Title: Encore
Series: Matchmakers
Author: Bernadette Marie
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: 5 Prince Books
Formats Available In: All eBook
formats & Print
Release Date: June 13, 2013
Digital: ISBN
13:978-1-939217-58-5 ISBN 10:1-939217-58-X
Print: ISBN 13:978-1-939217-57-8
ISBN 10:1-939217-57-1
Purchase Link:
(Available
July 4)
Blurb: Newly unemployed concert
pianist, Thomas Samuel has spent most of his adult life escaping his
upbringing. He’s become an expert at hiding his feelings and
remaining professional. But when he meets cellist Carissa Kendal he’s
faced with one emotion he can’t escape—love.
Carissa hadn’t expected her mother to
take on the art of matchmaking and she was convinced she wasn’t
very good at it. Strong minded Carissa had her work cut out for her
with the emotionally scarred Thomas, but love always wins in the
end—or does it?
By the time Thomas realizes his past
does not define the man he has become it might be too late. Big
venues and scenic places might just win over the heart of Carissa and
take her away from him—unless he hurries and faces the man who
ruined his career and convince Carissa that every performance, even
love, deserves an encore.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Her young student pulled the bow across
the strings of the violin, and the sound was pure evil. Carissa
Kendal winced, then quickly smiled. She’d get it in time.
Eventually, they all got it if they stuck around.
The dropout rate of students was the
one dark cloud over her next venture, the Kendal School of Music. It
had been her dream to teach music in her own school, and she was
about to dive into it. She’d hoped her mother would want to be by
her side more, but Sophia still had Hope to raise. Carissa had
accepted that, but to have her mother call up an old friend to help
her wasn’t settling.
Did Sophia not think she’d look him
up? That she wouldn’t find out who he was?
At the moment, he was nobody. Every
musical endeavor he’d pursued in the eight years since the renowned
tenor Pablo DiAngelo’s ensemble broke up had failed spectacularly.
Why was Sophia soft on him? Her
mother’s name carried far more influence than that of the failed
pianist, and it would have given Carissa’s music school all the
prestige it needed.
The student pulled another evil note
and snapped Carissa from her thoughts.
“I’m never going to get this,”
the young girl complained with her nose wrinkled.
“You will. If you want to, you’ll
get it.” She smiled encouragingly, remembering when she’d been
that young girl. “You need to remember to practice the material I
give you.” Carissa raised her eyebrows with the subtle demand.
“Okay. I promise I’ll be better
next time.”
“And if you practice, that will
always be the case.”
As her student gathered her instrument,
Carissa marked off her lesson sheet and handed it to her.
They left the study of the old
boardinghouse, where Carissa lived with her grandmother, and stood by
the door as her student’s mother walked toward them. Carissa gave
the girl a squeeze on her shoulder.
“She’s doing wonderfully. A little
extra practice each day will help,” she said. “Don’t forget
your peppermint on your way out the door.”
The young girl fished in the bowl for
the right piece of candy as Carissa opened the front door. The
violinist’s mother handed Carissa a check for the lesson.
“Thank you, Carissa. She enjoys her
lessons very much.”
“I’m pleased to hear that. We’ll
see you both next week.”
As the woman and her daughter descended
the front steps, a man paid a cab on the street in front of the old
house. He stood with his suitcase in his hand and looked her way.
He was tall and too thin for her taste,
but he looked almost regal in the way he carried himself. He removed
his sunglasses and stroked the wisps of dirty blond hair from his
eyes. She almost didn’t recognize the man from the pictures she’d
seen on the Internet.
He looked like a blond Jimmy Stewart,
and her stomach did a little flip.
“Hello,” he called as he neared the
house. She smiled despite her misgivings. He even walked like Jimmy
Stewart.
Like most of Pablo’s ensemble, he’d
always walked behind the man with the million-dollar smile, never
next to or in front of him, not like her mother who had been paraded
on Pablo’s arm. It was no wonder she hadn’t recognized him.
She extended her hand to him, and as
his fingers enclosed hers, she gulped in air. He was strikingly
handsome. She hadn’t expected that.
To have played for Pablo, as Sophia
had, Thomas had to be tremendously talented. Yet would the curse that
hung over his career affect her music school?
“You must be Thomas Samuel. I’m
Sophia’s daughter, Carissa Kendal. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
When Sophia Kendal had said her
daughter would meet him at the boardinghouse in Kansas City, he
hadn’t expected she’d look like the woman standing before him.
The woman before him stood erect as a dancer. Her hair fell to the
middle of her back like an ebony waterfall, and her dark eyes were
soft. She wore a flowing, orange blouse and a long skirt of the same
orange, mixed with earthy browns that swirled around her calves when
she moved.
She was mesmerizing.
“Please come in.” She stepped back
through the door. Heat rose on the back of his neck as he passed by
her. “My mother says you’ll be staying with us until you get
settled.”
“Uh. Yes.” He felt like his tongue
had swollen. “I’m sorry if I seem out of sorts. I knew Sophia for
so long that to think of her as your mother, well, that’s a stretch
for me.”
Carissa smiled at him again. “I was
seventeen before she adopted me, so I can understand. I’m sorry you
couldn’t make it out for their wedding.”
“Yes, so am I.” Had he made that
wedding, he’d have made it his business to become more familiar
with the dark beauty who, with the most subtle gesture of tucking her
hair behind her ear, had his pulse climbing.
Guilt halted his thoughts. He should
have been at the wedding because he’d promised Sophia he would be.
It was just another broken promise, and he feared he would let her
down again. And given his past, he had no business fantasizing about
Carissa—or any woman. It could end only in heartache—or worse.
Bernadette Marie has been an avid
writer since the early age of 13, when she’d fill notebook after
notebook with stories that she’d share with her friends. Her
journey into novel writing started the summer before eighth grade
when her father gave her an old typewriter. At all times of the
day and night you would find her on the back porch penning her first
work, which she would continue to write for the next 22 years.
In 2007 – after marriage, filling her
chronic entrepreneurial needs, and having five children –
Bernadette began to write seriously with the goal of being
published. That year she wrote 12 books. In 2009 she
was contracted for her first trilogy and the published author was
born. In 2011 she (being the entrepreneur that she is) opened
her own publishing house, 5 Prince Publishing, and has released
contemporary titles and began the process of taking on other authors
in other genres.
In 2012 Bernadette Marie found herself
on the bestsellers lists of iTunes and Amazon to name a few.
Her office wall is lined with colorful PostIt notes with the titles
of books she will be releasing in the very near future, with hope
that they too will grace the bestsellers lists.
Bernadette spends most of her free time
driving her kids to their many events. She is also an
accomplished martial artist who will earn her conditional second
degree black belt in Tang Soo Do in October 2012. An avid
reader, she enjoys most, the works of Nora Roberts, Karen White,
Megan Hart, to name a few. She loves to meet readers who enjoy
reading contemporary romances and she always promises Happily Ever
After.
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