotel this evening.
Flora stepped off the elevator and walked toward the ballroom to make her entrance late and alone. She paused to take in the grand sweep of glittering chandeliers and the wide expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows reflecting the electric light back into the room. Oversized potted palms climbing almost high enough to touch the ceiling hid the four corners of the grand room.
Though the ballroom was crowded with guests, Flora glanced around in hopes of finding the man she hoped to wed. The search was futile, of course, as tonight's celebration of the Crescent's first anniversary was a masked ball. Those who dared ignore the requirement were given a generic mask, white for the ladies and black for the gentlemen. And yet she hoped that somehow she might recognize him.