Page 2 of Jenny
CHAPTER ONE
Thirteen months later…
At two o’clock in the morning, Jenny Hanford still sat at her desk in the half-lit office on the first floor of her house. Day or night, nothing much happened in Berry Lake, Washington, a small town located north of the Columbia River Gorge. Maybe that was why she’d grown up devouring novels and now wrote books full of intrigue, espionage, and non-stop action.
Jenny stifled a yawn.
Yes, she was tired, but sleep could wait until she finished the draft of her new novel,Assassin Fever—the next volume in her bestselling thriller series called the Thorpe Files, which featured spy extraordinaire Ashton Thorpe.
Almost there…
As sights, sounds, and smells swirled through her mind, her fingers flew over the keyboard. The tapping sound became nothing more than white noise. She focused on the screen. Letters turned into words that became sentences and then paragraphs.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Tears stung her eyes.
Oh, Ash. You did it. You saved the world. Again.
With a sigh, she typed her two favorite words in the English language—The End. The draft was finished.
Satisfaction flowed through her.
A good feeling considering she’d been certain the story was the worst thing she’d ever written only four days ago. Still not perfect, but the manuscript didn’t suck as badly as she’d thought. All she needed was feedback from her editor so she could do revisions. She typed a quick email, attached the file, and then hit send.
Now she could sleep. Well, once her brain slowed down.
If she went to bed now, she wouldn’t sleep. The story still looped through her mind. The elation of finishing mixed with the sadness of saying goodbye for now to her favorite character.
Might as well do something productive until she could no longer stay awake.
The number of emails in her inbox made her do a double take. Jenny groaned. She’d been ignoring everything for almost two weeks, but…
8132.
She groaned again.
Don’t look at them.
But, of course, she had to.
Jenny deleted as much of the junk as she could. Message notifications from her online book club could wait until tomorrow. They were used to her disappearing to write. When she’d first joined the Romantic Hearts Book Club, she’d been a full-time textbook editor and part-time author. Now she only edited an occasional textbook project—usually as a favor to her former boss—and wrote full time.
So much had changed over the past four years. Her entire life really, though few knew because she’d never made a big deal over writing as Jenna Ford. She wasn’tthatsecretive about her pseudonym, but she’d quickly learned too many people only wanted to beJenna’sfriend. Not Jenny’s.
Maybe that was why her closest friends, other than her sister-in-law and some college classmates, were people she’d met virtually. She could just be herself with them. It was easier that way.
She scrolled through her inbox and deleted what she could. The subject line “Message in Bottle Found” caught her attention.
She did a double take. “Seriously?”
Over a year ago—thirteen months to be exact—she’d taken a Caribbean vacation on Enchanted Island with eleven other members of her book club. Meeting in person seemed appropriate after being together online for three years.
Boy, was it ever!
Spending face-to-face time with friends, having fun in the sun, and talking about books had been the perfect getaway. Jenny hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed a vacation—or how enjoyable it would be to hang out with women from the book world.
Before they returned home, they’d each tossed a message in a bottle into the ocean in hopes of finding true love. They weren’t called the Romantic Hearts for nothing. Surprisingly, a few had met their dream heroes after they received replies and were now married.
