9 Delightful Love Stories for Valentine’s Day

20170130_224128_resized

Life keeps us busy! Planning a webinar takes time. Selling that webinar takes time! Selling our books takes time.Tutoring and editing keep me from having time for much mischief. Cleaning is not happening!

I have no time to read novels I’m not editing, but I can manage to read an occasional short story. Anthologies are wonderful since they contain shorter reads. When Gilded Dragonfly Books planned an anthology for Valentine’s Day we wanted to write stories with an audience that includes people who might not read typical romances. Some of us chose older heroines and unexpected couples. We promise a happily ever after in these nine stories in Finding Love’s Magic.

Finding Love’s Magic is the perfect gift for someone you love or for yourself! In Cupid’s Bow, Georgia anything can happen. No one knows a goddess lives in the southern town playing matchmaker. Ghosts haunt houses and normal people find new love and renew old relationships. It will live up to its 5 star reviews and Amazon Best Seller status!

A collection of short stories of romance and second chance at love. Welcome to Cupid’s Bow, Georgia, a small town with its own magic. Nine authors share their stories of new found love, magical love and love lost but found again. The magic of Cupid’s Bow brings each couple love to lasts a lifetime and beyond. This project is filled with Southern voices and Southern charm, pull up a chair and sit on the porch for a spell as our authors weave their romantic tales.

Except:

Maribelle’s Magic By Mary Marvella

Maribelle Bridges stared into her bathroom mirror. She rather liked the glamour she chose twenty-two years ago when Venus led her to the small stop in the road now called Cupid’s Bow. Her long brown hair had just enough gray streaks now to make her look fiftyish. Her smooth porcelain skin still looked smooth, after all, she was immortal. She certainly looked nothing like the young woman Venus had banished from Olympus more than a thousand years ago. The goddess could really hold a grudge!

On the marble counter a scroll glimmered and vibrated. When she picked it up it became a pink Smartphone. Even an exiled demigoddess needed to get with the program of the twenty-first century. The text message she viewed made her blood run cold.

Ready to give up? You might as well. The couples you must unite this time will never get together. You will fail. Besides, Jayus loves me now.

Maribelle tapped her response.

Not on your life, Venus. Bring it on!

Here is your list and your deadline. I would wish you good luck, but I would not mean it.

The text ended, but Maribelle couldn’t ignore the picture Venus had sent. She couldn’t look away from handsome, blond-haired Jayus in Venus’s arms. It had to be a fake! Surely Jayus still loved her. The vindictive goddess looked at her and winked.

“Time to get to work so I can free Jayus,” she muttered. She braided her waist-length hair and wrapped the braids around her head in a coronet. One day she would reclaim her love, her black hair, her youth and her real home.

***

Walking to work warmed her heart as she passed large old houses with porches and white picket fences. When she returned home to Olympus she would have a house with a porch and swing like the one she owned here in Cupid’s Bow. Many of the houses had been in disrepair twenty-two years ago. Now they shone with fresh paint and their owners tended their yards like show places. Daffodils lined walkways and bordered houses. A few pansies still bloomed in yards. Waving at her neighbors, she marveled at flowers raised by green thumbs and the magic of love.

Jasmine Green’s name had been at the top of Venus’s list. The woman had been angry since the day Maribelle met her twenty years ago. Her yard, like her house, looked perfect, like her sign, Green and Green, Attorneys at Law. Jasmine had never removed the first Green, though her father, Able Green, passed away ten years ago. The old home had no swing or rocking chairs on the front porch. Matching statues of lions beside the front door looked so lifelike Maribelle expected them to roar. When one turned a shaggy head toward the demigoddess she pushed that thought from her mind so it wouldn’t happen. She had to be careful with that little power Venus had let her bring here.

By the time she strolled into Maribelle’s Flower Shop she had taken three text orders for “something exotic” and the “perfect candy” for anniversaries. Love my Smartphone! Cassandra already worked behind her candy counter in the building she shared with Maribelle, making the most perfect flower candies, a bit like marzipan but even better. The woman had a way with candy that bordered on magic. And Maribelle should know.

“Good morning, Cassandra. I have three orders for you. I’ll write them down.”

“Did you get them on your phone?” Cassandra placed a tray of orchid shaped candies in the mirrored glass case.

“Yes, I’m finally learning to use it.” She waved a hand in the air as though she hadn’t been fighting with the gadget for months.

“A call or text?” Cassandra straightened up and raised her black eyebrows.

“Why?”

“You could forward a text to me.”

“If I knew how!”

“Hand me your phone.” The candy maker grinned as she tapped the face of the phone. “Got it.”

When Maribelle curled her lip at Cassandra the younger woman laughed. She has such a pretty face and lustrous curly black hair. Why would such a lovely person not have a boyfriend?

Go to http://www.MaryMarvella.com to see the next scene!

COMMENT HERE FOR A FREE SHORT STORY BY MARY MARVELLA. COMMENT ON WWW.MARYMARVELLA.COM FOR A FREE NOVELLA!

https://goodreads.com/author/show/4909455.Mary_Marvella

https://www.facebook.com/ARomanceCaper

http://www.MaryMarvella.com

https://www.facebook.com/mmbarfield

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Marvella- Author/121044561311561

https://pinkfuzzyslippersauthors.wordpress.com

Follow Mary Marvella on Twitter @mmarvellab

http://www.GildedDragonflyBooks.com

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Marvella/e/B008E1SJ32/

https://www.facebook.com/mm.mayfieldauthor