Hello and welcome to the #MFRWhooks Blog Hop! This month I'm featuring my books set during the World War Two era. My current work in progress is a time travel romance/romantasy series in which an apprentice angel must give three mortals a second chance at love in order to earn his place in Heaven. In book one, I'LL BE SEEING YOU, Gabriel travels back in time to Plymouth, England shortly before the D-Day invasion in 1944 to give Frank a second chance at love.
In this excerpt from I'LL BE SEEING YOU, Gabriel and his mentor, senior angel Thomas, try to convince Frank to go back to 1944 to correct the mistake he made with love back then:
“I know you’re capable of love because you once loved a woman named Claire.” Gabriel laid his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Remember?”
Thomas pointed to the night table and a dozen red roses in full bloom appeared. Their scent filled the room. Frank squeezed his eyes shut. “I hate roses.”
“Because they remind you of Claire?” Frank’s memories of Claire flooded Gabriel’s mind. “Open your eyes, Frank.”
Reluctantly, he complied. Gabriel snapped his fingers and a video of a young woman working in her rose garden played on the television. She turned to look directly at the camera, her smile full of joy.
“Is this Claire? She’s very beautiful. Tell me about her, Frank.”
Frank stared at the screen. “Her name is Claire Cartwright. We met during the war, in Plymouth, England. Just months before D-Day.”
Gabriel read Frank’s conflicted feelings. To Frank, Claire Cartwright, with her shining dark hair and porcelain skin, was a more beautiful English rose than any nature ever created.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
He heaved a sigh. “Yes. Very much.”
"But you hated her, too.. Why is that, Frank?”
“Because she turned me into a cold, unfeeling person incapable of loving anyone else. She played me for a fool and betrayed me with another man.” Frank closed his eyes again. “Please stop. I’m an old man. Why are you torturing me like this?”
“You’re not unfeeling,” Gabriel said. “On the contrary, I think you feel too much. You’ve let anger and hurt blind you.”
He snapped his fingers and sound accompanied the video. Big band music played at a dance hall.
This is the first time Frank talked to Claire, Thomas said. He’d seen her before with a group of friends, but this was the first time he had the chance to talk to her, to hold her in his arms.
“There you are, walking across the dance floor toward Claire.”
“We’re so young,” Frank whispered. “And she’s so beautiful.”
“Yes, she is,” Gabriel agreed. “You look very handsome in your uniform, too. See how all the young women stare at you as you walk across the dance floor? But you don’t seem to notice any of them. You only have eyes for Claire.”
Frank sagged against his pillow. “Yes.”
“Do you remember what you said to her that night?”
“No.”
“Listen.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Frank’s younger self asked as they danced.
Claire smiled up at him, her eyes shining with amusement. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“You do now,” young Frank said with a cocky grin.
Claire laughed. “You’ve decided that, have you? All on your own? Do I get any say in the matter?”
Frank gazed into Claire’s eyes. “No, none at all.”
“You dated a lot of girls before the war, didn’t you, Frank?” Visions of Frank with a succession of young women raced through Gabriel’s mind. “You were a good-looking kid and girls gravitated to you. But you’d never experienced anything like this before, did you? Like you’d die if you couldn’t hold her in your arms and kiss her. Like you’d cease to exist if she turned you away.”
On the screen, Claire shook her head. “What an arrogant Yank you are.” But she continued to dance with Frank, smiling up into his eyes.
“You fell in love with Claire that night on the dance floor, and your world changed forever.”
“It was ruined forever, you mean. Turn it off!”
Just one more stop, Thomas said.
Once more, swing music pumped out of the TV as couples crowded the dance floor. Young Frank scanned the crowd, looking for Claire. Gabriel read Frank’s memories once again.
“You didn’t think you’d see Claire that night, but you got a pass at the last minute. You caught a ride into Plymouth and made your way to Claire’s hospital. You knew she volunteered every Saturday night at the weekly dance in the recreation hall there.” Gabriel pointed to the screen. “You glimpsed Claire across the room and followed her into a cloakroom. You were excited to surprise her. But the surprise was on you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Frank replied wearily. “The bloody surprise was on me.”
A group of drunken British airmen crowded into the cloakroom just ahead of Frank. Whoops of laughter sounded from inside the room.
“Henderson, you sly boots! And all this time you told us the two of you were only friends! What a lark!”
Frank entered the cloakroom just as Claire passionately kissed Charles Henderson. He stared at them in utter devastation. When Gabriel glanced at old Frank on the bed, he saw the same devastation on his face and, for a moment, Gabriel experienced remorse for making him relive it. But he hardened his heart. He had a job to do, and he couldn’t let sympathy for Frank get in his way.
The drunken airmen stumbled their way out of the cloakroom, laughing and hooting as they went. Frank waited until they were gone before speaking. “Claire, what’s going on?”
She broke free from Henderson. “Frank? What are you doing here? You said you couldn’t get leave.”
“I believed you.” His face was full of pain and incredulity. “You said you loved me, and I believed you. You said Henderson was just a childhood friend, and I believed that, too. But no more.” He turned to leave.
She grabbed his arm and whispered urgently, “No! Frank please! It’s not how it looks!”
Frank shook off her hand. “Really? Because what it looks like right now is that you made a fool of me.”
“Frank, please!”
Frank hurried from the cloakroom and out of the recreation hall.
“Turn it off, damn you! Turn it off!”
Gabriel snapped his fingers and the television abruptly stopped. The screen stuck on a picture of an anguished Claire looking directly into the camera.
I hope you enjoyed the excerpt. No buy links or book cover yet, but I'm hoping to publish I'LL BE SEEING YOU in the first half of 2025. Stay tuned!
For more great excerpts and books, check out this week's Book Hooks blog hop: