Sherryl Woods - Flowers on Main

Dear Friends,

Welcome back to Chesapeake Shores and the tightly knit, if far-flung, OBrien family. If you read The Inn at Eagle Point, you know its going to take a lot to get these folks back together, and theres nothing I like more than trying to reunite a dysfunctional family.

This time youll get to know Bree, the middle sister, whose career as a playwright at a regional theater in Chicago started so brightly. Now, though, shes returned to Chesapeake Shores, her heart in tatters and her spirit wounded. But being back home among family and friends isnt as serene as shed been hoping, because in order to build a future, she needs to confront her past.

Im sure every woman would like to have a past as sexy, headstrong and amazing as landscaper Jake Collins, but few of us would like to deal with the kind of complications that have torn him and Bree apart.

And, as if their struggles to find their way back to each other arent complicated enough, Brees mother, Megan, and her father, Mick OBrien, are busy sorting out their own very contentious relationship under the watchful eye of everyone in the family and in Chesapeake Shores.

I hope you enjoy meeting more of the residents of this wonderful seaside community. Enjoy this visit, and plan to come back again. The welcome mat is always out.

B ree OBrien sank her fingers into the rich, dark soil and lifted up a handful so she could breathe in the scent of it. This was real, not like the shallow world in which shed been struggling to make a name for herself for the past six years. Gardening was something she understood. Plants could be coaxed along with water and fertilizer and loving attention in ways that a theater production could not. A vase of flowers, artfully arranged, had only to please the recipient, not an entire audience, each of them a critic in one way or another.

Shed been relieved when her sister Abby had called her about the opening of the Inn at Eagle Point, now owned by their sister Jess. It had given her the perfect excuse to flee Chicago, where her last play had been savaged by the critics and closed a mere week after it had opened. In six years shed had one regional theater triumph and two box-office and critical disasters.

Some playwrights might be thrilled to have just one big success, even far, far off Broadway, but Bree had always wanted more. Shed expected to be up there with Neil Simon, Noel Cowardheck, even Arthur Miller. Of course, that had been after her first success, when she was way too full of herself. Shed thought herself capable of Simons comedic timing, Cowards wit and Millers complex dramatic skill. Thered even been a few critics whod shared that opinion.

That had made it all the more humbling when the second play had received only lukewarm praise and a shortened one-month run. The third had been skewered by those very same critics whod sung her praises earlier. Her first play was suddenly being called a fluke. More than one suggested she was washed up at the age of twenty-seven.

Shed been relieved that no one in the family had been in Chicago for the plays opening to witness her downfall or to see the reviews that had followed. She wouldnt have been able to bear watching them struggle to be supportive. It was awful enough that everyone at the theater had been a part of the most humiliating moment of her career. None of the actors had even been able to look her in the eye as the directorher lover, for goodness sakehad read review after scathing review at the opening-night party before finally crumpling up the papers and tossing them in the trash.

One of these days, she supposed shed muster up enough confidence to sit down in front of her computer and try again, but for now she was happy to be back in Chesapeake Shores, in familiar surroundings, with her family fussing over her just because they loved her and not because they knew her life was in shambles. Shed needed girl time with her sisters, a rousing game of tag football and nonstop teasing with her brother Connor and his buddies, and a chance to hug her niecesAbbys twin daughters.

Shed needed to be back home even more than shed realized, back in her old room where the only writing shed ever done was in her diary or stories and plays written for her own satisfaction and no one elses eyes.

What shed also needed, but hadnt admitted to a soul, was distance between herself and acclaimed playwright and director Martin Demming, a mentor for a time, a lover even longer. Lately, though, the relationship hadnt been working. Maybe she was already raw and overly sensitive after those vicious reviews, but it seemed to her hed taken an almost gloating satisfaction in her failure. She hadnt been prepared for that.

So, here she was, three weeks after the opening of Jesss inn, kneeling in her grandmothers garden, yanking out weeds and letting the warmth of the sun soak into her bare and protectively sunscreened shoulders. For the first time in months, the tension that knotted there had finally eased. She feltShe searched for the right word, then realized it was content. She felt content with herself, even with her life, despite the current upheaval. She couldnt recall the last time shed felt that way.

Oblivious for now to all the warnings about sun damage and Martys constant and annoying admonitions about ruining her pale-as-Irish-cream complexion, she turned her face up to the sun and felt it ease the headache that came whenever she thought about the life shed left behind.