Thursday, November 14, 2013

Blog Tour: Timeless Keepsake Tour: Granting Her Wish by Emma Kaye

This virtual book tour is presented by Bewitching Book Tours.
Click HERE for more tour information.
Welcome to The Wormhole and my stop on the tour.
It is my pleasure to feature:
Emma Kaye and Granting Her Wish.

About Emma Kaye:

Emma Kaye is married to her high school sweetheart and has two beautiful kids that she spends an insane amount of time driving around central New Jersey. Before ballet classes and tennis entered her life, she decided to try writing one of those romances she loved to read and discovered a new passion. She has been writing ever since. Add in a playful puppy and an extremely patient cat and she’s living her own happily ever after while making her characters work hard to reach theirs.

For more information on Emma, please visit her online at www.emma-kaye.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/emmakayewrites, or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/emmakayewrites.

Granting Her Wish
Emma Kaye

She doesn't belong in his time and he doesn't belong back home. Could they belong to each other?
Excerpt Granting Her Wish:
Danielle Thiessen smiled like an idiot as she held open the door of the cafĂ©. The place had been like a second home to her the past few weeks. Riding the PATH train back and forth to Manhattan for countless job interviews during the day while tending bar each night, she’d needed all the caffeine she could get.
She breathed in the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee and cinnamon rolls that wafted out the door along with a blast of warm air. The frigid wind of December in Hoboken made quick work of the warmth, but the cold couldn’t touch her today.
An elderly man in a fedora and thick, horn-rimmed glasses shuffled through the open door. He tipped his hat in thanks and her grin widened. He probably thought she was a lunatic, but she didn’t care. Nothing could bring her down. She undid the buttons on her knee-length, cherry-red wool coat. She struggled with the zipper underneath while she waited in line, only managing to yank it free when she arrived at the front.
“Merry Christmas, Wendy. Small coffee, please.”
“Merry Christmas! How’s the job search going, sweetie?” Wendy plucked a festive red-and-green paper cup from the stack and filled it with the strong Colombian brew she knew Dani preferred.
“Great.” Dani beamed. “I’m just coming back from my final interview. I got the job! I start right after New Year’s.”
Wendy stretched across the counter to give Dani a quick hug. “That’s wonderful news.” She pulled back and picked up a plate of sugar cookies decorated like ornaments. “How about a little treat to celebrate?”
Dani shook her head. “No, thanks. Coffee’s fine.” Treats would have to wait until her first paycheck. Her bank account was running on fumes. She’d have skipped the drink altogether if they would’ve allowed her to sit there without ordering something. Wendy wouldn’t mind, but her boss? Uh, no.
She passed her money to Wendy and dropped the change into the tip jar. It wasn’t much, but Wendy needed the help. Dani wasn’t the only one with shaky finances. She and Wendy worked nights together at the bar and often shared tips on how to make their meager incomes stretch as far as possible. Wendy knew just how much it pained Dani to be in debt.
Just a few weeks to get through before she could rest easy. She’d scraped enough together to pay January’s rent since that would be due before her first paycheck hit her account. Utilities would be late, but she’d worked out a payment plan with the utility company and she’d be only a few days behind.
A knot formed in her stomach just thinking about it. What choice did she have? Thank God those days were almost behind her.
Dani draped her purse over the back of a chair before pulling out her little notebook to jot down some figures. She stifled a groan as she sat, her feet aching from her pretty, but not exactly sensible, boots. She wasn’t looking forward to the walk home.
All she needed was a little break. A few moments to think things through. She wrote down the salary she’d been promised so she could figure out what her checks would look like.
The credit cards would take a while. They’d gotten out of hand once her mom’s medical bills started streaming in. But if she maintained her current spartan lifestyle a few extra months, she’d get a handle on it before too long.
She scrutinized her calculations and swore under her breath. She’d forgotten all about taxes. She reworked her numbers. The new figures made her stomach plummet.
Her head dropped into her hands. She was so screwed. At this rate, she wouldn’t be out of debt until her forties. She shivered from the cold seeping through the glass window at her side.

My Thoughts:
This is a sweet love story.  I am not usually a fan of the time travel love story, but this one is wonderful.  The author offers a glimpse into Dani's trying life, haunted by money troubles, a not so great childhood and the burden of her ailing mother; and then comes Lee who has his own haunted past which has been overshadowed by what he calls luck and the love of a good woman.  I knew right away that the young man is actually the old man, but that only made me read faster, hoping to figure out what comes next.  The story is short and sweet, and left me with the feeling that we should all be so lucky as to find that one true love (hopefully not the time travel thing).  I really enjoyed how the author brings the story full circle at the end while giving the whole tale a fulfilling finale.