Love Gone South

Chocolatier Lanie Heaven has good friends, a booming business, and the adoration of the citizens of Merritt, Alabama. But she also has a secret. After the devastating breakup with her longtime college boyfriend, she lost a baby and the hope of ever having a child - the thing she desires above all else.

Tolly Lee is pearls, debutant balls, and old silver on the breakfast table. She is ashamed of something she did 13 years ago, but she was only 16, and she didn't set out to do it. Still, she should not have led college senior Nathan Scott to think she was his age. She never imagined a football star like him would keep calling her, but it was mostly a long-distance relationship, and it's not like they had sex. In the end she paid for her sins with her heart, and she might not be done paying.

The last time Brantley Kincaid had an argument with someone, he was 18 years old - and he regrets it like he will never regret anything again. If only he had not balked at going to pick up his grandfather that day, his mother would not have driven into the path of a truck, and there would be two fewer graves in Merritt Cemetery. Though a frequent visitor, he hasn't lived in Merritt since burying his mother and grandfather. But now he's coming back, and it might not be so easy to hide behind his wit and charisma.

No matter how many critics call him an artisan or how much money people are willing to pay for his handcrafted furniture, Will Garrett will always be the son of a drunk from Mill Town. Though he has admired Dr. Arabelle Avery ever since his teenage busboy days at the Merritt County Club, he has no aspirations where she is concerned. A boy from across the tracks doesn't go calling on a state senator's daughter.

Professor Bebe Wellesley comes from a long line of psychics but has inherited just enough of the family gifts to make her peculiar rather than of very much use. The handsome bookseller who is so proficient at obtaining the obscure texts she needs to teach her college parapsychology classes caught her eye a while back, but why bother? She’s learned the hard way that men don’t like women with a supernatural bent - no matter how paltry their power.