Genre: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary
Release Date: August 1, 2013
Digital ISBN 13:978-1-939217-60-8 ISBN 10:1-939217-60-1
Print ISBN 13:978-1-939217-59-2 ISBN 10:1-939217-59-8
Purchase link : www.5princebooks.com/buy.html
Finding Hope
Hope Keller has lived a perfect and peaceful life. However,
she is a mystery, to herself. The one thing that would make her feel whole
would be to know about her birth parents and discover who she really is.
Private investigator Trevor Jacobs has a job to do—find Hope
for her biological father and get to know her without her finding out. Locating
her was the easy part. Falling in love with her hadn’t been in his job
description.
When Trevor is asked by Hope to help her find her birth
parents he is put into a difficult situation. If she discovers he already has
all of her answers it might cost him his heart—and those answers might cost
Hope her life.
About Bernadette Marie:
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 her own contemporary titles. She
also quickly began the process of taking on other authors in other genres.
In 2012 Bernadette Marie began
to find herself on the bestsellers lists of iTunes, Amazon, and Barnes and
Noble 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—usually hockey. She is also an
accomplished martial artist with a second degree black belt in Tang Soo Do. An
avid reader, she enjoys contemporary romances with humor and happily ever
afters.
Author Contact Info:
@writesromance on Twitter
EXCERPT of Finding Hope:
He’d seen it all in
his chosen profession. The most popular: the cheating husband. There were
bosses who suspected employees were skimming the till. And like the angry
wives’, the bosses’ suspicions were usually correct. A missing relative or
child was just as common, but this case piqued his interest more than most.
Trevor Jacobs looked
down at the manila folder on the passenger seat of his car. He tugged at his
collar. The Missouri summer was warming the inside of his car to temperatures
that he was sure would kill a man. He picked up the folder and flipped it open.
Finding Mandy Marlow
had been a challenge because she’d disappeared when she was seventeen. That had
been forty years ago.
The last time her
mother had seen her, Mandy’d had a newborn infant in her arms and had come back
begging for money. Ruth Marlow, Mandy’s mother, had given him the case’s scant
details over the phone. His notes clearly reflected that Mandy hadn’t gone
asking for a place to stay or for help with the baby. She had wanted ten
thousand dollars and they had refused. She had told them she’d be living with
friends. Friends who would love her and her baby, unlike her parents.
He’d finally tied
Mandy to a David Kendal, a retired airline pilot living in Kansas City,
Missouri.
Mandy Marlow had
lived in the Kansas City area approximately seven years after she had left her
parents’ house. Her DMV records showed she’d lived in a house owned by David
Kendal and exactly seventeen years after she’d last been seen by her family she
changed her name to Mandy Kendal. He’d searched marriage records, but he found
no record that Mandy and David had actually been married. She had assumed the
name through proper channels. However, their names did appear together on the
birth certificates of Carissa Marlow Kendal and one Hope Katherine Kendal.
Hope Kendal had been
born by cesarean moments after they had pronounced Mandy Kendal dead. She had
died of heart failure and had papers that had strictly instructed that she not
be revived.
She hadn’t been.
David Kendal married
a Sophia Burkhalter only three weeks later. He flipped through the notes. “In a
lovely back yard ceremony of the home of the bride’s grandmother Katherine
Burkhalter,” the newspaper clipping had stated. Adoption records showed that
Sophia, now Kendal, had adopted Carissa, then seventeen, and the newborn Hope
only three months after she’d been born.
What a tidy package,
he thought. Ex-lover of the dead woman shares custody of his children with his
new wife. What a twisted novel plot that would make. He laughed. However, armed
with the facts he had, he knew it had been that simple.
A change of heart,
or perhaps a shove in that direction, had Mandy Marlow—Mandy Kendal—giving up her children and
refusing to fight for her own life.
Sweat beaded on his
brow. Trevor reached for his bottle of water. It had grown warm. He drank it
down and tossed it into the backseat with the other bottles he’d discarded
there. He knew he wasn’t the ideal patron for a car rental company.
He flipped through
his notes again and stared into the face he’d become familiar with.
Hope Katherine
Kendal.
She stood in a
crowded room, but the camera had zoomed in on her. She’d been intrigued by
something, or someone. Long blonde hair cascaded behind her shoulders and
crystal blue eyes watched him from the photo. She had lips that were full and
just a bit pouty. The face that mesmerized from the photo had a cherubic look
to her, but a super model’s features.
He knew he’d been
fascinated by it too long, too many times. He’d seen it in his dreams. He’d
found himself driving down the road thinking about her face.
Trevor checked his
watch. He’d been sitting in the cemetery, in his parked car, for over two
hours. He’d wait another two hours and then he’d move on.
But he didn’t have
to wait any longer.
A blue Miata pulled
up between him and the headstone that read Mandy Marlow Kendal. The beautiful
blonde that he’d familiarized himself with stood there in person. He felt his
heart race a little faster.
The pace of his
heart was different from when he was about to confront most of those whom he’d
followed. That was adrenaline. This was lust.
Hope stood just
outside her car. She was dressed in jeans that rode low on curvy hips. She wore
her tie-dyed shirt tucked in, giving her a look of being taller than she was.
Her hair fell well down her back in a long tail.
Large sunglasses
shielded her eyes, but he knew how blue they were.
She wasn’t moving.
He was far enough from her he knew she couldn’t see him, but he wondered what
she was thinking when she stood still on the narrow dirt road. She reached
through the open window of her car and pulled out a bouquet of flowers.
Another car pulled
up behind her. Trevor watched with intrigue. Carissa Kendal Samuel—he’d
familiarized himself with her face as well—climbed out of her car and
approached Hope.
He watched them
exchange a few words and then an embrace. It was amazing how different sisters
could be. Hope was fair. Her blonde hair was strikingly different from the dark
hair of her sister. Carissa stood a few inches taller than Hope and her figure
was straighter where Hope’s was voluptuous.
Arm in arm the
sisters walked toward the grave of their birth mother. A smile crossed Trevor’s
lips. Right on time.
