Esmerelda's Secret

Blurb

Esmerelda, Massachusetts, a community built on tradition, held secrets and painful memories. John William (J.W.) Dalton and Willow MacKenzie had once been passionate lovers, two halves of one soul, torn apart by greed and misunderstanding. Now ten years later, J.W.is sheriff and Willow has returned to Esmerelda to finally lay to rest the tormenting ghosts that continue to haunt her. Her love for J.W. has never died. Willow's return will open old wounds. Can J.W. protect her from the destructive truth that awaits?

Excerpt

When the tires of her car crossed the county line, the rhythm of Willow's body intuitively shifted. She quivered with awareness. Long dormant desire blazed unexpectedly. Her breath quickened. With fear or anticipation? The glow of her car's headlights captured the dark wood and white paint of a road sign. Esmerelda, Population 10,592. First Established 1752.

Willow, shrouded in memories and the icy silence of a moonless, fall evening, traveled along the bittersweet familiarity of Main Street. Orange jack-o'-lanterns swaying in the wind cast a flickering ghostly glow to the lonely night. It was 11 p.m.

She remembered well the unwritten commandments of this small town on the edge of the Massachusetts border. No one stayed out past 9 p.m. In Esmerelda, the commandments and the law were laid down, and upheld, by the Family Dalton. Willow was raised during the tenure of Sheriff Jack Dalton. Tradition held that the eldest Dalton son always stepped into the black-and-white embrace of law enforcement. This was a community defined by tradition. Tracing back to 1752, Daltons had stood guardian for the innocent. When Willow was growing up, those who crossed Jack, or anyone of Dalton blood, might as well fold up and call it a day. Willow bitterly remembered being the recipient of the thunder of Dalton anger. After the unjustified gossip over the incident with Kenny Miller, a Dalton cousin, she might as well have been branded with the letter A.

Even her mother had encouraged her to leave town. She never asked Willow for the truth. But then, neither did the man who professed to love Willow. No one wanted the truth. Justice is blind was never a truer statement than in Willow's case.

In Esmeralda, a story didn't need to be true to spread like wildfire, or be held as gospel. At seventeen, Willow had been too naïve to withstand the suspicion and humiliation.

Once she graduated from Esmerelda High School, Willow fled to Boston. She never looked back. That was ten years ago. She wondered if anyone would even remember Willow MacKenzie today. She turned into the parking lot of the Comfy Lodge Motor Inn and turned off the engine. Willow closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

The week before, she had received a form letter from her mother's lawyer informing her that Moira MacKenzie had died. Her mother, the woman who had raised Willow from a sense of duty rather than love, who never tried to contact her after she'd left, was gone.

Something beyond a sense of duty to her mother had brought Willow back to Esmerelda. She trembled as the devil tiptoed along her spine. Willow was about to come face-to-face with the demons that had chased her for ten years. Tormenting memories kept her yearning, but never satisfied; made her want, but never fulfilled.

The wound to her soul inflicted a decade earlier had abscessed and she yearned to have it cleansed. Only one person could help and that person was in Esmerelda. Her mother's death was but the catalyst that returned her to the source.