Harvest Moon by Janet Eaves

A Ladies of Legend Novella...
After her sadistic husband is dead, Winifred Butler believes herself finally free of his horror. But he continues to torment her from the grave as his secrets and lies, treason and terror, bring Agent Tom Green to her door. She is as determined to keep her past a secret as Tom is committed to bringing her secrets to light. Only one of them can win. So both must fight the attraction to the other, knowing they have everything to lose...

CATEGORY: Contemporary

HEAT LEVEL: Sapphire

LENGTH: Novella

FORMAT: E-BOOK

$4.00

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Excerpt:

The large structure had certainly seen better days. There was not only a general air of neglect with all the dusty spider-webs filling the upper and many of the lower rafters. The tin roof had large sheets missing and the support posts, as well as the exterior siding, were rotting in places. The long vertical boards enclosing the structure showed signs of water-rot at their jagged ends.

Winnie pressed her lips together, wondering just how long it had been since the barn had actually been used as intended. Not that she knew everything there was to know about farming, but she did know, after working for them one winter during her Christmas break from school, that the Casey family had farmed this land for several generations, and none of them would have allowed such disrepair. Which meant Jack, the lazy mongrel she'd known he was, hadn't been farming as she'd been led to believe.

So what had he been up to? she wondered, as she walked to the far end of the barn where the heavy oak door to the tobacco stripping room lay closed. Fortunately there was a light switch on the outside of the built-in structure so she was able to enter safely.

There were still indications that tobacco had once been stripped in the dimly lit room. The long, three section press machine with its hydraulic hose attached to an electric air-pressure device looked much as she remembered, though layers of dust now covered it. The woven-wood, flat baskets the hand-tied tobacco would be placed on were already considered old-fashioned when she'd worked for the Caseys, but Mister Casey had treated them as treasures from his past, and kept them in pristine condition. Not now. They were dirty and rotting. The man was probably spinning in his grave.

Winnie sighed, shaking her head at the complete neglect of the place as she continued to scan the room. Though filthy, nothing much had changed with the long bench that workers would stand in front of to lift the stalk, strip the tobacco leaves off, then place them in the now disintegrating burlap sacks that hung off the table's front edge.

She exhaled through pursed lips. There was a lot of cleaning up that would have to be done. The stripping room was as dusty and web infested as the rest of the barn. But the worst thing was that there was no sign of photo developing equipment. So where had Jack done his dirty work?

She crossed her arms, rubbing at the goose-bumps chilling them. At the moment, she had no idea where to search next. She started to leave the room when a hint of white caught her eye. Nestled tight in the corner between the stripping table and the wall was a picture of another woman, naked, terrified, and chained to the posts of a bed similar to the one she'd known all too well.

Shock loosened her grip and the photo floated to the dirt floor as vomit rolled up from her stomach to her throat. She turned, bent over, and let go, making the dust rise as she emptied everything inside. She ran the back of her hand over her mouth as she stumbled backwards until her bottom rested against the stripping table.

She hadn't been Jack's only victim.

 

Now available in print, two books in one! Harvest Moon and Beauty and the Beast.

Read an another excerpt!