Authors: Mimi Barbour
How appropriate, she thought, the handle of doom. Stop it! You know you’ll find hope here, or at least some help. She pulled her trembling fingers back to rub her forehead. If only my conscience would stop nagging. Agitated nerves shot streaks of nausea throughout her stomach, and the thought of what lay ahead made her take a step backwards.
I can’t stand out here all day. I need Uncle Robert’s support. He’s the only one who can guide me through this—this disaster.
Resolved once more, she stretched forward, lifted the golden lever, and banged it down with force.
Her beloved uncle appeared, swung open the door, and stood behind the screen. His puzzled expression was quickly dispelled by an enormous smile of welcome for the girl making the racket. He had no chance to speak, because as soon as she spied him, the control Daniell Howard had been maintaining broke.
“Uncle Robert, can we talk? I need help, and I didn’t know where else to turn.”
Robert Andrews, Bury’s Doctor of Psychology, flaunted the adoration he felt for his niece every time they were together. She’d always known she could count on his cooperation. Their eyes met, and she saw at once that he’d caught on to her desperation.
The smiling man pushed open the screen door and, in his most gentle tone, said, “Dani! Of course, dear girl, come in, and we’ll enjoy the sunshine while we visit in the garden.”
He stroked her rebellious red curls, hugging her to him, before giving her a little push toward his favourite retreat. “I’m working out there, going over some notes. Make yourself comfy, and I’ll bring along a tray with refreshments, including some of Mrs. Dorn’s homemade biscuits with jam and cream.”
The slender girl nodded, patted the hand squeezing her shoulder, and headed in the direction his finger pointed. As she approached the entrance to the garden, the sun’s filtered rays could be seen beyond the open doorway. Framed by greenery and hanging purple blossoms of wisteria, the glorious sight beckoned her to his sheltered paradise.
Various handwritten notes were scattered across a round wooden table, weathered to grey, that sat in the centre of the paved courtyard. Along with an ashtray, holding her uncle’s cold pipe, and a smudged glass half-filled with milk sat an empty plate with a generous sprinkle of sandwich crumbs. Those bits of bread tempted the sedge warbler perched high in a nearby bush, who noisily expressed his frustration over the lure of the unreachable tidbits.
Dani paced the area. She enjoyed the array of foliage aromas bombarding her and, wanting to get closer, subsided onto her uncle’s favourite seat. It was a perfect reproduction of the bench that for many years had sat in front of the town’s old vicarage. Behind this seat grew an exact replica of the magnificent rose bush in the vicarage garden. Not at all surprising, since her uncle had propagated his bush from that same one. The flowers were an incredible anomaly; in each of the two places three different colours of roses apparently grew from one set of roots.
The white blooms glowed with an inner radiance that gave them an abnormal depth like one sees in newly fallen snow. The pink, a hothouse shade, wove around the other two and appeared too vibrant for words. And the red hue, her favourite, held her mesmerized until, involuntarily, her fingers reached to stroke the velvety softness. How incredibly beautiful! She sighed when she noticed her hand shaking.
Anxiety returned, and so did the sickness in the pit of her stomach. Hugging herself for a few seconds, she rocked back and forth. How could I have been such a fool? The question raged at her, along with the knowledge that, as soon as she confessed, there would be no taking it back. Well, there’s no taking back what I’ve done, either, and now I have to figure out what to do about it. Unable to relax, she began to wander the small area. God, I hate feeling so out of control.
On her third trip around the small patio, she passed too close to the table and accidentally knocked a pile of papers and a notebook to the floor. They scattered from one end of the terrace to the other. As she slowly gathered them, trying to put them back into order, her eye caught a name familiar to her.
Apparently, Lucy McGillicuddy, whom she knew as the pleasant town librarian as well as a close friend of the family, was also one of her uncle’s patients. Uncle Robert’s profession as a psychiatrist tended to be the focus for many animated discussions that stirred derision and scepticism from most of their relatives. But not Dani. She thought it a very interesting occupation and both respected and loved her uncle for his progressive thinking.
Her eyes caught the words “time travel.” Avidly, she began to read her uncle’s squiggly, handwritten notes pertaining to the paranormal activities he’d researched. I shouldn’t be reading these, she thought, but also accepted that no red-blooded teenager with any curiosity whatsoever could have ignored the magnet of those words any more than she could.
According to the doctor’s observations, the rose bushes behind the bench in front of the vicarage held an unexplained power. And Lucy had experienced the plant’s enchantment first hand.
“Wow!” Dani skimmed her uncle’s comments, becoming totally engrossed in the story. She muttered in a voice filled with wonder. “Lucy’s body was invaded by another spirit? A girl called Jenna McBride, a super model from the future? Cool!”
Her uncle’s career as a reputable scientist meant that he dealt with proven facts, not questionable fiction. Therefore, she believed in his deductions and studied his prognosis carefully. She soon garnered all the pertinent facts of the case; thanks to the speed-reading she’d taught herself.
When spirit travelling and invading another’s body, no deterioration or any lasting afflictions occurred at all to either the physical landlord or the spiritual tenant, whose own body would remain in a coma throughout the duration.
Absorbing the contents of the papers while restoring them to the table took only a few moments, but devising a plan happened almost instantly. Not hearing anyone approaching from inside the house, Dani deemed it safe to try out a little experiment with the bush nestled behind the bench in her uncle’s garden. If the magic worked the same as it did with the mother plant, her problems wouldn’t go away. But she needn’t deal with them right this instant, either. Procrastination worked for her at the best of times and this, quite possibly, had to be the worst.
She took her small scissors from the crammed schoolbag she’d flung on the ground near the table, snipped off a gorgeous red rose, placed herself onto the bench, and, lastly, she pricked her finger.
For Frances, my friend and helper.
You’re a great finisher and I thank you.
More Praise for We’re One and The Vicarage Bench Series
THE VICARAGE BENCH by Mimi Barbour is a truly delightful read. I was captured by the events in the book but it is the characters that kept me reading.
The first story, SHE’S ME, had me laughing out loud with the thoughts and actions of the two heroines.
HE’S HER had its equal share of humor and I enjoyed the unique connection of the protagonists.
We’re One picks the tempo up a notch with a a suspense themed romance and a heroine who can hold her own. All three enjouable numbers are tied together by a vicarage bench, a special rose bush and the admirable Dr. Andrews.
~By Romance Junkies Reviewer - Pamela Denise.
SHE'S ME
"She's Me is less a romance and more a story of transformation. Lucy, with Jenna as her style coach, discovers her confidence and sense of self. In return, some of Lucy's lovable charm rubs off on the tough talking Jenna. The woman needs it. Even the gentle Jenna is difficult to like. That is what makes her so unique and so real. The switch back gets a bit complicated, distracting from the wonderful inner journey. She's Me is delightfully deep read."
~Kimber , Fallen Angels Review
HE’S HER
“I found the story line original and I love the focus on the distance that the characters travel—even some of the secondary ones. It’s tightly written with a crisp turn of phrase...quirky and sparky, and Ms. Barbour gets the mix right. And the end—well, it just made me want to go ‘Aaaaahhhhh...sweet!’ A great little story. Recommended.”
(Rating: Fantastic, Stays on Shelf)
~Vasiliki Scurfield, WRDF Reviews
Book one
My Cheeky Angel -
With he help of a cheeky angel, lonely naive tomboy, Annie Hynes, changes lifestyles and becomes a powerful businesswoman who gets so wrapped up in her new world that she risks losing her friends, the man she loves and her self-respect.
Book two
Cheating Angel
. Man-hater Sadie Wright gets mixed up with a crazy, hotshot soldier when he runs her down with his convertible. Now she's stuck having to accept his help to do her dog-walking job. Just her luck that some of the expensive pets go missing, and Liam decides the puppy-mill rumor needs to be investigated.
Thank you so much for reading “We’re One” the first book
in The Vicarage Bench Series.
I loved writing this story and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
If so, I would ask you for a favour. If you purchased this book
at Amazon, please take a few minutes and leave an honest review.
Authors enjoy hearing that readers like their stories,
and hopefully, others will read your words and choose to buy the book
because of your sentiments.
Mimi Barbour lives on the beautiful west coast on Vancouver Island and
writes her paranormal romances with tongue in cheek and a mad glint in her eye.
Asked why she prefers paranormal, she answers - chuckling
.
“Because it’s fun! Imagination can be a lot more interesting than what happens in real life to so-called normal people. I love my characters, and my goal is to make the readers love them also. To care about what happens to them while the tale unfolds. If I can steal my booklover’s attention away from their every-day grind, absorb them into a fantasy world, and make them care about the ending, then I’ve done my job.”
My E-mail: [email protected]
My
website:
http://www.mimibarbour.com/
Or my blogspot: http://mimibarbour.blogspot.com/
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https://twitter.com/#!/Mimibarb
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