Midlife Mountain Magic: Paranormal Women's Midlife Fiction (Midlife Mountain Magic Book 1)

MIDLIFE MOUNTAIN MAGIC RENEE BRUME Copyright © 2022 by Renee Brume All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All product names, logos, brands, trademarks, and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Cover: Getcovers.com Editing: Roxana Coumans www.proofreadbooks.com Proofreading by: Horus Copyedit and Proofreading Map by Piroska Edes behance.net/piroskaedes CONTENTS 1. Working Late 2. Jailhouse Rock 3. Road Trip 4. The House on Mt. Storm 5. Potentia Security 6. The Truth 7. The White House 8. Training 9. Attack 10. Car 11. Lucy 12. The Calm Before the Storm 13. The Aftermath 14. The Holler 15. The Last Days of Summer 16. Breakfast 17. Top Secret 18. The In Between Next in Series About the Author CHAPTER 1 WORKING LATE I considered the bottle of red wine as it glugged into my extra-large glass. The evening news prattled on behind me. I noted everything was terrible in the world—and my life. Picking up my glass, I held it up to the light. The dinner was growing cold on the table. After a long day at work, I hurried home and made his dinner. On the menu tonight was salmon with vegetable kabobs and a side of quinoa. Quinoa was disgusting, but he thought it was a miracle grain. His paleo, low-carb lifestyle was a burden, but I did it for him. I am the office manager of his practice, our practice. Both of us were from small West Virginia towns, and we met at college. He had graduated from dental school, and at the same time, I had finished my degree in business. My father gifted me a sizable chunk of money as a graduation present, which I gladly gave to my new husband to start his dental practice. Then, I did everything I could to make us successful. Ryan Dental had grown to be the largest and best dental practice in the Cincinnati suburbs. But as the practice had grown, so had my workload. I finally hired an entire staff of dental hygienists, office assistants, and payroll, but I still went to the office daily to handle the insurance billing and the books. It was a job I hated, shuffling paper, jumping through 10,000 hoops to get paid, and then dealing with patients who didn’t understand why they had to cough up the part their insurance refused to pay. But I was good at it, and I would turn up the sweetness, kill them with kindness, cut a deal, make a payment plan, anything to get that money in the door. My phone rang, and I looked down. Taking another sip of wine bitterly, I picked it up. It was him. I knew his excuse before the words were even out of his mouth. “Hey babe, I had a patient come in last minute with an emergency abscessed molar. I’m going to be awhile. Sorry,” his voice said, but he sounded cheerful, not like he had worked a ten-hour shift. He should be upset. Something stunk, and it wasn’t the fish I had prepared for dinner. “When do you think you’ll be home?” I asked, taking another sip of wine, my eyes flicking to the cheerful yellow clock on my kitchen wall. The food on the plates grew cold steadily by the second. “Oh, it’s going to be eight, maybe nine. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this problem,” he sighed. I heard a faint sound in the background. Was that a giggle? “Okay then. I’ll put your dinner in the fridge,” I said, my voice sounding wooden in my ears. This wasn’t the first time my husband had ruined my plans. “Don’t wait up for me, Beth.” And then he hung up without an “I love you” or even a goodbye. I ended the call and then threw my cell phone across the room in a fit of rage. It hit the sofa in the living room, landing on the soft, rich leather with a thump. I held my head in my hands, hunching over my island as the tears rolled down my face. I hated this life. Sick and tired of being pushed to the back burner and stretched so thin, I felt the person I was fading away. When our daughter, Lucy, was still at home, I devoted myself to her. Besides running a business, I was the Vice president of the PTA, a Girl Scout Leader, and a soccer mom cheerfully going to every game. Often, Sean would show up late or not at all. I had to be everything to everyone. Frankly, at 43, I was bone tired of wearing every hat. I picked up dinner and threw it in the garbage, plates and all. Sean could starve; I didn’t care. Picking up my keys and rescuing my phone from the couch, I headed out of my house with my wine bottle still in hand, sliding into my black minivan with the Ryan Dental logo emblazoned on the side. I took a gulp straight out of the bottle and then chucked it into the cup holder. If there is one thing this beast had, it was cup holders. I slammed the door shut with pure hatred. My loathing of this van was displayed for all to see. I had only kept it after Lucy moved out because Sean said we needed something big enough for the large packages of dental supplies he ordered wholesale. Once a week, I went to the post office, hauled all the boxes to this van, and delivered them to our office. Once, he even ordered a