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Автор Bartholomew Nancy
“Stella, I need to tell you something. ”
The serious tone in Jake’s voice scared me. I took a deep breath and waited, assuming he was going to blame himself for Bitsy’s death.
“After you and I broke up, Bitsy and I had a…short relationship. ” He looked at me. “A few years later, a couple of feds paid me a visit, doing a background check on Bitsy. They didn’t tell me why, of course, but I figured it out. Bitsy was joining the spy club. She may have been on a job when she called you. She probably knew we were working together and didn’t want to risk calling me directly. ”
Oh, great. So, Bitsy hadn’t wanted to hire me, she wanted Jake. Didn’t they all?
“You all right with this?” Jake asked.
I gave him my best smile. “Glad you told me. We’d better get to it. ”
I turned away and stared out my window as Jake drove. The real reason I was upset was not because Jake had information I didn’t have. I was upset because Jake had lots of secrets, and they just seemed to keep popping up.
How could I trust a man who had so many secrets?Dear Reader,
Have you ever wished you could roll back the hands of time, even for a brief moment, and revise your own history? You know, “If I’d only known then what I know now!”
Well, Stella is my opportunity to revisit history. She’s come home to the small town where I grew up (although I’ve made a few changes to protect the innocent as well as the guilty!), and she gets to do a lot of the things I could never quite accomplish. For one thing, she gets the guy! Jake is so much yummier than the boy I pined after in high school and Stella’s got him right where she wants him. In real life, those guys grow up, they lose their hair, gain a spare tire and get sooo boring, but not Stella’s Jake! He’s grown up and he’s gotten better with age and experience.
Stella takes on a case that involves an elderly woman in a nursing home. For the past two years, in my “real life,” I’ve been consulting two days a week in some local nursing homes, doing psychotherapy with the residents. It has been an eye-opening, heartbreaking time for me. Very often I find myself trying to provide the hugs and love that my abandoned parents and grandparents crave. They are so alone, so forgotten, so…well, downright neglected. Stella finds herself caring as much for Baby as I do for my residents. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to once again point out that our elderly or our “mentally ill” are not disposable items—they are wise, giving and loving human beings, and we are lucky to have them among us.
But more than anything, this book is about love and its place in life’s journey.
Have fun, dear reader!
Nancy
What Stella Wants
Nancy Bartholomew
NANCY BARTHOLOMEW
didn’t seem like the Bombshell type at first. She grew up in Philadelphia as a gentle minister’s daughter. Sometimes, though, true wildness simmers just below the surface. Nancy started singing country music in biker bars before she graduated from high school. And yes, Dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl!
