Hidden Truths (65 page)

Amy scratched her head. "Why on God's green earth is
love so complicated?"

A soft smile parted Rika's lips, revealing the gap between
her teeth. "Maybe so we'll appreciate it more once we find it. Now lock
the front door and come to bed."

"
R
UN!"
RIKA GRIPPED Amy's arm and dragged her across Baker Prairie's dusty main
street.

"I can't!" Amy gasped. "I can't run in these
shoes."

"Stop complaining and run."

Amy stumbled. "Damn petticoats!"

Under the pretense of helping her, Rika gripped Amy's hand
and encountered smooth silk instead of the familiar calluses. "The organ
has already started, and your father will be a nervous wreck if we're
late."

"You'd think it was Papa's wedding, not Nattie's."

They slid to a stop in front of the church portal. Rika
smoothed a hand over the blue satin of Amy's dress. "You look
beautiful."

Amy stopped grumbling. "So do you."

Their gazes touched and held.

Rika finally wrenched herself away. "Come on. Let's go
in."

When they slipped into the church and hurried down the
aisle, whispers rose in the pews.

"Poor girl," Rika heard one woman say.
"Having to watch him marry someone else..."

"She seems fine since the Hamiltons took her in,"
another woman said.

Rika sighed. After almost three years, she'd thought people
had finally stopped talking about her, Phin, and the Hamiltons.

"Don't mind them," Amy whispered and pulled her
into the first pew.

Nora leaned over, her red hair glowing against the dark
green of her dress. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, Amy had one of her horse ideas." Rika
lovingly nudged Amy's knee.

"Horses? Now?"

Amy pointed over her shoulder to the pew behind them, where
Frankie sat in an elaborate lace dress. "Frankie gave permission to have
Mouse and a carriage waiting for Nattie and Phin in front of the church."
Amy's pride was so endearing that Rika wanted to lean over and kiss her, but
she settled for pressing her knee against Amy's.

Nora squeezed Amy's hand. "A gray horse pulling the
carriage... what a good omen for their marriage!"

Organ music started up again, and the portal opened to the
first notes of the wedding march.

People in the pews turned and craned their necks.

Rika caught a glance of Nattie, who floated down the aisle
in her pale yellow organdy dress. A veil covered her face, but her hands
clutched Luke's forearm and gave away her nervousness.

Luke strode with measured steps that made Rika wonder how
often she had practiced the walk down the aisle. When it came to her daughters,
Luke left nothing to chance.

They reached the front of the church. Luke raised Nattie's
veil, kissed her cheek, and transferred Nattie's hand onto Phin's arm. One long
glance and a formal nod to Phin and she slipped into the pew next to Nora.

Her hands shook when she smoothed them over her gray doeskin
pants and the knee-length claret frock coat. She tugged at her cravat until
Nora grabbed her hand and held it between her own.

After three years, Rika no longer found it strange to know
Amy's handsome father was a woman.

"You know what day it is today?" Nora leaned close
to Luke and whispered, just loud enough for Rika to hear.

"The day we start waiting for grandchildren?"

Nora coughed and then laughed. "Oh, I can't wait to see
Grandpa Luke bounce half a dozen grandchildren on his knees. But that's not
what I meant. Twenty years ago today was the day we first met."

"Yeah, I thought about that too when I had that
conversation with Phin earlier. Twenty years..." Luke looked deeply into
Nora's eyes. "It's been quite the journey."

"And it's not over."

"No," Luke said, "it's not." Ignoring
the frowning people in the pews behind them, she leaned over and kissed Nora.

Rika looked away. She couldn't kiss her love so openly, but
when they held on to the hymnbook together, she brushed her index finger
against Amy's under the cover of the book.

Amy leaned over. Her breath caressed Rika's ear when she
whispered, "To our journey."

I
GREW UP AMIDST the vineyards and
gently sloping hills of southern Germany. I spent most of my childhood with my
nose buried in a book, earning me the nickname "professor" before I
even finished elementary school. The writing bug bit me at the age of eleven.
The very first piece of fiction I ever wrote was a thirty-page western story that
I still have somewhere (well-hidden because it alternately makes me cringe and
laugh when I read it today). I wrote two dozen mostly novel-length stories
(westerns, adventure stories, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction – you name it, I've probably
written it) in my "baby years" as a writer, but no one but my poor
twin sister ever got to read them.

That changed when I discovered the
Internet and the wondrous world of FanFiction and online stories. My parents
belatedly got their wish – I took my nose out of my books and started to spend
my time glued to the computer screen instead. Soon after, I wrote my first
FanFiction, a Star Trek: Voyager story. Don't bother to search for it on the
web; even if there was still a copy in circulation somewhere, it's in German.
Back then, I would have taken a thousand oaths that I would never, ever be able
to write more than a grocery list in English. Then I took an intensive, free
online language course – almost eight years of constant fanfic reading. Let's just
say that I learned some words I later had trouble explaining to my friends why
I would know such expressions.

So in the beginning of 2006, I finally
put my newly acquired knowledge of the English language to good use and wrote a
series of three Law & Order: SVU fanfics in English. As my confidence grew,
I wrote a longer FanFiction and then my first English historical fiction. In
some ways, I've come full circle – because "Backwards to Oregon"
takes place on the Western Frontier. Other than the setting I promise that it
doesn't have much in common with my first childish attempt at writing.

I still live in Germany, where I work
as a psychologist. When I'm not working or writing, I like to spend my time
reading, cooking for a bunch of friends, spending time with my nephew and
niece, and watching way too many crime shows. I also enjoy learning new
languages (Russian is my latest project. I haven't found any lesbian online
stories using the Cyrillic alphabet to help me learn, though).

Backwards To Oregon
–
Lesbian: Historical Fiction,
Romance

Summary

"
L
UKE" HAMILTON has
always been sure that she’d never marry. She accepted that she would spend her
life alone when she chose to live her life disguised as a man.

After working in a brothel for three years, Nora Macauley
has lost all illusions about love. She no longer hopes for a man who will sweep
her off her feet and take her away to begin a new, respectable life.

But now they find themselves married and on the way to
Oregon in a covered wagon, with two thousand miles ahead of them.

*  *  *

Conflict of Interest
– Book I
– Lesbian: Romance, Crime

Summary

W
ORKAHOLIC detective Aiden
Carlisle isn't looking for love... and certainly not at the law enforcement
seminar she reluctantly agreed to attend. But their first lecturer is not at
all what she expected.

Psychologist Dawn Kinsley has just found her place in life.
After a failed relationship with a police officer, she has sworn to herself
never to get involved with another cop again, but she feels a connection to
Aiden from the very first moment.

Can Aiden keep from crossing the line when a brutal crime
threatens to keep them apart... before they've even gotten together?

*  *  *

Next of Kin – Book II – Lesbian: Romance, Crime

Summary

S
EX
CRIMES Detective Aiden Carlisle is slowly getting used to being in a committed
relationship with Dawn Kinsley – a relationship that isn't always easy since
Dawn is not only a psychologist but also a former victim in one of Aiden's
cases. Aiden’s private and professional lives collide when Dawn's newest
patient gets in trouble with the law. Will she be able to stay objective enough
to solve the case without pushing Dawn away?

The same case also throws Deputy District Attorney Kade
Matheson's well-ordered life into chaos. In the last few years, Kade has taken
case files and law books, not lovers, to bed. She has been focused only on her
career and fought hard to win cases like Dawn's, but now the case forces her to
finally face her attraction to women. She suddenly finds herself with two
secret admirers – but which one is more dangerous, the threat to her life or
her heart?

*  *  *

Second Nature -
Lesbian:
Shape-Shifter Romance

Summary

N
OVELIST JORIE Price doesn't
believe in the existence of shape-shifting creatures or true love. She leads a
solitary life, and the paranormal romances she writes are pure fiction for her.

Griffin Westmore knows better — at least about one of these
two things. She doesn't believe in love either, but she's one of the
not-so-fictional shape-shifters. She's also a Saru — an elite soldier,
investigator, and if need be an assassin with the mission to protect the
shape-shifters' secret existence at any cost.

When Jorie gets too close to the truth in
her latest shape-shifter romance, Griffin is sent to investigate — and if
necessary to destroy the manuscript before it's published and to kill the
writer.

Hidden
Truths
Sequel to Backwards to Oregon
Lesbian: Historical Fiction, Romance

L
UKE HAMILTON has been living
as a husband and father for the past seventeen years. No one but her wife,
Nora, knows she is not the man she appears to be. They have raised their
daughters to become honest and hard-working young women. But even with their loving foundation, a few fears and insecurities
have Amy and Nattie hiding their own secrets.

Just as Luke sets out on a dangerous trip to Fort Boise, a
newcomer arrives on the ranch — Rika Aaldenberg, who traveled to Oregon as a
mail-order bride, hiding that she's not the woman in the letters.

When hidden truths are revealed, will their lives and their
family fall apart or will love keep them together?

*  *  *

T
hank You
for
Purchasing and Reading
Hidden Truths
.

L-Book ePublisher, LLC

http://L-Book.com