In my next romantic suspense in my Northern Shore Intrigue series, UNCERTAIN SPRING, my heroine is an early fifty-something widowed grandmother.
That’s why I asked my question in the subject line. Here’s the first page of the book. Does it grab your interest? Do you mind that Lois is not in her twenties?
The Beginning of Uncertain Spring
Driving north late at night, Lois blinked to keep herself awake. Just a few more miles. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the snow. But she’d never returned to the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior in March. This winter Florida had been…different, odd-feeling. All her usual activities, even golf and teaching her self-defense classes for women at the Y, had palled. Evie’s twelve year old voice played in her mind, “Grandma, I wish you were here.” That phone call had instantly made everything clear—at last. She’d closed up her house and started north. Now drawing so near her destination prompted the familiar ache to clutch her heart.
A sudden blast of wind and snow caught her car and her attention. She slowed and kept her focus on the yellow line in her headlights. The wind batted her car as if it were a rowboat in a storm, not a Lexus SUV. She drew a deep breath as she glimpsed landmarks that said her lake home waited just ahead. From the county highway, she turned down the long lane to her house, her headlights illuminating the triple garage doors ahead. Her goal in sight, she sighed and slowed to a crawl, aiming her door remote. The door rose.
Something leaped up against her driver’s side window. She shrieked in shock. Slammed on the brakes.
A dog barked with panic, not aggression. He wasn’t growling The large golden retriever braced his snow-clogged front paws against the edge below the window, and continued barking. She couldn’t ignore the panic and the frenzy in his tone. Something clicked in her memory. Her own childhood dog had barked just like this, summoning help when her little sister had fallen out of the tree and had been knocked unconscious. He needs help. Something’s happened.
Lois turned off the car and cautiously opened the door. “Hey, fella, what’s up?” she said, automatically slipping into her speak-to-dog voice, one she hadn’t used in years.
The dog sprang away and then halted. And then looked back and with his body language alone beckoned her to follow.
She took a step and then halted. “Just a minute, fella.” She hurried around the car and opened the back hatch and pulled out her winter emergency pack. The dog leaped around her still urging her to come—come now. From the ample pouch, she pulled out a flashlight and an old navy blue wool blanket. She checked that she had her cell phone in her pocket. The wind hit her. She zipped up the jacket and pulled up her hood. “Okay, boy. Let’s go!”