Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

I suspected he was still wary of what would happen if we touched. The first time we had made contact, he had become aware of his genetic destiny, then when I grabbed him during the fight underground, he was transported across land and sea in an instant. He was probably right to approach me with caution, but it didn’t make me want his hand on me any less.

He smiled, turned and walked away. I watched as he hurried across the sand so was able to catch him looking back at me over his shoulder. I felt like a teenage girl with a crush and it was electrifying. When I got back into the café there was a bouquet of flowers on the counter and Effie was diligently reading the attached card over and over.

“Are you for real?” she barked. “Ryder is sending you flowers; Miller is being all broody and mysterious on beaches and you can summon beer from nowhere. I give up.” I took the card out of her hands and read the neat cursive. ‘No matter what, Ryder.’

There was no kiss at the end, but somehow those four words were enough. I felt as though any flirtatious activity between Ryder, and I had breezed past me unnoticed, but he had run to my aid the night that Miller came to the house as a wolf and he had taken me up on a hike to find Greta’s car. I must have had my head in the clouds.

“Who was Greta’s guardian?” I asked Effie.

“He’s over there, why don’t you take him this cheesecake he ordered then tell him to get out. That idiot had one job...” she hissed, passing me a plate of dessert, muttering about how early it was to be eating so much sugar, and spinning off into the kitchen.

I looked over in the direction she had pointed in and saw the back of a grey-haired man hunched over a newspaper. I carried the plate over and sat down across from him, slid the cheesecake across the table and waited for him to acknowledge me.

“I wondered when you would think to speak to me,” he grumbled, still reading the paper. “I flew back a day or so ago and was expecting that you would be straight over to my house, but nothing.”

“I’m very new to all of this,” I explained.

“Aren’t we all,” he huffed. “I was Greta’s guardian, and she did something reckless, she didn’t wait for me or the sheriff to accompany her on a trip to the outer islands and she’s been killed because of it.” I didn’t like this guy one bit. He was staring through wire-framed glasses at the article in front of him, one hand reaching over the table to pull his cheesecake closer, I grabbed at the plate and pulled it back towards me.

“You don’t get to blame her for being murdered,” I snapped. “Why weren’t you with her? Why haven’t you introduced yourself to me since I got here?”

He looked up and in an instant I recognized his face. He had been at the funeral all those years ago, those electric blue eyes were impossible to forget. His face had also stared down at me from the family tree in my new house. He had spoken at the service, hadn’t he? He must have been close with the person we were burying that day.

“Greta was my daughter, so I can cope any way I see fit,” he said calmly. “If you want to know the truth about your family, the reasons you were sent away and where everyone is now, then I suggest you ask Greta to take you to our house. She lived here for work but would spend every spare night back with us.”

He pulled at the plate again and I let go. I sat stunned. Did I have more family here? Why hadn’t Greta mentioned that her father lived on the island, that meant I had an uncle. Who had we buried all those years ago?

I still had so much to learn.

Ghost Writer

Book Two

1

“Who on earth would listen to this?” Kate laughed. We were sitting in the café after the rest of the customers had left and the radio was playing a folk song about wheat. Effie and I had been ignoring it as we cleared plates and swept the floor, but as Kate was sitting still with a cup of tea it was all she could focus on.

“Change the station then!” Effie teased.

“Oh shush,” Kate sassed back. I looked at the pair of them with confusion. “Sadie, my sister is trying to poke fun because we only have one station on the island. If you don’t like it, your only options are to suffer through it or switch it off.”

“Do you guys not have digital radio here? I thought you could get any station over the internet now,” I suggested.

“Digital radio?” Effie said with a smirk. “I suppose we should all hop in our flying cars and jet off to the moon while we’re at it.”

“My sister isn’t in the biz,” Kate added. “We can get some digital stations, but the signal is shaky at best. I know you are new here, but you will quickly learn that we aren’t that well connected to the world. We still have a VHS rental store on the island, that should tell you everything you need to know.”

“In the biz,” Effie snorted. The two of them started to exchange words that were clearly part of some sisterly secret language, it was fun to watch even though I had no idea what was being said.

I hadn’t been living on the island long, but it already felt like home. I had uprooted myself from Virginia to get away from a bad break up, only to find myself discovering that my life had always been destined for something beyond ordinary.

The café I’d bought had been sold to