Sweet Dreams

ISBN:  978-1-944258-11-5

 

Sarah Bowen is trapped in Orange Blossom...and she’s desperate to escape.

The day Sarah dropped her college-bound best friends off at the airport, she vowed to follow in their footsteps...soon.  While she worked in her family’s pie shop and socked away every spare dime toward her expenses at a world-renowned culinary school, she dreamed of the day she’d become a famous chef and open her own restaurant.  But Sarah’s plans have simmered on the back burner when one disaster after another delayed her plans.  Her friends have established careers and started families while she remained trapped in a small town filled with nosy matrons who frown as they look over her shoulder.  It’s no wonder that resentment has added a bitter undercurrent to Sarah’s otherwise bubbly personality, the same way finely chopped liver creates depth in her bolognaise sauce.

On the hunt for the next big hit in his family’s ever-expanding line of snack foods, Craig Star doesn’t expect much when a feisty brunette hands him a slice of orange meringue pie and insists it will change his life.  One bite convinces the confirmed bachelor he’s found more than the winning entry in this year’s Patty-Cake cook-off.  But with his future on the line, Craig can’t help peppering Sarah with kisses during early morning runs through the town’s picturesque streets, any more than she can stop herself from falling in love with the handsome newcomer during the long nights they spend tinkering with recipes in the bakery’s kitchen.

But problems rise like cakes in an oven when Craig chooses a place in the boardroom over his love for Sarah, and she discovers that success comes at a cost that may put her family’s pie shop out of business.  With the fate of her family and her town hanging in the balance, Sarah turns to her girlfriends for comfort and advice.  Whatever she does next, this time, she knows she’ll have no one but herself to blame for the outcome.

Sweet Dreams is the second book in The Orange Blossom series, the latest in heartwarming Women's Fiction from National Readers' Choice Award winner Leigh Duncan.

 
About The Orange Blossom series:

Welcome to Orange Blossom, a town that owes its existence to the early settlers who were stubborn enough—or foolish enough—to brave Florida’s mosquitoes and hurricanes until their wives and children finally started calling the central part of the state their home.  That was four generations back.  Since then, the population has grown to a whopping nine hundred and forty-three quirky characters, ornery cusses and staid leading citizens who worry that nearby Orlando, where theme parks sprout on every corner and tourists crowd the streets, will gobble up their small town.  Others fear a big juicing conglomerate will snatch up the last family-owned-and-operated citrus grove around these parts.  Either scenario is sure to drive every store in Orange Blossom out of business, and what would the town be without Miss June’s Pie Shop on Main Street, or the Book Nook down on the square?

But change is coming.  The girls who spent their summers at the camp Margaret and Jimmy Castle ran for kids who had nothing better to do than get in trouble are grown now. The ones who stuck around Orange Blossom all these years are taking a fresh look at their hometown, while those who left miss the quiet streets and laid-back lifestyle. And they’re coming home to renew old friendships, grab a second chance at life...and fall in love.