Happy Endings Resort Series
Our resort is full of characters—residents, staff, locals from town, and our visitors and guests—all with a story to be told. Come join us for this unique series. Each month will be a new book by a different author, with a new cast of characters, as well as characters from other books in the series stopping by.
~Book Nine~
October, when the veil between the living and the dead thins until it becomes transparent on the 31st and the living and dead once again walk together.
Happy Endings Resort, where everyone gets their happy ending. Right?
Esmeralda “Es” Boswell lives at Happy Endings Resort, but she is still waiting for her happy ending. She spends her days working as a receptionist for a local construction company, watching couples come in, designing and building their dream homes. Her nights and weekends are spent traveling around the countryside giving happy-ever-after psychic readings at fairs and carnivals. Even her dreams are filled with happy endings, of what could be. But in reality, she is alone, trying to earn enough money to take care of her father’s mounting medical bills and so far away from her happily-ever-after she thinks she is destined to walk her life alone.
Hardened newspaper owner and reporter, Dominic McKay, knows there is no such thing as happily-ever-after. As a boy, his parents died and he was left with his only living relative, a spunky grandmother who raised him. She taught him to stand up for what is right and to fight what is wrong, a trait he takes very seriously as an adult. When she dies suddenly, he knows there is more than meets the eye, there had to be something sinister behind her death. Someone had to benefit from killing her, and he was going to figure out who it was. He looks no further than the local psychic who had been giving her readings on an almost daily basis, and looks to prove she’s behind the murder of the one person he could always depend on.
But when there is one death, there is always another. And death follows Es wherever she goes. Can they both survive what is heading in their direction? Will they have their happily-ever-after? Or will they let this once in a lifetime chance slip through their fingers.
Amazon US Amazon UK Amazon CA
Chapter One
Es
I cry out in pain as the knife slices through my stomach, looking down I watch as blood pours out of me and splashes to the dry dusty ground.
Sitting straight up in bed my fingers dig into my stomach hoping to stop the pain as the remains of the dream still lingered fresh behind my eyes. Another nightmare. Looking over at the clock on my bedside table I see it is 3:13 AM. Great, I thought to myself. Not only did I have a nightmare during the darkest hour of the night I also had it in October, when the vail between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.
My name is Esmeralda Boswell, or Es for short and I'm a psychic living a double life in a small trailer at Happy Endings Resort in Endings, South Carolina.
By day I am a conservative receptionist at a local construction company. I watch happy couple, after happy couple come in, design their dream home and live happily-ever-after in it. But nights and weekends I travel the roads peddling my wears to the populace who are hoping for one future, but in reality are destined for something completely different. Since no one really wants to know how dull and boring their lives really are meant to be, I put a spin on it. They all want the same thing. Their happy-ever-after.
I try to keep both of my lives separate, but sometimes they overlap. Sometimes as hard as I try they rush headlong into each other and burn in a fiery crash.
If my dream was to be believed, I'm heading for a disaster of epic proportions. At this point I could only hope death wouldn't follow me, again.
I really liked these people at Happy Endings Resort, I don’t want any of them to die. I finally thought I had found a place where I was happy, where I fit in. Well, as much as I could anyway. There were people here who accepted me for who I was. I’d been searching for somewhere to live all of these years and it was here, at Happy Endings Resort. I’d seen my future, and it was here. So the real question was, am I going to survive what is coming, or is this my final stand against death?
M. Stratton is an International Amazon bestselling author in the romantic suspense and mystery suspense categories for her debut novel After the Storm. She is a self-proclaimed dork that loves to make people laugh and can trip over nothing. Her inner rock star is always on stage performing to a sold out crowd but is quiet and shy on the outside.
She lives with her husband and son in Arizona, which is a big difference from where she grew up north of Chicago Illinois. As an only child she learned to tell herself stories to make the long winters go by quicker while dreaming of summer vacations. Now as an adult she still makes up stories to pass the time, but now she writes them down to share with other people.
When not writing you can find M. watching football (Go Bears!), NASCAR, or classic movies, watching her husband and father restore classic cars, and seeing who can be sillier, her or her son, and of course reading.
