Just Like Heaven Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for the novels of “ONE OF TODAY’S BEST WOMEN’S FICTION AUTHORS.” —The Romance Reader

  SOMEONE LIKE YOU

  “Bretton, with her insightful observations, gets to the core of her characters in this novel about the many roles women play—wife, daughter, sister, mother, lover—whether by choice or by the force of circumstance. Commitment, avoidance, love, and guilt—Bretton, a master storyteller, superbly dramatizes a great range of emotions in this compelling tale.”—Booklist

  “Readers who appreciate a powerful character study that digs deep into cause and effect will want to read Barbara Bretton’s fine, convincing tale.”—The Best Reviews

  CHANCES ARE

  “A fine follow-up to Shore Lights . . . salt-of-the-earth characters . . . Alternately poignant and humorous, this contemporary romance gracefully illuminates life’s highs and lows.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Barbara Bretton’s myriad of fans will appreciate this solid contemporary sequel to Shore Lights . . . two delightful protagonists. Ms. Bretton provides a fine return to the Jersey shore with this warm family drama.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  GIRLS OF SUMMER

  “A moving romance . . . Barbara Bretton provides a deep tale of individuals struggling with caring connections of the heart.”—Midwest Book Review

  “A book readers will want to savor.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Insightful . . . Bretton excels at women’s fiction that engages the emotions without manipulating them . . . I highly recommend that discriminating readers pay a visit to these Girls of Summer.”—The Romance Reader

  “Barbara Bretton is a master at touching readers’ hearts. Grab this one when it hits the shelves! A Perfect 10!”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  SHORE LIGHTS

  “An engrossing tale of hope, promise, heartache, and misplaced dreams . . . Its uplifting message and smooth storytelling make it a pleasant read any time of year.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Bretton’s warm, wonderful book presents complex familial and romantic relationships, sympathetic characters, and an underlying poignancy, and will please fans of Kathryn Shay and Deborah Smith.”—Booklist

  “Entertaining . . . Barbara Bretton bestows a beautiful modern-day romance on her audience.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Her women’s fiction is well written and insightful with just the right blend of realism and romance . . . [Shore Lights] may be her best novel yet . . . A rich novel full of wry humor and sweet poignancy . . . The novel’s magic comes from the author’s ability to portray the nuances of human relationships at both their worst and best . . . powerful.” —The Romance Reader

  And acclaim for the other novels of Barbara Bretton . . .

  “Bretton’s characters are always real and their conflicts believable.”—Chicago Sun-Times

  “Soul warming . . . A powerful relationship drama [for] anyone who enjoys a passionate look inside the hearts and souls of the prime players.”—Midwest Book Review

  “[Bretton] excels in her portrayal of the sometimes sweet, sometimes stifling ties of a small community. The town’s tight network of loving, eccentric friends and family infuses the tale with a gently comic note that perfectly balances the darker dramas of the romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A tender love story about two people who, when they find something special, will go to any length to keep it.”

  —Booklist

  “Honest, witty . . . absolutely unforgettable.”

  —Rendezvous

  “A classic adult fairy tale.”—Affaire de Coeur

  “Dialogue flows easily, and characters spring quickly to life.”—Rocky Mountain News

  “No one tells a story like Barbara Bretton.”

  —Meryl Sawyer

  Titles by Barbara Bretton

  JUST LIKE HEAVEN

  SOMEONE LIKE YOU

  CHANCES ARE

  GIRLS OF SUMMER

  SHORE LIGHTS

  ONE AND ONLY

  A SOFT PLACE TO FALL

  AT LAST

  THE DAY WE MET

  ONCE AROUND

  SLEEPING ALONE

  MAYBE THIS TIME

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  JUST LIKE HEAVEN

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / March 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Barbara Bretton.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-515-14262-4

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  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  One

  Coburn, New Jersey—9:30 a.m.

  Kate French shifted the phone from her left shoulder to her right and plunged her hand deeper into her ling
erie drawer.

  “Mom!” Her daughter Gwynn was no longer a teenager, but you would never know it from her tone of voice. “Are you listening to me?”

  “I heard every syllable.” Kate pulled out an orphaned hand-knit sock and a silky pink camisole carbon-dated from the disco era and tossed them onto the bed behind her.

  “So what should I do?”

  Unfortunately Kate had shifted into maternal autopilot five minutes into the conversation and had lost track. Was Gwynn still debating her roommate Laura’s excessive devotion to the New York Giants or had she segued into an old favorite of all the French women: a dissection of Kate’s nonexistent love life?

  She bent down and peered deeper into the perfumed recesses. One pair of plain cotton panties. Was that too much to ask for? “Run it by me again, honey.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Gwynn said. “You’re answering e-mails while I’m pouring out my heart to you. I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Gwynnie, I’m not on the computer.”

  “I can hear the keys clicking.”

  “What you hear is the sound of your mother searching her lingerie drawer for a pair of—”

  “Hold on! I have another call.”

  The distance between the thirteen-year-old girl her daughter used to be and the twenty-three-year-old woman she was hadn’t turned out to be quite as wide as Kate had hoped. She glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. Come on, Gwynnie. I have things to do.

  “That was Andrew.” Gwynn the daughter had been replaced by Gwynn the girlfriend. She sounded almost giddy with delight. The sound hit Kate’s ears like fingernails on a chalkboard. “He called from the boat! Isn’t that the—”

  “I’m going to hang up now,” Kate said. “I have an appointment down in Princeton and I’m running late. We can pick this up another time, can’t we, honey?”

  “But, Mom, I still haven’t—”

  “I know, I know, but this can’t be helped. I want to hear everything you have to say, honey, but not right this minute.”

  “You’re going to Princeton?”

  “Yes, but not if I don’t get out of here in the next ten minutes.”

  “If I leave now I could meet you for lunch at the Mexican place and I can tell you my news in person.”

  “I thought you were working lunch shift at O’Malley’s during the week.”

  “Mondays are slow. They won’t miss me.”

  “You can’t just not show up, Gwynn. That’s how you lost your last job.” And when you do show up, you’re always late. That’s not how you get ahead.

  “You always do that to me.”

  “Do what?” She glanced at her watch. Was she the only one in the family who believed in punctuality?

  “Keep score. Why can’t you just accept that my career path isn’t like yours and let me live my life my own way?”

  “Gwynnie, do we need to have this conversation right now?” She was still on London time and not up for a discussion of individual rights and freedoms with an independent young woman who still expected Mommy to foot the bill for her car insurance.

  “You sound pissed.”

  “What I sound is jet-lagged.” She waited for the appropriate response from her only child, but none was forthcoming. “Did you forget I’ve been in England for almost ten days? I’m still on London time.” Does any of this ring a bell, Gwynn? She liked to believe most daughters would notice when their mothers were out of the country.

  “You’ve been gone forever. That’s why I have so much to talk to you about.”

  “Honey, this can’t be helped. I really have to go.”

  “Are you okay?” Gwynn asked. “You’re not acting like yourself.”

  “We’ll talk later, honey,” she said and then disconnected.

  Normally Kate would have felt guilty for cutting her daughter short, but today she only felt relieved. She loved Gwynn more than life itself, but her daughter’s melodramatic outbursts had a way of sucking the oxygen right out of her lungs.

  “Okay,” she said as she tossed the cell onto the bed. “Let’s get down to business.”

  There had to be something wearable in the house. A ten-day trip to the U.K. shouldn’t deplete a woman’s reserves. She pulled out the second drawer of her lingerie chest and dumped the contents in a pile. T-shirts from various island paradises. A garter belt with tiny roses embroidered across the handmade lace, remains of a long-ago Valentine’s Day celebration. More bras than any one 34B woman needed in three lifetimes. A puka shell necklace. The black lace mantilla she had found in a shop in Seville during her last married vacation. Ticket stubs, a McCarter playbill, a deflated balloon dachshund, and what was easily the worst birthday present her mother had ever given her: the infamous red lace thong.

  Maeve had come of age at the start of the turbulent sixties, and she believed in shaking up the status quo whenever she had the chance. How better to ignite some passion in her forty-year-old daughter’s life than to present her with outrageously sexy underwear in front of friends, colleagues, relatives, and a half-dozen prospective boyfriends? Unfortunately the passion Maeve ignited in her daughter had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with embarrassment. Kate had tried to be a good sport about it, but it had taken every ounce of self-control at her command to keep from throttling her own mother.

  She held up the thong. It wouldn’t cover a Barbie doll, much less a full-size woman. What on earth had Maeve been thinking?

  She considered making a quick run to Target for a three-pack of Jockey for Women, but the clock was ticking and Professor Armitage wasn’t known for his patience. And there was the fact that she was way beyond exhausted. Jet lag rarely bothered her, but today she was having trouble keeping her eyes open long enough to finish getting dressed.

  She cringed her way into the scrap of lace and elastic and then peered at herself in the mirror opposite the bed. That was better than a jolt of caffeine. The thong should have come with a warning sticker. This much reality so early in the morning was hard to take.

  She looked closer. That couldn’t possibly be right. The human body wasn’t supposed to have quite so many indentations. Maybe they should add an instruction label too for the lingerie-impaired. She slipped off the thong, spun it around, then tried again.

  A forty-one-year-old woman with a red lace wedgie was a sight to behold.

  Thank God it was a sight nobody else on the planet would likely ever see.

  Rocky Hill, New Jersey—9:45 a.m.

  “Congratulations,” the real estate agent said as Mark Kerry handed her four signed copies of the contract. “It’s now official: your house is sold.”

  It was also officially the point of no return. “Now what?” he asked, wishing he felt more enthusiastic about the sale.

  Bev scanned the signature pages and then slipped them into a large folder. “We have a tentative closing six weeks from today. I’ll arrange for the appraisal, the home inspection, radon testing, smoke alarms, yadda yadda yadda. All you have to do is pack for your move,” she said with a cheery smile.

  “And dig up the township permits for the new roof.”

  “See?” Bev rolled her eyes. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. We’ll need the roof permits, the signed lead paint disclosure, and your attorney’s name. You can fax copies to me and I’ll pick up the originals.”

  “So far it’s been almost painless.”

  “Five days from listing to contract,” Bev said, clearly pleased, “and we managed to get top dollar. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

  She gave him a contact sheet with pertinent phone numbers and a metaphorical pat on the back.

  “You look shell-shocked,” she said as he walked her down the gravel driveway to her car. “I promise you the hard part is over.”

  Easy for her to say. When Memorial Day weekend rolled around, he would be on his way back up to New Hampshire to find out if you really could go home again.

  Where was
home anyway? This small stone cottage in New Jersey didn’t have much going for it, but somehow over the last two years it had become home. Or as close to it as he was likely to get.

  Two postage-stamp bedrooms. Small kitchen. No dining room. No family room. A basement with its own share of troubles. When he walked through the front door he knew he was where he was meant to be.

  But nothing lasted forever.

  The other contract he needed to sign was propped up against the toaster, along with a note from his old friend Maggy Boyd, who was shepherding him through the process.

  The funny thing was, he thought he would have more time. Bev had warned him to be patient. The New Jersey real estate market wasn’t as hot as it used to be and the whole thing might take a while.

  It didn’t.

  Kris and Al Wygren showed up on Sunday for the first open house and fell head over heels in love with the place. They loved the wonky windows, the big stone fireplace, the squeaky floorboards, every single thing. He had pointed out all the flaws and they only loved it more.

  The Wygrens were all of twenty-five or twenty-six. Newly married. Newly pregnant. Ready to build a nest of their own.

  He and Suzanne had been just like them. Young and in love with their entire future spread out before them like a field of wildflowers. Not that he would have ever thought of the wildflowers simile. That was pure Suzanne. She had seen life through a prism of joy that even in memory still amazed him.

  Her mother used to say that God had been feeling generous the day he made Suzanne. He had granted her beauty and wit, intelligence and a kind heart, a sense of humor that could still make Mark smile across the years.

  But the one thing God hadn’t seen fit to grant her was the one thing that would have made all the difference: a long life.