Thank you for purchasing For This Moment, the third installment in the Gentrys of Paradise series. I hope you enjoyed it. The novella, Into the Evermore, is the first book of the series and tells the story of Eleanor and Beauregard Gentry’s meeting and marriage. The next book, For the Brave, is Matt Gentry’s story and how Annie Campbell saved him from a spring flooded river and his own demons. The final book in the series is Adam Gentry’s story, For Her Honor. It will release in the fall of 2018.

The Crawford Family series remains popular and includes, Train Station Bride, Contract to Wed, The Maid’s Quarters, and Her Safe Harbor. This series details the lives of three wealthy Boston-born sisters. Romancing Olive chronicles the life of a sheltered Philadelphia spinster as she heads west to save a niece and nephew. Reconstructing Jackson is the story of Reed Jackson, crippled confederate officer, who moves west to begin again, post-Civil War. Cross the Ocean and Charming the Duke are two British Victorian-era romances.

If you enjoyed For This Moment, please post a review or share your thoughts with friends and family. News about my books is available at my website, hollybushbooks.com. I post regularly on my FaceBook page with excerpts from all my books and I welcome you to join my FaceBook Group, Holly’s Heroines. Thank you again for your purchase!

The first few pages of Train Station Bride are next! Enjoy!

Boston 1887

“Really, Julia, do hurry,” Jane Crawford said to her daughter, who was still seated at the ivory lace-covered vanity. “The guests are arriving, and you should be there to greet them.”

Julia Crawford smiled up at her mother with resignation. This was a battle she didn’t need to win. She would make no argument.

“I’ll be down shortly, Mother. Jolene and Jennifer are there. Our guests are here to see them, not me. Has Jillian gone down?”

“She is standing with your father at the door,” her mother replied.

“I’ll be down in a moment, then. Do go down to the guests. You know how father fusses when you leave him alone,” Julia said as she spun a blond curl around her finger.

Jane glided to the door and closed it softly. Julia cocked her head, waiting for the soft patter of her mother’s slippers on the steps. Only then did she pull the gold chain from her neck and insert the key that hung from it into a gilded jewel box. With a final glance at the door, she pulled a white envelope from the box and removed and unfolded the letter it held.

Dear Miss Crawford,

I will be at the train station to meet you on the appointed day. My mother and I look forward to your arrival. I will stay above my shop until the day of our marriage. My mother has graciously allowed you to stay with her during that time. She is pleased to know you do needlepoint. Her arthritic hands no longer allow her to sew, and she is most anxious to have another woman about. I am anxious as well . . .

Julia read to the last line even though she could have recited the letter as if it were the Lord’s Prayer. Very truly, Mr. Jacob Snelling. The day of her departure would arrive sooner than she both hoped and dreaded. Mr. Snelling was a successful shop owner in a small South Dakota town, near fifty years old, with an aging mother. He had never married. His mother had begun to complain of a lack of company, and he admitted he was lonely. Those two forces had led him to place an ad for a wife in the Boston Globe nearly a year ago. To Julia’s shock, she had answered it. Their correspondence had been proper, more formal than she’d expected from a merchant in the Midwest.

That formality had been a great comfort to her—it was what she was accustomed to. He sounded like a truly nice man. He had great regard for his mother, of that she was certain. His letters were filled with news of the aging Portentia Snelling, and that always calmed Julia when she was most terrified of what she was embarking on. A man so devoted to his own mother would certainly be kind to her. She rose from the vanity seat with a smile on her face. One more formal evening with her family could not deter her.

Julia greeted a few guests and then found an unoccupied chair in a corner of the library. She had spent much of the day arranging the fresh flowers that now filled the room. It had kept her mind and hands occupied while her sisters fussed over their wardrobe and their mother scolded the servants over some small matter. Without distractions, the day would have dragged on, and she would have dwelled on a decision her mind had yet to grasp fully. She gazed absently about the room.

Her older sister, Jolene, married now ten years with a beautiful, fair child, sashayed about on the arm of her husband, Turner Crenshaw. Julia’s younger sister, Jennifer, nearly twenty-one, sat amidst a bevy of Boston’s first sons, laughing sweetly and tilting her head just so. It was most certainly the sin of envy that would lead Julia straight to Hades in the afterlife.

She felt no jealousy, though, as her eyes found Jillian. Dressed in navy velvet with a cream-colored lace collar to match her hair, Jillian was the fairest of the Crawford family. The baby of the family at only ten years old, she was already beautiful enough to turn male heads. She’d spend the first hour of the party with the adults and then be whisked away to her rooms. Even at her young age she was a model of deportment and graciousness, with a gay laugh. Julia would miss her most of all.

The Crawford women were all tall and slender—except Julia. She’d been no higher than her father’s tiepin at fourteen and still exactly the same height at twenty-seven. She snatched three shrimps from the young serving girl’s tray as she passed and laid them beside four chocolate bonbons in the napkin on her lap. Julia preferred to refer to herself as pleasingly plump or, on the days before her monthly courses, as a fat, frothy, ugly spinster with perfectly beautiful siblings and parents.

She was licking chocolate from her fingers when she saw her mother staring. Jane Crawford excused herself from her guests gracefully, as she did everything in life, Julia had long ago decided. Gracefully floating, serene and above the clutter and clamor of normal living. She had attempted to instill that elegance in each of her children. Julia was certain her mother considered her second daughter her greatest failure.

“Julia, use a napkin,” Jane chided and turned her head to view the crowd in their formal sitting room. “Alred McClintok has been hoping to speak to you all evening. Why don’t you quit hiding in this corner and go talk to him?”

Julia dabbed chocolate from the corner of her mouth and looked at the man her mother was referring to. Did everyone assume that plump women were only attracted to fat men? One of the reasons Julia had continued writing Mr. Snelling was his description of himself in an early letter: I am of medium height and very thin. Dear Mama worries I am ill, but Dr. Hammish assures me . . . Alred McClintok was busy stuffing canapés in his mouth, leaving a trail of grease around his fleshy red lips. He reminded Julia of a large black ball propped on two very stubby sticks.

“I’m perfectly happy here, Mother. Your party seems a rousing success.” Changing subjects had been a tactic Julia had used successfully when conversation turned in her direction, especially with her father and Jennifer. Her mother and Jolene, however, rarely allowed such a diversion unless it was to their advantage.

Julia knew she had failed when her mother gave her a glare she was long accustomed to. The icy blue of her mother’s eyes and the pinched shell of her mouth screamed “spinster,” “on the shelf,” and a long list of other shortcomings without saying a word.

“Mr. McClintok is a customer of your father’s, dear. We must always endeavor to make your father’s bank prosperous. Household expenses only seem to rise, rather than fall,” her mother said.

The veiled reference to Julia’s dependence on her parents’ home did not escape her. She also knew the Crawford Bank was very successful. Feeding and clothing her would never send them to the poorhouse. Julia glanced at the shrimp still lying in the napkin on her lap. Maybe she’d best go speak to the man. Nothing would come of a quick introduction, and it might keep her from expanding her waistline yet another inch. If he spat lamb on her gown, she could go to her rooms to change and not emerge until morning. Or she could slip away via the servants’ staircase in the kitchen and check her bags, which were already packed and stacked in her dressing room. On the morrow there would be only three days until she departed.

Julia had hoarded every bit of silver she could for her trip. The letter to her family was written, as well as a separate one for Jillian. Their housekeeper, Eustace, would give them out when she didn’t arrive home from a purported weeklong visit with Aunt Mildred. By that time she would be married, and there would be nothing her family could do.

Jolene would roll her eyes. Jennifer would be sad—not for long, though. Her father would rant and rave. Her mother’s fury would be hidden behind a glassy stare. Though, all in all, Julia was sure they would be glad she was gone. They would never voice the sentiment, for certain. It would be gauche to admit this final lapse in her judgment would, thankfully, be the last, in their company at least. They would tell friends she was on an extended holiday at Aunt Mildred’s, just as they had done before. Soon no one would inquire as to when she would be coming home. Her family least of all.

The only person other than Eustace who would miss her would be Jillian. No more long walks in the park. No more reading together by candlelight with the rest of the household long abed. No more brushing the silken hair ’til the child’s eyes drooped. Jane Crawford supposed Jillian preferred Julia’s company because Julia often acted with the sense of a ten-year-old rather than that of a woman. Julia would insist that Jillian loved the freedom to just be herself in Julia’s company. For whichever reason, they would miss each other desperately.

But it was long past time that Julia did something for herself. Made something of herself, even if it was only a wife to a thin, balding Midwesterner and a companion for his mother. She could have lived indefinitely with Aunt Mildred. Her aunt had written her as much. Julia loved her, and her aunt adored her, but Mildred at seventy-two had an active life with other widows in the seaside town she lived in. And a beau in his eighty-fourth year. As Mrs. Jacob Snelling, Julia would be someone of her own making. Someone’s wife. Something no one could take away from her.