Justice in the Shadows
Justice Served
Justice For All
The Provincetown Tales
Safe Harbor
Beyond the Breakwater
Distant Shores, Silent Thunder
Storms of Change
Winds of Fortune
Returning Tides
Sheltering Dunes
First Responders Novels
Trauma Alert
Firestorm
Oath of Honor
Taking Fire
Wild Shores
Short Fiction
Collected Stories by Radclyffe
Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace
Radical Encounters
Edited by Radclyffe:
Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2014
Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.
Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments
Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love
Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions
Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games
Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery
Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets
Breathless: Tales of Celebration
Women of the Dark Streets
Amore and More: Love Everafter
Myth & Magic: Queer Fairy Tales
By L.L. Raand
Midnight Hunters
The Midnight Hunt
Blood Hunt
Night Hunt
The Lone Hunt
The Magic Hunt
Shadow Hunt
Acknowledgments
Love comes in all
sizes, shapes, colors, and combos—of age, ethnicity, cultural heritage, gender
identities, sexualities, social strata, and more. The color at the center of
this book is green and seems fitting in a time when difference is feared, and a
great many people think building walls, physical and metaphorical, will cure
what ails us. Those of us in the LGBTQ community know a lot about breaking down
walls and out of closets and fighting to be visible. Preserving the rights and
freedoms of others is essential to preserving those same things for us. So goes
one, so go we all, sooner or later. This book is a love story about two women,
about home and family, and about the boundaries that must fall for us to
preserve our love and our lives.
Many thanks go to:
senior editor Sandy Lowe for the inspiration and hard work, editor Ruth
Sternglantz for endless attention and expertise, editor Stacia Seaman for her
unique skills, Sheri Halal for a super cover, and my first readers Paula, Eva,
and Connie for encouragement and aid.
And as always, thanks
to Lee for the best colors of all—green grass and blue skies. Amo te.
Radclyffe, 2016
Chapter One
At ten to nine, Emily settled into one of the
leather and mahogany captain’s chairs at the round oak table in the library on
the second floor of the Winfield Building and looked out the tall leaded-glass
windows into the Flatiron District. A light, late snow fell, delicate and
subtly powerful. So far the dusting was pleasantly picturesque, painting the
sidewalks and marquees in a fleeting lacquer of white, and not enough to snarl
traffic in Manhattan. She’d been in her office before six and hadn’t minded the
walk from her apartment in Chelsea. Spring was around the corner, snow or not.
She sipped her Earl Grey and waited for the
others, soothed as always by the faint lemony scent of furniture polish and the
seductive aroma of parchment. She never used the renovated conference room on
the first floor, with its bright lights, steel and glass tables, sleek modern
chairs, and absolutely no soul. This room had soul. The shelves were filled
with history—history she was part of now—books discovered, sponsored, birthed
by the Winfield Literary Agency for a hundred years. She hadn’t been born into
this world, but she’d been born with the love of words and she’d found her
home.
Home. A flood of melancholy washed through
her even after all this time. Almost ten years since home had become a place of
sorrows and loss. She brushed the fleeting sadness aside, even while knowing it
would return. The past was never truly gone, and she didn’t want it to be. She
had forged a new life, but memories, even painful ones, could still bring
moments of joy. She did not regret hers.
Right now she had a very busy day ahead of
her, and she looked forward to it. She sipped more tea and scanned the agenda
on her tablet. Acquisitions, launches, marketing and ads, budget, contracts.
Business items to some, but excitement to her. Behind every bullet point a book
was waiting.
At five to nine, Ron Elliott arrived, looking
neat and polished as he always did in an open-collared, blue button-down shirt
and flawlessly tailored black trousers. His chestnut brown hair draped over his
forehead in a subtly artful accentuation of his dark brows and piercing blue
eyes. He was handsome in the way some men could be beautiful and masculine at
the same time. If she’d been interested in men in a personal way, and if he
hadn’t been gay and happily married, she would have picked Ron as the perfect
match. He loved the work the way she did—as more than a job. He hadn’t even
complained when she’d been moved ahead of him into the senior agent position
when she was younger and had less time in than him. He claimed he really only
wanted to spend his time on acquisitions, and she believed him. Some days she
envied him, when her carefully scheduled half-day of reviewing the slush pile
went to hell in a handbasket with an unanticipated fiscal crisis, a frantic
author with a missed deadline, or an impossible publisher request to advance a
pub date.
